Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Building a Waterski Lake - Many Questions

I am new to this site and by stating that my primary desire for a pond is for watersports, some of you may prefer that I not belong. However, conserving the environment and water quality is also dear to my heart so I hope you will accept and help me. I have had a dream for some time, which is to live on my own private waterski lake. Granted I know this will likely be well beyond my personal budget but I also have others who are interested in sharing this dream. I am sure that I will have many more questions along the way but for now, I will start here:

I don’t currently own the land. So needless to say, the first step that I have to make is buying the land. However, I would hate to spend a significant sum of money buying land to start the project if it is doomed due other issues such as: not enough water run off to keep the lake full, too much seepage, denied permits / permission to build the lake. Therefore, I am looking to this site to understand the likelihood of overcoming the many obstacles prior to talking to land owners and local authorities about such a project.

I can target 3 main land types. I have spent a fair bit of time driving around and looking at topographical maps, which has narrowed my search somewhat. My options are:

1)Flat farmland. There is plenty of this around central Illinois. The problem clearly is getting enough water to run into the lake to keep it full. The best sites that I have found are on 40 acres parcels but since the land is so flat unless I slope the excavated material into the lake no water really runs into the lake. From what I have read in the USDA Ponds - Planning, Design, & Construction Manual one needs 5 acre feet of watershed in my area. For a 14 acre pond (2600’ x 230’) that averages 10' deep, one would need 700 acres of watershed to keep the pond full (14 acres times 10 feet = 140 acre feet times 5 acres)! Does anyone have successful experience with significantly less watershed area than USDA recommends? Annual rainfall this area of IL averages 36”/year and according to a couple of studies that I have read, evaporation averages 35”/year in IL as well. I have yet to figure out how much seepage to plan for. What I have found interesting is I have noticed several ponds in Illinois with little if any watershed beyond their own surface area that seem to stay nearly full all year long and some how continue to be over full every spring. Finding a site with 700 acres of watershed is nearly impossible unless you dam up a flowing creek/river and I doubt the government will allow that. The 700 acres do not seem to add up with observations unless each of these ponds along the highways are spring fed or something???

2)Lowlands next to a creek. There are 2 main sites that I can target that have the dimensions that I would require. They would have a slightly less problem of keeping the pond full than flat farm land (probably about 80 acres of heavily sloped and wooded watershed could be easily directed to the pond) but some of the land is in a flood plain. My thought was to build a 2700’ long berm along one side to keep the spring flood waters out of the lake rather than allowing the flood waters (and any branches or debris it carries) to fill the lake each spring. I certainly don’t want to hit branches that have been carried in from the flood. The berm would also reduce the amount of excavation required but may create permitting issues. In addition, this is relatively sandy soil so sealing the pond would be an issue. I don’t have this one figured out yet. Since I don’t own the land, test holes are obviously a problem but Illinois Soil information calls it Sarpy Loamy Sand (I have a lot of info on the soil and it doesn’t hold water well).

3)Pasture land that is cut through by a naturally eroded ditch. When looking at contour lines this looks like a great site to significantly reduce the required excavation. It seems that it is almost made for building a lake to my dimensions. This ditch only carries water during rains but quickly dries up once the runoff from about 400 acres of land that empties through this location. Obviously the main problem would be silting since most of the watershed to this area is cropland. If I interpreted the Illinois NRCS calculations correctly, the silt would fill in at a rate of about 0.5”/year. Since the silt would be more of an issue near the inlet, this likely would require periodic digging (every 5 - 10 years?) to maintain the depth of the pond. Rental of a long reach excavator might have to be in the ongoing budget.

I guess my first couple of questions are:

1)If given the choice, which one of the 3 above properties would you target and why? Are there any that are obviously not a viable option? What other major issues do I need to think about that are specific to one of these sites?

2)What work should I do prior to contacting the landowners about selling the land? I clearly don’t want to do this until I am relatively certain that if I buy the land, we can complete the lake project.

