Digging a pond:

[Bandit44]

I have dug out a couple of my ponds, but a friend of mine wants me to dig him a small pond. I would like some help on how to build the levee. I know you are supposed to dig a core or trench in the soil to lock it in place, but would like to have some more information from some who have done this. Any suggestions would be a great help.

Bandit44

 

[Dirtman2007]

To do it right you really need an excavator to dig a good core trench. you could dig one with the dozer but it would be alot of dirt to move depending on how wide your blade it. I always start by scraping all the topsoil, roots and other junky dirt and pushing it up behind where the dam will do to use in the back slope of the dam. Next I will dig a core, then begin to fill and pack with good clay. I've always just used the dozer for packing and I've not had a problem with the dams leaking. Just put the dirt in a few inches at the time and track over it to pack. I do and would recommend using a compactor around the drain pipe to make sure the water does not try to go under or around the pipe.

Good luck

 

[Bandit44]

Dirtman if a dozer is all you have to work with, how wide and deep of a core would you need for a small pond, say about a 1/2 acre or so.

Bandit44

 

[Dirtman2007]

Dirtman if a dozer is all you have to work with, how wide and deep of a core would you need for a small pond, say about a 1/2 acre or so.

Bandit44

It's going to be alteast as wide as your blade, what size dozer are you using?

I just dig down until I see some good soild clay materail will little to no tree roots.

Around here it's usually 4-5' deep that I dig for the core.

 

[LowBoy]

Another thing to keep in mind is to not use a straight out spillway or culvert pipe if you can avoid it. First reason is if you ever want to drain it down, other than wrecking the dam, how are you going to do it?
Secondly, most of the time even if you compact around a pipe in a spillway, and the torrential rains come, you'll be babysitting that spillway for the rest of your life.
A good engineered outlet is usually in the form of a standpipe, depending on the size or your pond, I'd safely say use at least a 15" plastic standpipe to the desired outlet elevation, a 90 at the bottom, and enough pipe again to reach out beneath the toe of the dam slope. A 15" pipe will take a serious amount of water. Whatever you want to use as a plug or cap is up to you, there's all kinds of alternatives. I use a plug with a big thrust block of some type against it, etc. That way you can pull it and drain it like a bathtub if you had to for maintenence in the future.
I built a giant pond for a buddy 10 years ago that I should have gotten a permit to do, but it was out on the country so we went for it. It's about an acre, and I built a sediment/silt pond above the main one to catch anything before it entered the big one. The elevation difference was about 15 feet, so I had the opportunity to build a cool looking waterfall with the big goons I dug up and placed them so the water splashed down 15 feet onto them.
I used a 15" ADS standpipe drain, and to this day he's had nothing but fun in that pond, over 100 trout in it, and a dock in the middle to swim to. Kind of a nice achievement for what I had to work with.(A 240 Hitachi excavator...wish I had a D-8 to accompany it many a day there.)
Good luck Bandit44.

 

[d6peg]

Bandit,
I have built probably over a hundred ponds in the last several years. Some I have only used a dozer to core the dam. On other occasions I have leased a backhoe to core. If it has live water I would suggest a 7 to 10 foot core (deep) and generally a dozer blade wide will suffice. I, unlike Lowboy, do not like the idea of the stand pipe because of the trees and other loose stuff we have in our parts that can clog a standpipe up. If your runoff is going to be clean it will probably work fine but I have seen too many ponds go over the dam with standpipes as spillways where we live. I always look for the natural spillway and allways try to leave the grass to prevent washing. Here is a link to one of the latest ponds that I have built. https://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=7693

Remember this is just my opinion and do not want to offend anybody, but this is what works best for me and I am sure that the standpipe works best for lowboy. Have a good day and best of luck

 

[D6c10K]

I'm no expert on building ponds, but I've seen a few with sediment basin above and they look well worth doing....keeps it from having to be cleaned out after 20 years.

I also like the idea of a plug that allows you to drain the pond...especially if you don't have the sediment basin. I'd like to see exactly how that's constructed.

