do y'all have houses close to your pond?
Yes!
We wanted our cabins as close to the water as safely possible.
Of course every project/pond/drainage/soil/terrain/pond water fluctuation is going to be different, each with its own set of challenges.
Before we built the cabins we had Mike Otto come out for advice and Mike suggested we have a guy come out and laser shoot the land to see how high the water could get before the water would start to run down the emergency run-off area so we could be absolutely sure the water would be flooding down the emergency spillway long before it ever came close to the cabin. We've had really high water this past year and the water never came close to flooding the cabin.
ps: It's not a bad idea to keep some of these in the barn just in case we see high water coming:
Empty Sand Bags for flooding 
