Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Dirt moving equipment question

I'm trying to get a 2 acre pond bid out in an area that is very flat and I'm noticing a very distinct trend between the different subs. If you all read my previous post about pond shape, I'm dealing with a very flat piece of land, where we are going to essentially be digging out a deep hole to create a pond. What I'm noticing now though is that the bids are starting to fall into two categories. Those who are bringing in bulldozers, excavators and dump trucks and those that are trying to do everything with one or two bulldozers. Some of the subs that are in the first category are telling me that it can't be done with just bulldozers. In the meantime, the subs using only bulldozers have bid substantially less. While it's not the final shape, I have told all the subs the same thing, that we are digging a 580' oval that's 150' wide with a 4:1 slope down to 12ft. I have also told them that the spoils from the lake need to be spread out over the remaining acreage and be no higher than 3' from the original grade. I ran the math on this given where our fence lines and other obstacles are and they will have to spread dirt up to 600ft away from the pond site. I'm a home builder in the Austin, TX area, so I have a tremendous amount of experience dealing with subs and wading through my share of BS that they try to feed me, but I lack experience in moving dirt so I'm looking for a little guidance. Totally understand that this is kind of a shot in the dark without seeing plans and visiting the sight, but didn't know if the "you can't use just bulldozer's" comment is similar to a mechanic telling me they need to clean the carburetor on my fuel injected car?

Thanks in advance

David,

Have you dug any test holes or trenches in the pond basin? I would highly recommend doing a few the next time you have some extra time on a backhoe or mini-excavator available in the area.

As a builder, I am sure you know how miserable it becomes when you dig a basement out below the groundwater level, or have prolonged rain on your construction site.

IMO, it can be done all with bulldozers, if they DO NOT hit a wet clay layer or excavate below the ground water level. If they have to work in standing water, a drain sump and de-watering pump will help, but will severely hurt the productivity of your dozers. The contractors with excavators, dump trucks, and dozers can keep their operation going much more smoothly in the face of some water problems. Further, for your distances, it might be more efficient to do the excavator/dump truck option. (I have talked to a lot of experts about some similar pond excavation projects on our property, but I an NOT a dirt moving expert.)

However, for the distances you are describing, I believe the most efficient way to move spoils is to utilize wheeled scrapers like a Cat 623 or 627. They can scrape over 20 yards of material on each trip while barely slowing on the scrape pass and on the dump pass. If they have room to run ovals on your property, then you could probably run two at the same time dropping the spoils in opposite directions.

If you could find a contractor with scrapers (or even a separate contractor), then you could have the scrapers rough in the pond basin and move the bulk of the spoils, and then have a good pond building contractor do the finish and compaction work.

(The materials they are scraping also makes a big difference on the speed and efficiency. That might be another reason for some test holes. You might get a great bid from a scraper guy that knows he could move it easily.)

Finally, do you have deep topsoil? If you do, then consider selling some of the topsoil. I bet you could get an excellent price during the next building boom in Austin. You will need to stockpile some good topsoil to grade back over your clay or sandy spoils. However, if you have a lot of extra topsoil, you could stockpile that for sale by your road entrance and lower your net spoils that have to be spread across the rest of the property.

I probably should have mentioned that we have drilled a core sample for testing (all clay down 20'). There is literally no rock present on the site. So, we won't be digging a core trench or anything like that. Also, there isn't any water under us either. Apparently were in a well dead zone between aquifers.

FishinRod, unfortunately none of the contractors I have talked to have scrapers. But that's something I have brought up because it does sound like the most efficient way to dig and move dirt. I'm not even sure where to rent one of those other than going straight to the CAT dealership.

Center, there’s not much cheap about this stuff and every penny you pinch will piss you off in the future.

We do have a rental equipment company in town that will rent me a scraper. A 623 is only $13,000 per week!

I think the road building guys are more likely to operate scrapers in their equipment fleet. That is why I suggested a possible "rough in" contractor and then a pond finishing contractor.