3)Should I contact NRCS and county agencies about this as a potential project without owning the land? Obviously, I don’t want to buy the land and then find out that they won’t permit me to do the project.

4)Should I contact local contractors / gravel pits that may want the dirt or wait until I buy the land? All 3 sites may have fill that might be of value to local builders / land developers so I certainly will explore that option when the time comes.

5)If w can’t trade dirt to a contractor in exchange for free digging then is it reasonable buy a couple of tow pan scrapers and hire a couple of operators (who incidentally are family) for this type of project or would a professionally designed lake and contractor be the only way to go? I have calculated it would take 9,000 passes and just under 1,000 hrs with a 34 yd scraper to dig the lake. If a dam was required, I would hire professionals for that but just moving dirt is a lot cheaper if done without the contractor markup.

6)What other suggestions to improve the chances of being able to obtain the land and required permits do you have? Farmers may not want to sell a portion of their land and regulatory agencies are much less likely to permit a ski lake rather than a pond. However, I am an honest person and would want to tell people my intensions with the land rather than obtaining a permit for a fish pond or agricultural pond and then skiing on the lake.

Thank you all for any help that you can lend to my dream. I either need to pursue this dream or find another dream. I have kept it in the back of my head for too long now.

First off Matt, welcome to Pond Boss!

Even though most of the guys on here build their ponds for fishing there are plenty on here who know more than just fish management. The earth mover guys (otto) and others will I'm sure be willing to help you out... Be patient and they will chime in soon. Best of luck in attaining your dream, with a will their is a way!

Welcome Matt.

The amount of water that drains off of a watershed depends on what type of soil is present. If clay is present more what will run off. If there is sand, most of the water will soak into the ground and not drain.

Since your evaporation rate is not that high the pond won't have to be as deep. I would think 7'-8' would be deep enough.

Welcomb Matt
In the morning I will have more time to read and respond.

Hi Matt and welcome to Pond Boss. Feedback from Otto is about as good as it gets.

Very interesting project idea you have there. I grew up water skiing - both salt and fresh water. Very much fun.

Oh and as an also and besides, no one is going to "prefer you don't belong" to Pond Boss. This is a site for people that own ponds, want to own ponds, or just like talking about ponds.

We're glad you found us.

I am very glad that I found this site too and glad to see that there are others who have had the opportunity to enjoy waterskiing too. I am anxiously awaiting my "required reading"... Perfet Pond... want one?

After some more studying last night, I can see that I will also have a lot of questions on seepage. Most of the soil that is in our area has a Ksat of 9 - 20 micrometers per second which makes me wonder how the existing ponds in the area stay full. If I understand the calculation correctly at 10 micrometers per second, the lake would loose 3"/day due to seepage. I know you can bring in clay or bentonite to fix that but since it seems all the soil with clay in the area has similar Ksat numbers, I'm not sure where to get the clay.

Welcome aboard, Matt.

I can't say that I have "enjoyed" water skiing. Fish Wife says the perfect skiboat for pulling me is a U-Boat, since I have never gotten above the water.

Matt -- another Pond Boss welcome. Hang tight. You should be able to get a lot of good answers from our members.

We are always glad to receive new questions and ideas. AS you get started, we really like to follow your progress through the whole process. Please keep posting.

This is just one link to somebody's progress My Second Pond: Structure

Certainly the geographic area you planning for has lots of good ponds. Some of the members here may be a little shy about advertising their services, but I'd strongly suggest that they post here on the forum, or they send you a Private Message offering their consulting services.

The price of some good consulting will more than pay for mistakes that you won't make.

Good luck,
Ken

Just guessing but. 700 acres needs to be checked.

You can find out most of the information you will need from a topo map, Getting on the property and walking around will be important but not at first.

Yes you should find out about the permits before you buy the land.

Selling dirt from a pond outside of the city limits is hard here in Texas. Check around but do not get your hopes up.

When it comes to doing the work yourself. The answer is YES.

It sounds like a neat project I look forward to hearing more about it. With the equipment described, my gut feel for the time required is about 3 or 4 times what you estimated.

