Hi everyone,
We have a 2yo clay pond that until this spring was overflowing with water. The dam at the end of the pond was created using clay from the pond area. The end of April, a small area appeared on the back side near the base of the dam that started gushing water like a geyser. Gallons of water started flowing out of it and continued to flow out of it 24/7. Around the same time our pond drastically starting losing water. We had been working with a pond person since last year and he said we must have a leak but he didn't think the water gushing out the other side was related to the leak. When the pond was down 2 feet, he put some bentonite on the pond side of the dam and then waited several weeks to see if the bentonite did anything. I had been researching leaking ponds and read about Soil Floc. I asked the pond person if he was familiar with the product but he didn't suggest we try it. We reminded him that the pond didn't start losing water until the gallons of water started flowing out of the ground on the other side. The last time we saw him was a month ago when he stopped by and saw that the pond was down 4 ft. He proposed we create a "waterfall" feature and pump the water from the gushing geyser up the dam back into the pond. He was going to come up with a quote for this "waterfall" but we haven't heard from him since. In my mind this was just going to recycle water back into and right out the leaking pond! Around this time, my husband and I noticed the amount of water coming out of the geyser was starting to slow down which I assumed was from the water pressure in the pond going down. We were so frustrated at this point that we ordered and applied Soil Floc on our own.

That was a week ago and our pond is suddenly refilling-very slowly, about 0.5 inch a day. I'm kicking myself that we didn't do this sooner, especially since I understand the soil floc works best when there's more water in the pond.

The area on the back side of the dam still has a little water coming from it. We added more soil floc so we're crossing our fingers this will continue to improve. I was going to apply some bentonite around the bank to fill in any cracks that appeared as the clay dried out with the receding water. Is there anything else we should be doing (aside from ditching this pond person)? I didn't know if we should apply something over the area on the back side of the dam. We also have an aerator fountain in the pond which we turned off before applying the soil floc. When would it be safe to turn this back on? Thanks for any suggestions and sorry about the long post.