If your property is totally on flat ground, then another possible option is to build some landscaping hills around your pond site. It is much cheaper to push up a gentle slope compared to a 600' push. It might even make your pond property more attractive, especially if you (or your wife) have an excellent eye for that sort of thing.

Another option would be to use the spoils for some other recreational activity. For example, a high berm for a family shooting range, a motorcycle dirt track course, etc., whatever your family likes.

Finally, I want to reiterate that I am NOT a dirt expert. We have some very similar ground on our property that I have been planning pond projects on and asking lots of actual experts for advice. However, our family budget keeps getting blown up, so my plans have remained on the drawing board. I am hoping your plans progress to an awesome pond!

I’ve run a Dozer twice. I agree with my buddy Mile Otto. There’s a lot of difference in cutting grade and building a hole for fish.

So I mentioned before the land does have a lot of restrictions that come with it, one of which is that I can only stack dirt 3' above the original grade, so decorative hills and stuff is sort of out of the question. With that said I still have full intentions of building a shooting backstop. I figure if anyone calls me out on that I have a compact tractor with a bucket and I can just take it down myself without too much effort however I don't want to cheat on the rest of the 30,000 or so cubic yards of dirt. That would be a bigger project if I was told to reduce its height.

Fortunately, there's now a ton of contractors available. We tried to get this project going about a year and a half ago and it was pulling teeth to get anyone to return a phone call or come out and look at the place. I'm going to search around a little more to see if I can rent a scraper. Seems like that would be a game changing piece of equipment.

Right now I'm homing in on one contractor that travels around the state doing dirt work. I have heard this is fairly common in the dirt work field. In my line of work unfortunately it's been nothing but bad experiences hiring subs from out of town because the job is "finished" and the guys go home. Then you fail your inspections and it's impossible to get them to come back to make a few small corrections. Typically, even when you hold back a few thousand it's just not worth it for them to come back or they take forever to get back to you. Not sure if that would be an issue with this type of project though. Once the equipment leaves the site you are already going to be paying a big premium to bring it back. The other thing I'm noticing is there may be a giant premium for local subs given the construction boom that has happened here.

That construction boom is everywhere here due to migration from all directions

Cutting grade is mostly automated now. Pond building is far from that.

I rent tractors with attachments I have never used before all of the time - because that is generally "low skill" work. I watch a few videos from experts and then learn on the job and get pretty good results.

I have even rented backhoes and mini-excavators to perform other "low skill" work and I completed the jobs fairly quickly and efficiently. The controls on modern heavy equipment are just spectacular at this time IMO.

I think loading a scraper correctly and efficiently is more of a "high skill" job. However, if there are no rocks and no water holes, then I don't see how you can screw things up badly. Further, if you are cutting the exact same clay material the entire time, then I think your learning curve on the scraper should go up fairly quickly?

Finally, a scraper can be efficient in stripping and stockpiling your good topsoil. If you just got a scraper on site, with either you or a contractor operating it, you could efficiently move a lot of yards of material and then hire the locals to come back later and finish the pond and re-grade your topsoil over the your clay spoils. (I think that final grade is also a "high skill" job.)


I have attached an excellent article from my files. The writer really covers the factors involved on optimizing your scraper equipment.

Scraper Selection


I have talked to several of our heavy equipment rental fleet guys about D6 dozers and large excavators. On one company I got a "sales" guy that did not know much about the equipment. On another company I got a guy that definitely had operated equipment and was asking me all kinds of questions about the job that I had not even contemplated yet. If you get the latter guy at your rental company, then you might feel confident enough to operate the scraper yourself? Also, if something is not functioning correctly (or efficiently), I want a rental company I can call and have an expert tell me how to fix/improve the problem!

P.S. Dave had a little typo referring to our best "dirt guy" on the forum. His name is Mike Otto, and he operates a company in Texas a little north of Dallas (Otto's Dirt Service). He used to comment in the forum a lot. He even has an excellent dirt/pond book that you can buy from the Pond Boss Shop called Just Add Water. I have talked to him on the phone about a "newbie" running heavy equipment and he gave me excellent advice. It might be possible for you to email or call him and perhaps get a response if they are currently shut down for weather. He might also be able to tell you the best equipment combo to perform your particular pond build, and he might even know a good scraper guy as far south as Austin. (Just throwing out more ideas for your project.)

