Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Packing clay bottom

cb100,

It sounds like you are doing everything right. Are you digging with your own excavator/backhoe? If so, that is a big plus.

It is hard to do geology over the internet, but if water is running pretty steadily from the walls of your pit and into your sump, then you are PROBABLY still digging in muck, and NOT the clay seal.

Keep grabbing some samples from your deepest scoop every time you dig a little more in your sump pit. I expect that at some point you will reach a good clay layer. (Keep performing the "clay ball" test.)

Cleaning out the muck is certainly an expected step for a 48-year-old pond. Once you get the muck out, then you can evaluate your clay layer. Hopefully, you will find some thin spots that are likely candidates for your leak(s). At that point, you can evaluate bringing in more clay from adjacent locations or using the SoilFloc to seal up your weak clay areas.

**If you use the search function, there are lots of discussions of sealing off ponds with the SoilFloc. TJ is DEFINITELY one of the experts for advice on that subject!

Yes it is my excavator. I am down past any muck or clay into rock water is still coming out so I am not sure about any actual clay liner

cb100,

The lack of a sealing layer is perplexing on your pond. (Can you post pictures of the "lay of the pond" that shows the dam and the watershed?)

Your pond must have had something that created a seal if it held water well for most of the first 48 years!

One other option is that the sealing horizon has been disrupted by "bioturbation".

Basically, living organisms could have mixed up your sealing layer with the overlying "muck" layer. This could be burrowing crayfish, it could be muskrats, it could be hundreds of small cottonwood trees, etc.

If you NEVER had a sealing layer, then your underlying rock layer must be impermeable and your dam must be "pinned" to the rock horizon with a clay core of some type?

I had a pond built, in all red clay, in late 2016, that was only compacted with a loaded tractor backhoe after it was dozed out. It leaked for a year and a half, before finally settling enough to gradually stop seeping through the dam. After almost five years, it stays full to nearly full all the time, losing only by evaporation, it seems.