Hi folks - new poster here, previous reader, good to meet you all.
We purchased our property north of Dallas a few months ago and it has(had) a small 60x80 pond on it. We noticed that without nearly continuous pumping of water, it would lose water at a very rapid rate - 6 inches a day.
We had a couple excavation companies come out that do pond work and another couple landscaping companies that do liners. The problem, we explained, was the rapid leaking.
We went with one of the excavation companies - the most expensive option - who seemed to be the most knowledgeable. They explained that because we’re in N Texas and have good clay, and because we had a fairly large yard around the pond, they should be able to dig up a portion of our yard to get the clay that would be needed to seal the pond. No need to bring in additional materials. They also suggested they’d need to extend the pond by about 15 feet in order to appropriately slope the walls.
They’ve been out nearly every day for the last week with their bulldozer. They told us there were some rock structures that they hit in their digging and an inflow of water around them that they had to plug. The resulting pond shape was MUCH larger than originally planned, At this point they said they’re nearing the finished product, just need to do some smoothing, etc.
I have some concerns and therefore some questions for the wise folks of PB:
1) It appears that they did some ‘clay buildup’ on only one side of the pond. We asked about the other side and their response was ‘we can’t do anything better than god created on that side.’ Attached is a picture where I think you can see the difference. What do you think based on the photo?
2) At one point they got their bulldozer stuck, and immediately following that they pushed a bunch of top soil (that previously had grass, weeds growing in it) into the pond that they’d just dug out and spent days compacting. I assumed that he was doing it to stabilize things and would ‘seal’ over it, but in the end they didn’t, it now forms part of the wall and part of the bottom of the pond. I’m concerned this won’t seal any better than what was there initially...?
I’m just a bit hesitant because my cynical side tells me that the leaking 60x80 hole we had before has now become a very expense, still leaking 80x120 hole. I’m linking to the before, in progress and today (almost done) photos and welcome any input. Thanks!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/1zNcrZ5844vPKh6i8