Otto ("Ought-Toe" as Bob Lusk pronounces it) will consult at locales which he can't work directly due to distances or prior commitments.

We are trying to coordinate schedules to have him come up here to look at a project that we want to complete in 2024. This weather might throw a monkey wrench in things though as the customer spends the winter out of state.

I have a little experience in earth moving, just enough to be dangerous, but when you are talking about moving dirt up to 600 ft, dozers will not be efficient at that, scrapers are pretty much the only way to go with that, way more efficient even then an excavator and a couple dump trucks, and then you still have to go out and spread the piles on the other end, and yes I said a couple dump trucks, if not you will have the excavator sitting idle while the truck is hauling and dumping, that costs money. a scraper will move almost the same amount of dirt, if not a good bit more, in one pass, and the dirt will be flat and spread out when it lands.

Will the covenants allow you to stockpile the topsoil temporarily, as in a yr, so that you can get it sold for a decent price? that would help.
Also, if I remember correctly, you said you had about 30 acres that you were spreading these spoils on, even if you have only a few inches of good topsoil, that is a huge amount of topsoil that you will be covering up with barren clay if you don't strip it first.

When you are talking about scrapers, Caterpillar will probably not be your best option either, most of them are pulled anymore with huge farm tractors, to the point of John Deere making some of their big 4wd tractors labeled as scraper specials. they are fully equipped, along with two pans, that are pretty much auto loading and dumping, might take a person a minute to figure out how to most efficiently run them to their full potential.
I built my 15 acre pond entirely with scrapers, at one point in the deeper cuts we wound up bringing in a D6 with a ripper to rip the hard pan so the scrapers could get a full load quicker, the ground got too hard for the smooth cutting edges of a scraper, it didn't have enough down pressure to fill the 24 yrd pan in a reasonably short distance.

Hope the information is helpful, let us know how it goes, Good Luck!

I like the point about covering up top soil w/ dead clay. I'd be wary of doing that, because I did that on a small scale. In three years time I have added back enought amendments to grow some weeds. Will be another couple years to get bermuda back here. No big deal but lesson learned. Could be tough across 30 acres.

Best contractor you can find is one that is referred by a friend or neighbor. Find a nice pond and do some door knocking if needed.

So I reached out to an aggregate company who recently moved in down the road, they took down my name and number and sounded interested. I now have a whole bunch of new concerns regarding if I want to sell the top soil or if want to spread it back out on top. I guess it's all going to depend on how much someone is willing to pay me for it vs what it will cost to pile it up and spread it back out. I've also reached out to my rental companies about a scraper. I'll see what they come back with.

IMO, for a 2 acre lake build - you must save some topsoil!

If not, then you will have rains washing clay back into your pond for 1-2 years while you are struggling to get your groundcover plants growing. That is going to cost you depth that you paid good money to create.

As a builder, how much good topsoil do you put back over clay to establish nice lawns?

Also, gehajake actually knows how to do dirt work. Maybe he will pop back into your thread to say how much good topsoil should be graded back over the clay. I have no clue if you only need 6" or if you need substantially more.

I do know that 3' of compacted clay built on a flat grade is going to drain very poorly. Your grass or other groundcover is not going to thrive alternating between water-logged roots and scorching Texas summers.

As an excavating contractor I have done that more times then I care to admit, cover up topsoil with clay, its what the home owner wants and is willing to pay for, stripping and re spreading it is expensive, and most of the time home owners would rather spend that money on more expensive flooring or cabinets inside the new house, so that's what they base their decisions on.
As for an amount, that varies a good bit, a lot of times 4 to 6 inches is plenty, especially spread over uncompacted fill, where people have the biggest problems is cutting 4 ft off the top, to where they are now down on some really hardpan clay, that will absorb and hold zero water, then try to add a few inches of topsoil on that and expect grass to grow, it will sprout and get nice and green but only for a short period of time, as soon as it gets hot and a little dry it will croak fast, the subsoil has no growing capacity and will not absorb or hold any amount of moisture, it needs ripped or something to loosen it up so that it can absorb water and roots.

