Bobbss, the camera is an aqua vu HD7i. I couldn’t have done this without a camera. It’s been fascinating. And the walleye and perch and smallies that we’re growing in the pond are all over the bottom of the pond….which is also fun to see them grow.
Dave, I think the recipe thus far has been the seekleak polymer continuing to build and compound within the leak with each application. The combination of the various other materials (clay, sand, gravel, kitty litter, bentonite) were primarily to get anything to lodge in the hole to slow the water long enough to have polymer bond to long enough to set up and begin expanding.
The polymer continues to expand for 3 weeks after application.
In your case with a seep/leak in the dam that’s exposed, I don’t think the polymer would work as well until the water level comes up. The polymer is best when there is water running through a leak so that the fine polymer particles get sucked into the leak in the dam where the water is escaping so it starts to expand and plug the leak internally in the dam.
We treated the entire pond basin in August with 4 units of Seekleak polymer. Our leak went from 4” daily to 2.25” after that application. About a month later is when I found the sink hole leak. We then focused only on that spot for the past two months. We’ve applied polymer and the clay/kitty litter combo in just that area like you saw in the video. I wait a couple weeks in between applications to allow the polymer to expand. Test the water flow with the camera and dye tablets to see if I can see where it’s going. Then I put more polymer down over top. I think it’s working like plaque building up in an artery and clogging the channel shut by compounding on top of the previous layer of polymer/clay layer.
I’ve been monitoring daily water levels, and over the past three months of treating we’ve gone from 4” to 2.25” to 1.25” to .75” to .25” daily loss currently. That trend has been super exciting. I don’t want to speak too soon, but we’ve seen incredible results. It’s been time consuming and a lot of effort. But we’re kind of an extreme case I think with the leak 20’+ feet down in the pond. Accessing it is a challenge. So if it could work on a leak like ours, I’m fairly confident it could help you.
For a polymer application, a seep type leak is perfect for what that product could do…but you’d want to wait until the water is up and there is water actively running through the dam to pull it into the dam so it could expand within the leak and stop the flow.
