Well I have my first pond and of course my first pond problem. Actually I have many pond problems this is just the first one I plan on fixing. We know the previous owners and they had the same problem so not a new problem just new "my" problem
The pond is a runoff fed 1 acre body of water that's at least 50 years old and has enough sediment to build a mountain. The problem is when the water get about 2' from full pool there is a leak on the dam. You can actually see the. water coming out a hole about 15' from the bank. Until I can get all the sediment out I need all the depth I can get so I thought this might not be too hard to fix myself. Unfortunately the last time I saw it was in the spring and I wasn't planning on buying the property at that time, but I know about where the leak is located. There's a little valley where the earth has settled, or eroded away. At most it's about a 10 inch dip.
There are lots of crawfish holes around, so I'm not sure if this leak was specifically from one of those. I haven't seen any evidence of a muskrat or other larger animal burrowing. There are a few larger holes, see the picture attached. I'm not sure if the leak is coming from there.
My first thought was to hand dig a trench to about where I thought the hole was located. Probably 2 to 3 feet at the deepest so a long day but not impossible. I also thought getting a pump and seeing if I could locate exactly where the hole was might be beneficial. Other options would be renting something like a ditch witch or a backhoe.
Once I have the ditch dug out I would mix in some other dirt, refill the ditch and drive over it a bunch with my Jeep to compact it down.
Since we just bought the house I'm little short on cash at the moment so anything I do would have to be on the cheap. If I can get that done before spring hopefully the spring rains will fill the pond back up to its normal full pool size. That would buy me another year or so before I could get someone to dredge out all the muck.
Pretty much exactly what Fishinrod said, Your jeep will not compact the repair sufficiently at all best case scenario. I have fixed a ton of leaks similar to that, muskrat holes mostly, but also tree root rotting holes, with a mini excavator in small areas, to even rework the top 4' of an entire dam top that had massive muskrat damage. my way to tackle your situation would be to dig across it with a mini excavator down past the damaged area and past it a good bit end ways, then replace it in small lifts, assuming it is good clay, mixing a generous amount of bentonite with it, you will need to compact it with a jumping jack or similar in small amounts but that is a lot easier after you take the back side of the excavator bucket and compact it pretty good and smooth with it, then one person can handle the JJ better. first things first tho, you will need to eliminate the cause, like muskrats and such, crawdads seldom cause a big problem, they mostly burrow down, not out. another problem I am afraid you will find, if the pond has been down to a different level for a few yrs, the muskrats will go down with it, and dig new burrows and tunnels at a lower elevation that is under the current water level, as the pond fills up you are liable to find more leaks. Good Luck!
