Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam Uh oh… how bad is it? New Pond Behind Old Pond

I’m building a new pond behind my old pond. The pond is at my ranch which is 2 hours from where I live so I can only check on it on the weekends. The plan is to build the new pond, re-dig the old pond and then connect the two together. I showed up at the end of week-one of the build. Everything looked great just like we planned. But then the contractor said, “We made a mistake on the transit and we have to raise the damn 4’ tall”. I didn’t think a bunch about it. My thought was the deeper the better.

Then I showed back up this weekend at the end of week two and realized that the damn is actually four feet higher. It wasn’t pushed out and then made 4’ higher. It just goes up at a very steep slope. Instead of the 3-1 slope it looks like 1-1. Then in the middle of the pond it’s a big drop off and the middle is dug out 25’ deep (I ran a string line across the pond and pulled a tape measure across it to verify.

What are your thoughts? Attached are some pictures. Please help!!!! The white PVC pole in one of the pictures is nearly sticking up out of the ground 10’ tall and it’s only about 15’ from the fill line.

My wife isn’t happy about it at all. In my mind the only way to fix the sloes to 3-1 would be too bring a lot more dirt in. As you can see there is not more dirt available in the pictures. It would mean making the pond much bigger by the old pond to get enough useable dirt to make the proper slopes. I believe the pond to be about one acre in size. It think if I was to dig out and move enough dirt to make the pond to what I believe is correct. My current 1 acre pit hole would turn into a 2 acre pond.

Here are my concerns….

1) it’s steep for the fish. The entire purpose of the project was for LMB and a healthy pond environment
2) is it properly packed down being that the walls are that steep. I don’t really see how it can be proper as is but I don’t know for sure. As you can see in the pictures there is a lot of loose dirt around.
3) at any part of the new pond it appears to me that if a cow steps into it… they are not getting out of it. Or even worse…. If a side by side went into the pond…. It would be a goner.


I spent a good amount of money to this point and I feel like I just burnt the money in a barrel. I’m thinking the only way to fix it is to dig a much bigger area around the existing pond on the upside of the new pond and then push the dirt from that end back to the new dam. I think it could be done, but it would likely cost me double what I was going to pay.

I have a pretty good video that shows the pond if there is a way I could post it.

The guy dug a hole. He did not build a pond. Lack of good homework and reference work produced the results. Saddened to see your result. Did you first buy Pond Boss's book "Just Add Water"? Excellent read and basic pond building information.

+1 on Bill recommendation. If you ever want to talk reach out sometime I help build ponds in NE and am happy to lend my experience. Tj@hudlandmgmt.com