Hello! I own a small .4 acre pond in Western North Carolina. I just purchased my property this past fall and am starting multiple projects. Aside from beginning to clear land to build my home above the pond, I am working to evaluate and repair the pond. It’s a spring fed pond that was built in 2014. I have another spring that meets the outflow behind the dam. I was going to build a second pond below this one but with the home project I figured it makes more sense to work this pond and the land projects for the first year or so. I’d love to have a larger pond as I alway grew up on 1.5-2 acre ponds. Managing the smaller mountain pond will be a learning experience.
Pond Info: - triangle shaped pond from damming of natural spring in bottom of valley. - Depth at build per the new owner, 12 feet. - Dam was built narrow at top, 6 feet with no spillway, 12” freeboard. Steep off the back and needs better slope to allow for mowing. - Fish, has small population of LMB and some perch. Believe a few war mouths. I’ll be culling the unwanted war mouths. - Water, extremely clear as it’s fed by the mountain spring. Small stream of continuous outflow from 8” pipe/riser. Estimating 5-10 gpm outflow. Could see bottom at 8 ft depth and anywhere around pond. - Back of dam has small signs of a past overflow event. The very center of dam is slightly lower grade than rest of dam, ~ 10” freeboard.
Projects commenced: - I have been relocating dirt from property and adding it to back of dam with plan of eventually raising dam a few inches to allow for emergency spillway to be cut in. Not increasing water level, just raising the freeboard and putting in an overflow. Haven’t designed the overflow yet. Never built one myself but going to try. - Added a little fertilizer. Pond water clarity of visibility is lesser now, closer to 36”. It is a slightly greener tint and you can no longer see to the bottom in the deeper areas. - Stocked some FHM and BG this spring. Figure a pond this size will be better suited as a BG pond rather than a LMB pond. Do have 30-50 LMB in there though. - one side is shallow where the previous owner said the ground was too hard for his to dig deeper with his tractor when he dug out the pond. I have a CAT track loader and one day may consider draining and digging out that corner of the pond. If I can get photos to post you can see it. I’d love to dig it deeper but doing it with an excavator without draining seems to be ill advised. Thoughts?
That’s enough for now. It’s small but it’s a good little pond.
Last edited by mindEASE; 05/24/2306:09 AM. Reason: Adding photos
That is a lot of questions to address for one post.
Some thoughts:
1.) I have never heard of an emergency spillway being routed over the top of a section of the dam. Best practice is to route around the outside of one of the wings of the dam. I would probably try to route it around the area where the builder said there was hard ground. That way if you get severe erosive cutting of the emergency spillway during a flood event, it should only partially drain the pond - as opposed to breaching your dam. (The lower spot in the middle of the dam is probably due to some post-construction settling, and MAY indicate the builder's compaction was not optimal.)
Another option would be to add a siphon system to augment your existing pond outlet. An affordable siphon can move a lot of water, and maybe save you from overtopping the dam due to anything less that a 100-year flood.
2.) Yes, making the pond deeper in the "hard to dig" shallow water area will be difficult. Fortunately, the 12' max depth is pretty good for a pond that size. However, you say your water is so clear that you can see down to 8' deep. Is the shallow area growing unwanted plants or filamentous algae at this time? If not, then maybe you can live with the shallow area, and spend your construction $ on Pond #2?
Your clear pond sounds like it might actually have low productivity. This is more likely for spring fed ponds. Watershed ponds typically have some nutrients washing in after the very first rain.
Fertilizing your pond to start an algal bloom (if the water chemistry is correct) might make it more productive AND cut the sunlight reaching the pond bottom in the shallow area.
Another option on a pond that small is using pond dye to inhibit plant growth in your shallow water areas.
Good luck on enhancing Pond #1 and creating Pond #2!
Finally able to upload some pictures. I have uploaded some of the washout on the back of the dam, starting of dirt work, and work where it stands now. Also some overhead views of the pond. I also have one photo of a bass the little lady caught last week while I was milling about on the track loader.
@FishinRod, Thank you for the feedback. I fertilized but cut back on it. I wasn't sure if fertilizing would help or enable underwater plant growth. Would you add a syphon that rests on top and over the dam? I've seen them go through the top of the dam but not sure about it being on top. Interested in your thoughts here. The builder, should I proceed with the second pond is a proponent of syphon systems.
Unfortunately, the picture attachments do not work, even if they appear to upload. Also, every previous internal picture link/icon in the forum that may have worked in the past is now dead.
Your only option is to use an external photo hosting site and copy/paste the image's BBCode into the body of your message. imgur and imgbb seem to work well. FlickR and Photobucket, not so much.
Once you get your photos to appear, you will get more traction on your questions. Good luck!
still not visible (at least as embedded pictures). Maybe another member can go to the hosting link, find the pictures and bring them back and embed them?
I don't know if the folks in the office at PondBoss know (I tried to send an email but don't know if it went through) If this is truly the fault of the UBB software then they should be demanding a refund for the past few months of program costs as it is NOT working as promised. If the problem is in the user settings that PondBoss controls then I hope someone can give them the tech support they need.
I purchased the land in Oct 2022. The owner lived out of town and didn't spend much time maintaining it. I have been working the pond, dam, and clearing stream beds and cleaning up the land. It is coming around. I did stock some FHM and BG in the spring and I fertilized once. I need to fertilize or dye at a shorter interval due to constant feed water from the spring that heads 100 yards further up on my property. Its July and the small spring hasn't stopped flowing. The owner said he had never seen it dry up, that it was a year-round spring. So far so good.
I want to modify the overflow to draw from the bottom. It seems simple in theory, but every time I sit and brainstorm the idea I get caught up on the details. Thank you all for the kind replies. I will likely need to get this thread started in the renovation sub-forum so as not to take away from other new members.
I think it would be theoretically possible to install it above ground across the top of the dam. However, the PVC would always be exposed to sunlight, which makes it brittle over time.
Typically, it is installed through the top of the dam, just a bit below the water level at normal pool. That way the pipe installation does not create a pathway for a leak to develop through the dam, since there is very little water pressure trying to seek a path when the water is only a few inches above the pipe level.
Most dams have enough freeboard above the normal pool water level and below the top of the dam to allow for burial of the horizontal leg of the siphon pipe.
That may not be the case for your situation, due to the top of the dam being barely above your normal pool elevation. However, I believe you could easily remedy that situation since you already have the capability to move dirt from the backside to the top of the dam. Dam tops are almost always built to be level, but I don't see any reason that you couldn't build a little hump or mesa above the siphon system. If you built something like a flat-topped mesa, you could place a bench there since that location should give an excellent view of the pond. (You could add any feature you want, I was just throwing out ideas so the extra dirt wouldn't look too weird.)
As the diameter of PVC pipe gets larger, it gets progressively more expensive and more difficult to work with and get perfect seals. If you just need a smallish automatic siphon to regulate the normal to slightly above normal water inflows from your spring, then that should be an easy project. If you do get rare floods OVER the dam due to big rains, then you could add a tilted culvert through the dam, but just above the water level at normal pool. If that was sized correctly, then a larger culvert would pass a lot of water during a flood, and hopefully keep the water from going through your "emergency" spillway. However, when you do get a "100-year" rain, that should go through your emergency spillway, but you can then make repairs after that rare event occurs.
I hope that gives you some more ideas on protecting your nice existing pond!
P.S. The trees look a little different, but your red dirt being worked in the photos looks just like the ponds south of me as soon as you cross the Kansas border into Oklahoma.
