First post here. I live in New York's Hudson Valley. For the first year in our new house, we had a problem with standing water in our front yard. It was a soupy mess. We decided to put in a French drain, but upon digging we discovered two or three natural springs burbling up through the ground. We have clay soil here so our landscape guy suggested digging out a pond and draining the overflow to the drainage swale on our property line. This sounded too good to be true to me - I'd always wanted a pond, and this was like nature's way of insisting that I have one now...
So they dug the hole, about 15-20 ft in diameter, 4 ft deep in the lowest parts and it filled rather quickly. Since the initial fill, the level has steadily dropped. Yesterday I dropped a garden hose in there to try to bring the level up (since my wife is now beginning to worry that instead of a pond, we have a new mud pit in our front yard). It didn't seem to make much difference. The water level is still a good 6" below the level of the drain pipe. Now I realize the soil needs to compact and seal up, and the pond/hole has only been there for about two weeks. The landscape guy who dug the pond says it's just evaporation. Now granted we haven't had much rain the past few weeks, but it hasn't been hot and it seems evaporation shouldn't cause that much water loss, as it should be replenished by the spring. If this is evaporation, then I hate to see what might happen when we have a two or three week dry spell in July.
Is it possible the soil is still becoming compacted and hasn't fully sealed yet? Is it possible we need to use some sort of product to help seal it? Is it possible that I got talked into a pond but am going to end up with a muddy pit as the focal point of our front yard (which likely will lead to me being murdered by my wife)?
I've read other threads on similar cases, but thought I'd present my own set of circumstances and see what you guys thought. Thanks in advance for all advice and suggestions!
The Mule, It sounds as though you have a groundwater pond that will be changing depth with the level of the ground water. That’s why when you turned the hose on to fill it up it didn’t seem to make much difference. Just my initial thoughts but wait until an expert tells you what they think. Good luck!
A good analogy would be if you built an in-ground hot tub beside your swimming pool and used a connecting pipe to fill the hot tub.
The hot tub will fill up to the water level of the swimming pool. However, if you open the pool drain the water level in both will go down. If you had a check valve in the connecting pipe, then only the water level in the pool would go down and your hot tub would stay full (except for evaporation losses).
Unfortunately, it is not possible to put a "check valve" on a spring. However, it might be possible for you to cheat the spring a little bit!
Consider the pipe between the hot tub and the pool. If that pipe is 1 foot from the top of the pool, then water will go over to your hot tub every time the water in the pool rises above the pipe. If the drain is subsequently opened on the pool, then your hot tub will only drain to the level of the pipe - even if the pool is completely drained.
If one of your springs into your pond is very well defined, then you might be able to control your pond water level. Was there a nice sand/gravel spot of water inflow that you could observe when your pond was excavated?
One option would be to seal the sides and bottom of your pond and then drive a sandpoint on a 2" pvc pipe back into the location of the spring. (I would even drive it at a slight downward angle.) When the groundwater level is high, the spring will fill your pond. When the groundwater level goes down, then your pond will only drop to the level of the pipe. (Assuming your pond was perfectly sealed.) You could then make up evaporation losses with your hose if needed.
You could do a similar arrangement by building a gravel trench into the area of the spring (like a french drain) and then having a pipe connection to your pond. I would definitely recommend anti-seep collars in that situation to ensure a better seal for your pond.
Finally, you could even attempt to compact and seal your pond to the elevation of the springs, but then leave everything above that level uncompacted.
All of my hare-brained schemes are easier the more clearly the limits of your springs are defined.
Good luck on improving your pond project! It sounds like you have turned lemons into lemonade.
P.S. Another option is to just observe your water level for the first year. It may turn out that the low point of the groundwater level is still perfectly acceptable for your usage of the pond.
Mule, if you are able to take some pictures, it may help others give some advice.
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."
Thanks so much for the detailed and informative reply, FishinRod! This is very good information for me to have as I move forward. The pond is only a few weeks old, so I think I'll just observe for now and see how it does for now and take action next spring if necessary.
And yes, I'll get some pictures up. Let me see what I have on my phone...
OK, a few images attached. One of them shows the pond on the day it was dug and filled, one is from the day they regraded around the pond, and the other shows the beginnings of my landscaping with ground covers - much more to come with that.
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."
Mule, that tree right next to the pond.... did it have a lot of root system where you excavated? I see what look like roots in the dirt.
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."
Sometimes with ground springs, they flow positive until the pressure/weight of the water in the new pond becomes too much to overcome.
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."
Just thought I'd update... The pond has continued to drain to the point that there's only about a foot of water left at the very bottom. Looks like a giant muddy crater basically. So I think we're going to have to seal it as per FishinRod's post.
For this application is there a specific method for sealing that would be recommended? I'm sure my landscape guy knows about this stuff but I thought I'd get an opinion here from folks who won't be charging me to do the work! :o)
I've read about SoilFloc and Bentonite, and it seems SoilFloc is the choice for ponds that already have (some) water in them. But I'd love to get some feedback on this from you guys.
You may well be right about that. He is the one that dug it for me, but I suppose I may need to consult a pond installation company for sealing it. Or is it something that can be done as a DIY project?
I guess I'm not clear on what the water source is for this pond.
If you seal the basin, doesn't that also stop water from coming IN to the pond?
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."
More info needed here.. Is runoff your source? Well water pumped? What is soil composition? If you are building this for a fishery, why is it just a muddy crater? I say we take a second look at this, doesn't sound like your contractor had enough knowledge to perform the task you were asking for. EDIT: just got pics to load... Any roots cut will decompose and create a void-more than likely.. Any roots that were not cut will enter pond anyway.
It is supposedly spring fed - I saw the water coming up from the ground. It filled quickly, but then the level has since dropped consistently and it is now a muddy hole. I guess the groundwater level is very low?
FishinRod's suggestion was to seal the pond and then drive a sand point into the source and create sort of a standpipe so that the level would always be at the level of the top of the pipe.
The soil here is mostly clay. The stump in the middle of the pond is going to be dug out, so those roots will be gone. Roots from the live tree on the right will have to stay, obviously.
Are there any solutions here that don't involve chopping down the tree? It's a swamp maple, so I am sure it does drink a lot of water. It's frustrating though because the whole reason we dug the pond in the first place is because there was standing water in the front yard. Like deep puddles of standing water. The previous owner foolishly chopped down two other swamp maples in the yard right before we bought the place and once those trees were no longer there, the water started accumulating. I guess that one tree has gotten much thirstier than it was before.
I could fill the hole in and turn it into a rain garden or something, but I had gotten my heart set on having a pond. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.
I don't want to ruin your ideas.. I'm sure there is a way. You're in the right place to figure that out. Let's see what others have to say before throwing in the towel.
Would it be possible to excavate a little more on the opposite side of the pond (from the tree), place that earth at the tree's base to cover the existing roots and then put some sort of impermeable barrier down between the roots and the pond?
It doesn't seem like we have a solid water source for this pond that would keep things filled to the desired level.
I may be wrong, but in general, 'ground water' isn't really going to push up more in some spots as opposed to others; in other words, that ground water will be at the same level for that water table. Certainly it could rise or fall with rains or lack of rain, but it's not really a spring that flows out of some hole.
If you sealed up the pond basin, you could theoretically keep it topped off with city water, but you'd still have to contend with that tree's thirst. Even if you had no roots penetrating the new pond basin, roots would eventually grow through. That's why I was asking about that tree earlier in this thread.
Excerpt from Robert Crais' "The Monkey's Raincoat:" "She took another microscopic bite of her sandwich, then pushed it away. Maybe she absorbed nutrients from her surroundings."