Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? New property, old pond. What to do?

I just purchased some property and it has a small pond on it. Looking at past dates on google earth, it was dug sometime around 1975. The pond flooded 3 years ago during Hurricane Harvey. It is now covered in some kind of thick vegetation. Initial thoughts are to drain the pond and access what I have, then possibly get some equipment in there and clean out the sludge and start over.

Any idea what this vegetation is? Any recommendations or suggestions on how to go about this? We are south of Houston. The pond is about 150' from one end to the other. My kids are 10 and 13 yrs old so I'd like to get some perch and maybe some bass in there for them to have fun with. We are about to start building a home on the property, so really don't want to sink a large amount of money into the pond. I'd love to hear any thoughts or suggestions y'all may have.

Just a guess, but it looks like Salvinia. I hope somebody corrects my guess, because that's nasty stuff.

Salvinia

When earthmoving equipment is on the property to do grading and foundations for the house, that is the best time to do a pond renovation project!

I would suggest you keep doing research on Pond Boss forum to determine your best course of action on your pond. There is literally an expert for almost any question that you can ask.

(My problem was that you need to have some knowledge about ponds to be able to ask the experts the "right" questions.)

Good luck on your house and pond project!

P.S. If your pond dimensions are actually a 150' x 150' square, then your pond is 0.52 acres.

Best wishes, Rod

I've confirmed it is Giant Salvinia.

FishinRod, I am here to hopefully get advice on what course of action to take. I'd like to first drain the pond so I can assess what I have. Can a trash pump do this or would the salvinia be too much and clog it?

After draining, depending on depth and muck, possibly dig it a little deeper. In the end, I just want a body of water that is nice to look at and that my kids can catch some perch and maybe a few bass.

I appreciate any advice yall can offer. What would YOU do if it was your pond? Id not want to make it any larger. Deeper maybe, but not take up any more space.

Hey 45,

I am in the same general boat as you, and not to brag, but think I am in a little better starting position, haha! I just bought some property in the Plantersville area. The pond on it is about 1/8 acre, and was made sometime between 1958 and 1965. I have some vegetation around the edges, but have seen some bluegill and some decent largemouth (which have no problems eating grasshoppers that get thrown in the pond!). I am trying to figure out if I should just leave it, or if I should try digging it out and addressing the vegetation issues.

One thing I have thought about doing, is digging a larger (roughly 2 acre) pond on the back of the property, and then once it is stocked, converting this smaller one to a catfish only pond. I would pellet feed them to keep the size up, and it would be a great small pond where the kids are almost guaranteed to catch something.

If you want to get a fairly accurate size, I recommend using google maps. You can zoom in as far as possible, right click a point on the edge of the pond, choose measure distance, then click points all around the edge, until you get back to the start point. It will give you the area, and you can either use google to convert it (just search for sq ft to acres), or just divide the area by 43,560. I added a picture for you. My pond measure .1446 acres, which is just over 1/8th.

I am going to keep an eye on this thread to see if anyone has any input. Best of luck with yours!

So, any ideas how to drain it? Trash pump? Siphon made form PVC? Just not sure if that Salvinia will clog the drain.

Am I even asking the correct questions? Just thought I'd get more than a couple replies....

Just looking for some guidance from you experts on this pond. Admittedly, I don't really know what I'm doing.

I prolly wont be much help for ya but I will take a stab at it. If I was going bring in equipment to dig it out I wouldn't worry bout the vegetation because it will be removed also. If theres no fish in there tht you care then drain it. When I drained mine (only halfway). I took a bucket and put the pump inside it. Made the bucket like a big washing machine tub. It had lots of small holes in it. Mine I was more concerned with mud clogging it up. If you get some kind of trachoe to clean it be careful. It could disrupt a clay line which hopefully it has. Hopefully I didnt create more questions than answers which I tend to do.

