Well, my niece and her husband just bought 15acres with about a 3acre (when full) pond! Pond is currently about 6' low do too an old 6" cast iron overflow pipe. He asked for my help to stop the leak so it can fill back up. After brain storming I came up with the idea of placing a half inflated socer ball into the intake of the pipe and inflating it-well after several attempts of chasing the ball as it exited the discharge side we finally got it stopped! We then poored sac creat on top of the inflated ball below the water line.This thing is so rusted-and crumbling above the water, beyond salvage!! What now! I plan to put in a syphon system since it is so low-but how do we permantely disable this old pipe without draining the rest of the pond. There are still fish in it and they can not afford restocking! They are young and this is there first home-My idea is: Place a larger PVC pipe around the existing riser portion and fill with concrete-Then pump crete from the discharge side aswell! What yall think?

Filling it with concrete will work if done well. Good idea to put in a new system as fixing the old one would be high risk. Be sure you don't have an overflow event while the old one is disabled and the new one not in. That could jeopardize the dam. Care should be taken where the pipe goes into the dam.

well I plan to put in a 10" syphon system as this would not require us to further drain the pond. The pond is so low because the cast iron pipe had rusted through at this level. On the pond side-I plan to put an 8" PVC sleeve over the cast iron pipe to about 2' above it and fill to the top with concrete. Haven't come up with a real good idea as how to plug the old pipe on the discharge side yet, any ideas?

They have guys that pump concrete. It probably won't be cheap to pump the pipe full of hydraulic cement, but it'll be cheaper than fixing the pipe or repairing the dam. I'd look into a concrete pump.

To inspect the pipe, plumbers have cameras on a long snake to inspect sewers.

A pump truck cost $750.00 per day here in East Texas. Good Luck

You can build a plywood chute to acess the pour site. They usually have 16 ft. of chute on the truck so they you can determine how long to make your chute. I have never had a pump truck on a site. A lot of builders use them for every pour. After all it is only your money. Good luck.

Getting the concrete to the pipe is always a problem.

We have cut a road on the dam slope to the pipe with a dozer. A little work but will get the truck closer.
The wooden shoot sounds good.

Otto

What about a tractor or backhoe with a front bucket to transport the concrete?
I've seem MANY footers poured this way. Just make sure the company knows in advance that you will be bucketing the concrete in, and the truck will be tied up for a longer period of time than usual.

If there is no water coming out of the discharge you could dig back into the levee with equipment until you find some metal good enough for welding. You can then cut off the pipe and weld a thick plate on the end and pack plenty of dirt back on top. This is not as good as a concrete plug, but I have seen it work several times.

-HH