Wasn't someone else on here considering a similar project a couple of years ago?

Welcome. I've done a fair amount of skiing in the past, and have even taken lessons at a Fl. Ski School for a week to tune up my skills. I think the type of skiing that you plan on doing will dictate the type of pond that you desire. The ponds that I've been on were long and narrow, with an island on each end to keep the boat's wake from going back up the pond's length after the boat has turned around. To give you some idea on how narrow that turn-around is, I was told "not to be outside of the boat's wake when going around the island." The first time, I was, but just right outside of the wake and the ski ran aground!

There was one pond for a slalom course, another for trick skiing, and another for jumping.

Just a thought: What about doing a search for some of the ski schools in Fl., then take that info and look on Google Earth or another program like that. That should give you an idea of what they are using for waterskiing ponds.

All,

Thanks for the replys.

I do already know the dimensions that I want (yes, long and narrow. Most are about 2200' x 250' with a max depth of 6 - 8'. However, with wakeboarding now so popular, you need at least 10' deep for good wakes. I'm not a big wakeboarder but some of the other potential investors are). It sounds like your turn areas were tighter than that or else you had a poor boat driver. Speaking from experience, at even 200' you can easily make the turn without worrying about running aground. However, most make the turn areas 300' wide for extra safety. The turn islands are optional but very nice. With a turn island, the boat driver needs to be more careful with the skier. To me the decision on turn islands depends on if you are digging the lake out and the islands are less area to excavate vs filling in the islands.

Regarding the digging time:
Please don't take this as a know it all answer because I certainly understand your point about how everything takes double the time and money than what you expected and that is why I am here. I know there is a LOT that I don't know!!!! However, I work for Caterpillar and have talked with some of our experts here about excavation time in clay soils. Of course it depends on the kind of dirt, equipment, weather, operator, haul distance, etc... I have even done some modeling on our internal software to validate the numbers. I made many conservative assumptions to come up with the 1,000 hrs. In fact a 637D scraper with an average operator should get the job done in 700 hrs. An ag tractor with 2-18 yd pull pans should get the job done in just over 1,000 hrs. These are actual working hours. You still have to add in operator time (usually you get 6 hrs of work in an 8 hr day) and you have to schedule 933 hrs for a scraper or 1,333 hrs for an ag tractor with 2-18 yd pull pans for the job. The contractor's "cost" for either of these projects should be just under $200k (scrapers cost more on a $/hr). Double that for Profit/Risk for the excavation company and it runs $400k to dig the lake. Yep, a lot of money but with enough investors together anything is possible.

Rough budget:
Land = $400k
Permits = $100k (I have no idea if this is even close)
Design / Engineering = $100k (Again I need to research more)
Digging Lake = $400k
Total = $1,000k (Divided by 6 investors and you get $167k each).

Compare that expense to a lake about 1 hr away and property there is $200k+ for a lot or $500k+ for a house. I would rather spend $167k + the house + lake maintenance expenses to live on a private lake than spend $200k + a second house to spend weekends on a very busy lake that I really can't ski much on anyway.

Yep. I dream big but is there any other way? I have committed to spending time this year to learn about whether it is even possible and what it would take to accomplish. If all goes well and we all commit to the project, we would start making offers on property in 2010. I know there are a lot of high hurdles to overcome between now and then but by the end of the year, I hope to have a much better idea of how high the hurdles are and how many there are.


Thanks again for the replys and help. We certainly need it.
Matt

It sounds like you have a pretty good handle on what you're wanting to do.

I think it was just me, and the turns were pretty durn tight. I think I was skiing 28 off at the time. Back then, there were only 3 events, and kneeboards were just hitting the market. To further date it, I had a prototype Jobe "World Class" that I was evaluating, and the "hydrofoils" that go on the ski fins weren't out yet.....

Would you want to use rip rap or otherwise protect the shore line from wake damage?

