Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Looks like I may have fixed our leaking problem.....

Hey everyone,

It looks like maybe we have finally got our leak fixed in our pond. Won't know for sure until probably spring but it looks promising at this point. Man with all the excavation costs, bentonite, installation of a well and not to mention all the work, I sure will be happy to finally take some fish out of that pond next year! The rain that we had earlier this week brought up the water level a couple of feet. If we get a few good soaking rains over the winter then hopefully it will be a full pool by spring! It's suppose to be 6.5-7 surface acres but right now it is only covering around half that. If we got just a few more inches of rain then it would come up enough to cover a majority of the bottom. That's what I'm really waiting on

The rate at which the water fell this summer was between 4-6" a day. We added pelletized bentonite in a boat and since then the water hasn't hardly dropped at all. We put out 12k lbs of bentonite about 6-8 weeks ago and we have pumped about 800,000 gallons of well water into it over the last month or so. I've run it in spurts because I have to go up and fill the generator and the 100 gallon fuel tank that feeds it. I have been letting it run until it runs out of fuel and then starting the process over again. I'm planning on firing it up for 1 more time this fall and then we'll see what mother nature can do for us

-lee-

Not trying to be cynical but are you sure you have enough watershed to feed this pond? The pond also looks like it will be quite shallow possibly inviting weed growth.

Lee, I think I would spray the grasses to kill them. I have a small forage pond that dried up during a drought. Grasses grew in it and when it rained, the grasses blackened the water. I had the water analyzed by the Texas A & M soil lab and Lusk read the analysis. He said for me not to worry and that it was just temporary. Well, that was a couple of months back and temporary is still happening. I think I would get some Roundup and head off the problem.

Cecil....the pictures are a little deceiving. Where that grass is will be under about 6' of water once it's full. We have a 4' vertical drop all the way around the perimeter. For our area we were told we needed a 10:1 ratio to fill a pond and we have 13.5:1 so we do have enough watershed but we just haven't had any water. I was hoping that we were going to receive some of the rain of those hurricanes that came through but we didn't get a drop from it.

David....I'm going up there tomorrow to do some hunting so when I get done I'll go spray the grasses. I have a 25 gallon sprayer that I can put on the back of my atv and do it in just a few minutes.

-lee-

Lee,

Glad to hear it. Pictures indeed can be deceiving. Now that you mention it I can see the 4 foot drop. Good luck! Maybe you'll get a freak snowstorm this winter that will fill it up?

Hey Lee you did get some rain out of the storms this week didn't you? I ended up with over 4 inches and added about 10 inches in depth to the pond here in North Alabama.

Bob....we got about 4-5" on Monday/Tuesday of this week. It is suppose to rain here tomorrow so hopefully we can get another inch or two out of it. I'm also going to turn the well on again on Sunday. As much surface acreage as we have under water now it won't make much difference but it'll put another 360,000 gallons of water in there so it will raise it a little but not a whole lot.

-lee-

Yeah I'm hoping for a couple of more also. Just as long as there are no tormnados had a couple touch down 2 counties NW of me out of the last round fortunatly no deaths just some injuries.