I know it has been a while, so don't know if you got your pump situation figured out, but random thought that popped into my head. If your pond is accessible by a large truck, and you have a small local fire department nearby, call them and ask them if they would be interested in doing some "drafting" training, and offer your pond up. Drafting is basically pulling water from a static source, to use for fire fighting. I remember we drafted from a few pools when there were no hydrants or water tanker trucks close enough. Plus, most firetrucks will pump roughly 1,000+ gallons per minute, so it wouldn't take too long. It's worth a shot.

Excellent work with the area calculation.

If you were referring to my post with the image of my pond, that is actually just Google Maps. If you zoom in to the area you want to measure, right-click on the edge of the area you want to measure and select "measure distance". Then start left clicking around the perimeter of the area to draw a line segment and trace the shape you want. Once you complete the shape, it will show you the total area and linear distance. Then you can convert that to whatever you want (total square feet divided by 43,560 will give you acres, or total square meters divided by 4,047). It works great for trying to lay out a new pond design and see how big it will be.

What's up with all these weird replies from new members with hardly any posts?

Anyway, we are about to get started with the house build. I still haven't done anything with the pond, but probably should do something soon. The pond is long and narrow. About 170' x 65'. Is there any way to rake the salvinia off the top? If I could clean out the salvinia then I could put off the pond renovation for a while since I dont have a lot of spare money at the moment.

Otherwise I will have to drain it and let it dry out for a considerable amount of time. What's the best way to drain? Trash pump or PVC siphon? Y'all help me out here please.

45ACP,
FireIsHot gave you the possible solutions on 11/23/20. You just needed to click on the Salvinia link he provided and then Management options. Here it is for your convenience. It sounds like chemical control is your best option even if you tried to rake/seine your pond. I hope this helps.

https://aquaplant.tamu.edu/management-options/common-salvinia/

can someone give the secret behind finding google map data back to 1975 as the original poster mentioned in the first post above? Did they even have satellite pictures in 1975? Google wasn't around then?

Its on google earth PRO. Not the normal google earth it has to be the pro edition. I looked and looked and that's what I came up with.

satellites were taking pictures in the 1970s??

No satellite pics from way back then, but I would bet if you check the local tax assessor's web site you'll be able to find aerial photos that go back a good long ways.

The earliest I could find for my place was from 1956. I found images going as far back as the late 1930's, but those didn't range into the unincorporated areas outlying the nearest town.

Correct, google earth pro. The earliest pictures of my street and property are from 1944. Then it jumps to 1969 and then 1978. Check out the picture. You can see the date in top left corner. It allows you to move the date around. Very cool to see the history of different areas.

In the 1978 pic you can see that it appears they dug the pond and probably used the dirt for the original house pad.

Spammers. There, I fixed it.

Thank you for pointing that out. I completely missed that link he posted.

A good sized trash pump will drain a pond that size in a day or two at most, but you must select a pump that has the capability of pushing water the elevation of the deepest part of the pond to where the outlet is as the elevation increases as the pond drains.
If you don't mind the wait, you can also siphon it out with cheap vinyl water tube (1" or greater) as long as you have an output elevation to drain to lower than the deepest point you want to drain from. The only thing is you will need to create some means to prevent the inlet from clogging up, especially with the siphon. As the water level lowers, the force of suction similarly will decrease which means even simple debris like leaves will clog it up.

BTW if you are going to drain, nuke the pond from orbit as far as plant life goes first. You want to get rid of any plant segments, let it decay a bit, and then ditch the nutrients as part of the draining process. Those plants look nasty, like you could almost walk across the surface.

Just a quick update, but I found a pond maintenance guy and he came out 3 times to apply a chemical that killed all the salvinia and sunk it to the bottom to decompose. It will do for now. I still want to drain eventually and re-do the pond, but our house will be done in about a month and now that the salvinia is gone and isn't such an eye sore, the pond renovation just got pushed lower on the to-do list.

Thanks for the update!!

Ditto what Sunil said!