I'm not expert on excavating or building ponds but one thing I noticed after being around this site for several years is that most people seem to build ponds by damming up a naturally formed ravine or drainage path to build a pond. I would imagine this is the cheapest way to make a pond but it's not the only way. I didn't have that option on my property but I do have 20 acres of peat bog. By definition I think the peat bog extends down into the ground to within the water table. Thus, I don't need 700 acres of watershed to keep my pond full. It gets its water from the ground. There are people on this forum who could tell you technically what this is called but I like to describe my pond as being below the water table. One perhaps could also say that it's the same as being spring fed. Now in order to build a pond under these circumstances I had to dig every cubic yard of soil (peat) out and move it. That's why this is not the cheapest way to build a pond. The up side however is that if it's a bog that is always wet then your pond will always have water and in my case the level hardly fluctuates at all. In the worst drought years my pond level fluctuates less than a foot. One way to turn all that dirt into a benefit is if you can sell it. In my area I can get a peat mining permit that allows me to remove all the peat from a defined area and sell it. I haven't done that yet since the pond I made is only 1/2 acre and I used all the peat from that project to create a very nice yard and garden around my house. My next project will be a one acre pond for which I hope to sell the peat. I have a friend who created a 5 acre lake by contracting a black dirt company to come in and remove all the peat. They paid him $50,000 for the peat and after they were done he had a 5 acre hole that filled with water. They paid him to build his pond. I am seriously thinking about buying the equipment needed to excavate and pulverize the dirt and sell it myself to make even more money. Just some alternative thoughts for you to ponder.

Very good question. I still have to figure this one out. Wakes from the wakeboard boat will erode a natural shore but rip rap will cause the wakes to bounce back thus ruining the water when you turn around at the end of the lake. Most private lakes don't allow wakeboard boats for this reason. Since most of the people who are interested in this project exclusively wakeboard it is a problem that we will have to overcome. Hopefully we can find a happy medium.

Yep, that was a couple of years ago then. You may have even been behind an original Mastercraft. The first boat that I bought was a '79 Mastercraft Stars & Stripes. It didn't run when I bought it but after a fair bit of work it ran great for many years.

Absolutely way too much reading for my brain to process here, but I would like to chime in and say that I was a BIGTIME skier from way back in the day! From the lakes of Minnesota to the hills of Tennessee Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Colorado!

Now it pretty much takes an ocean vessel to get me up on plane!

N8ly is pretty accomplished on a Zip Line too.

Bing

Iowa has hills?????

Ya know, I was thinking the same thing...

[quote=Matt Alger
Yep, that was a couple of years ago then. You may have even been behind an original Mastercraft. The first boat that I bought was a '79 Mastercraft Stars & Stripes. It didn't run when I bought it but after a fair bit of work it ran great for many years. [/quote]

Funny you should mention a Stars and Stripes. I've got an '81 Power Slot brown sparkles/tan that is still in fine shape. I pulled it back home in '81 with the '81 Z28..... It's kept up out of the water on a hoist even for a little bit - no beaching of the boat, and it's stored inside (covered) for the winter. It's been re-done once (inside and out) but the motor is still going strong. The school was around the '79-'80 time frame tho!
For the life of me I can't remember the ski school.

I think if you use 10"-14" rip-rap, a lot of the waves would break up on and between the rip-rap and not bounce back.

For the kind of money your talking about is it possible to find a beautiful lake in your area and buy you a nice home right on the water. Put in a nice boat slip right out your back door. I'm just a simple hillbilly from Tennessee so if this is a bad post please accept my apologies.

Sundown ski area is located in Dubuque, Iowa.
Correction: Hill of Iowa!
Sorry......

Simple is good. I am too. Tenessee has a lot of awesome lakes. However, central IL is quite a bit different. The only lake where you could build a house is about 1 hr away but it is way too busy for skiing unless you are a very early morning riser. There are a couple of strip mine lakes but none of the few people who own them wants to sell. We do also have the Illinois River but it is usually pretty rough too. Ski lake communities are become much more common.