I've been thinking about ways to battle our hot Texas summers and keep my pond at or near full pool. At first I thought about investing in a pump and bringing in water from the creek that runs through the property. But, it is almost always dry unless we really get a frog washer.

I don't know why it just dawned on me...but I have a drainage pipe (exactly like the one pictured below) that collects all of the runoff from the surrounding area and dumps it right on my property (which drains through the property, eventually ending up in the creek).



So, what I'm thinking is installing a catch basin right below the runoff pipe and channeling all of it through 4" PVC drain pipe directly into my pond. I would actually setup a dual pipe system with slip ball valves so I could direct it to the pond, and if it gets full, then switch it to drain into the creek instead...this would also eliminate a large portion of my land getting semi-flooded when it rains.

All in all it would only cost me about $850 to do this and just a small amount of rain would bring in a huge amount of water.

What are y'alls thoughts? Is there anything I should take into consideration?

Diagram below of how it would look. (You can tell, but I've highlighted in yellow the path of how the water currently drains through that section of the property.)

Personally I'd put the valve at the top near the catch basin and eliminate the secondary line. Just let your excess water run down the ditch versus having it run through a pipe.

I may end up putting the valves up near the catch basin, although the additional pipe would cost another $150 or so...

I'm sort of trying to kill two birds with one stone with the dual pipe system...of course try and keep the pond full, but also keep that area of land as dry as possible, because I'm about to till up a new crop field there.

Looks to me, the only solution is to expand the pond to the yellow line.

Agree, if possible make the pond larger…

Haha, yeah that would be nice, but a bit out of the budget right now.