That being said, I was extremely lucky on my dam, the backslope I had no topsoil to cover it with, I just limed and fertilized it really good immediately after completion of the dam, which was in March, and got a tremendous stand of grass because of abundant rains, no drought weather that first summer, and it has never looked back. I had clover looking like a hay field that summer. but put annual rye grass on it as a cover crop that shot up faster and held the erosion to nearly zero. but thats pretty rare, and I got extremely lucky with rain events. Good luck!

One of my aggregate companies got back to me and told me that they are willing to pay $40 per 12 yard truck for the top soil provided that its decent stuff. They said that we have to load it for them so I will need a loader on site. After running the math on all of this I'm realizing that moving all of this topsoil to one location on the property and then spreading it all out is going to be a considerable amount of work that I likely don't have room in the budget for anyways. I may try and pick some selective areas to move top soil back onto. I've got a 5' compact tractor, a tiller and a seed drill at my disposal. Any suggestions on what to try and plant to try and regrow some vegetation?

I prefer common Bermuda

If you are budget limited, then I would definitely recommend putting good topsoil and IMMEDIATELY planting your vegetation in the direct watershed to your pond. IMO, that has got to be your top priority for erosion control.

If you think you are going to have enough water to keep your pond well supplied, then you could grade the land surrounding the pond slightly away from the pond to avoid silt in-filling. However, in central Texas, getting maximum water to your pond may be your highest priority. In that case, I would grade the entire 30 acres of land to gently drain INTO the pond. (I am pretty sure DD1 would agree as he has been watching his ponds dry up for the last two years.)

Do you have a good NRCS agent in the county of your property? My guy is pretty good. They can be a valuable information resource. He may have a good recommendation for a specific grass or blend of grasses that have proven to be effective in your region. Further, they sometimes have cost-share programs. They might have one for erosion control and they pay you $X/acre to offset part of your grass seed and planting costs.

Centex, I’m in an area, a high hill, where the clouds split. I don’t get as much rain as my close neighbors at lower elevations. My dam is in the only place where I could impound water. When full, I have about 2.5 to 3 acres. Now down to about 3/4 acre. I took advantage of a Texas NRCS cost share program about 30 years ago. Check on it with your local office.

So the most recent update on all of this is that the bulldozer only guys are starting to flake out on me. So, I'm suspecting that most of you are correct in that this project just won't be efficient with only bulldozers to the point where they don't want to do the job. I was able to find a scraper to rent and speak with someone fairly knowledgeable on them. The scraper and tractor to pull it is around $15,000 for the week and it will only be useful until we hit a grade in the pond that it will no longer be able to go down. It appears to me that the way to go with this will be to rent a bulldozer for a month and bring it out first to start getting some initial work done until its no longer efficient to operate. Then bring out the excavator and dump trucks and try to limit that to a week or two. Unfortunately, I think the scraper is too expensive to bring out for the limited amount of use it will get. My only question at the moment is after talking to a lot of contractors, most of them are quoting me $3 a yard to excavate and move dirt. I know from my line of work and talking to my other development buddies that this is the same dollar amount that they are quoted for smaller infield projects. This seems like way too high of a price for a fishing tank in the country. What price per yard should I be targeting?

Not sure about your area but it shouldn't vary too much, that price is not that far off, around this area you will pay 2 dollars plus for a dam that you get back and push within the water holding area and work the dam in accordingly, plus of course the core area which can vary a good bit depending on your scenario, like a sand or gravel layer down below.

Whenever you have to move dirt farther on out to a bigger area it will cost more to do that, picture a dozer pushing 5 yrds of dirt 100 yards to a dam and tracking it in versus having to load and haul that same dirt 250 yrds, dirt doesn't haul quickly and cheaply.