Seeing the picture with your neighbors pond on it tells us allot. First, it's doable and the red tape should be minimal. They let him do it, so you should be allowed to do it too. That doesn't always work, but it's a good advantage in your favor. That is if you need permision in your area. A good friend of mine had allot of battles with the government on his land. One thing that he figured out, and tought me, was that everything they cought him doing already existed. He brought in a dozer, cleared about three acres of land and dug a pond without any permits. When they came after him, he said that the pond had alwasy been there, he was just cleaning it up and doing some repairs. It stoped them cold!!!!

You didn't mention what equipment you have, or what equipment will be used?????

For the pipe, I would want it longer then 20 feet. You can get 12 inch plastic culverts in 24 foot lengths, but I don't know about the other sizes or how big you want to go. It really depends on the water flow and what sized pipe can handle daily and normal rain flow. To be safe, figure out what you need and go up a size. The length of the pipe will depend on how tall you build the dam. Your pictures show about 8 feet of elevation change, but the bottom of the creek is probably lower then that. I'd want the dam to be about four feet above the waterline with more being even better. The more the dam weighs, the stronger it will be.

You will also want to drive over the dam, so it needs to be wide enough for that too. With a 3:1 slope and ten feet wide at the top, your dam will be 70 feet wide at the bottom, give or take a few feet. That's 4 culvert pipes to get through there and have a good slope on both sides.

To dig the key way, and the better you do this, the stronger your dam will be. With rock, it's questionable how dee you will get, but anything is better then nothing. To do this, you might have to dam up the creek temporarily upstream and pump the water around where you are digging.

It sounds like allot of work, but I think that once you get everything cleared out and a plan of action decided on, it will be just a matter of following the steps until you are done. Buy the parts that you will need and have them on hand. Even if you cannot get to it this year, having all the pipe on hand will just make it that much easier to get started when you are ready.

Good luck,
Eddie

Lake Marabou http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=139488&fpart=1

It's not how many ideas you have, but how many you make happen.

3/4 and 4 acre ponds.