I think I landed around $5k in fuel total, so around 1,300 gallons I think, and that included carrying about 100 bucket loads of old coal shale uphill 100 yards, away from the lake - several hundred gallons in itself. Everyone’s guesses were pretty spot-on - I used around 6 gallons per hour / 60 gallons in a 10 hour day. The machine moved dirt much better than I anticipated though, and even with hauling all that shale up the hill, I think I only put a little over 200 hours in the cab.
I was so impressed by that 963! Such a work horse, and really had very few problems with it! Track adjuster was a pain, but had been failing for a long time before I got ahold of it..
I was really disappointed with my grass guy. He was slow to get out there initially, so by the time it was planted it was already late in the year. Then it didn’t rain forever, and when the grass finally came up, the damn army worms ate it all. That wasn’t his fault, but he didn’t come back to reseed for several more weeks. By the time he got back, it was too late, and nothing grew before winter. So over the winter the hillside eroded pretty badly, and all the damn topsoil washed away. I’m still upset about this.. I ended up reseeding it myself this spring, and after a lot of fertilizer I’m finally getting grass to grow. Been a lot of work though. Lesson to learn here is one I already knew - if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.
I got concrete pillars poured for the dock through the fall before it filled up - just barely. The water level was chasing me all the way up.. It was completely full and going out the overflow in early February.
Overflow is sized well - we had some really hard rains earlier in the year, and it was only halfway up the pipe.
I’m not sure yet how well the lake is holding water. There’s a lot of land draining into this area, so it’s been flowing through the overflow all spring. This week though it finally fell below the overflow pipe. I’m concerned about a wet spot at the bottom of the dam, but it was there last year too with no water in the lake. It’s definitely a spring - time will tell if the lake water is adding to it. Worst case though, I lose a foot or so of water during the dry season, and it will fill back up very quickly once we get some rain.
We stocked minnows, bluegill, and redear this spring. We’ll put bass and catfish in next spring. There are about a million tadpoles in there right now, and the first set of minnows has spawned, so there are roughly a million nearly-microscopic minnows swimming around too. Good bass food!
It’s all coming together! Went swimming a couple weeks ago on a warm day. We’ve been getting the kayaks out on it. And I have lumber for the dock, and will start building it as soon as we get another warm day.
I guess I don’t have any recent pictures from up there. I’ll post some from earlier this year, and I’ll try to remember to take some when I get up there tonight and post later. Bottom image is the seeding I did - no credit to the lawn guy I threw money away to..
Rough cost breakdown for the project:
Machine Rental: $300 thank you gift card to a good friend. Couldn’t do it without them
Fuel: $5k
Machine Repairs: $2,600
Drain tile: $1,100
Seeding: $1,500 (worst spent money)
Dock: $3,500