Around here most all ponds just use a sloping drain pipe plus an overflow about 15' wide and 4' lower than the dam.
Even that isn't enough sometimes...two of the ponds on my place (around 1 acre each) are constructed as above. It rained so hard last summer that not only the pipe couldn't keep up, the overflow couldn't keep up either. Both dams were overtopped. Fortunately the dams didn't wash out. Hardest rain I can remember.

 

[Bandit44]

Dirtman I have a 550H Deere dozer and it has a 10ft. blade. Thanks for all the information, I think this will help me in the building of the levee.

Bandit44

 

[ok dirt witcher]

what kind of terrain

What kind of terrain, what is going to be the water source, and the purpose of the pond? does anybody around that area have any dugout ponds? where you dig out the dirt and feather it out on 2 or three sides? Ive done all kinds but these seem to be the most cost effective. this may help.
If not your local fsa or nrcs guys should help you.
http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-1114/ANR-1114.pdf


www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-1114/ANR-1114.pdf

 

[LowBoy]

Bandit,
Remember this is just my opinion and do not want to offend anybody, but this is what works best for me and I am sure that the standpipe works best for lowboy. Have a good day and best of luck

No offense taken at all d6. It's what works for you, then keep doing it. I just had 2 nightmare experiences with spillway inverts in the past, and again I prefer to have a future plan to drain the pond for whatever reason with a mechanical device, rather than to have to dig it all up with a machine.

All the ones I've done have had more than a few trees around as I recall, but you have to devise a good solid fastening system that holds your pipe in place, and it's a little bit of a dicipline thing to maintain it periodically too.
Standpipes are a standard practice even in our state engineered plans.

I just finished another pond project I was working on that was NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation permitted, and was taken to the extreme by them. They made us drain the pond (about an acre) totally, install $160K dollars worth of sheet piling at the old dam location, remove the perfectly fine concrete dam and rebuild an earthen dam. In addition to that, a 36"X36" square concrete drainage basin, into a 30" concrete pipe out 200 feet to a discharge point, with a 15" mallable iron gate valve down inside the basin to "adjust" flow. The valve was $2,500.00 alone.

Then, in addition to that, an "Overflow Swale" measuring 20 feet wide by 100' long, 2 on 1 sloped banks with fabric, 3" of 3/4" stone, and 14" of 6" rip rap on that. This swale will never see a drop of water in it's life with the basin and valve assembly there, but it's called C.Y.A.
Perfect example of when the DEC gets involved.

Again, I and many other contractors in this region use standpipes solely because fresh fill in an earthen dam, unless you're able to compact it well, have favorable material in the first place to work with, and let it set and "bake" without any added moisture till it's set, is a gamble the higher the water level behind it is.

If it's only a small, subtle overflowage going somewhere, there can be some exceptions, but again, it could be a lifetime babysitting venture if not engineered properly.:thumbsup

 

[panic button]

We are in the process of purchasing a small dozer. We are looking at a Allis Chalmer 653. We have a few ponds that the earth dams gave way over the years and want to rebuild them. Is a Allis Chalmer 653 with 8' blade enough to work with or should we be looking for a JD450 or Cat D4. Price is an object ... We will be using the dozer for other field work ie removing sapling and filling gullies.

 

[td25c]

We are in the process of purchasing a small dozer. We are looking at a Allis Chalmer 653. We have a few ponds that the earth dams gave way over the years and want to rebuild them. Is a Allis Chalmer 653 with 8' blade enough to work with or should we be looking for a JD450 or Cat D4. Price is an object ... We will be using the dozer for other field work ie removing sapling and filling gullies.

Allis chalmers 653 or JD450 are good for small dirt jobs and small trees.I guess it depends how big the dam is that you will be repairing.Cat d4 is a little bigger and might be a better choise.

 

[panic button]

The dam was but 30 years ago. About 10 years of neglect and a cloged spill way cause the dam to give way. About 5 years ago it was rebuilt, but the drain pipe was only 6"PVC and no spill way. The pond is fed by a spring and filled up along with heavy rains and no spill way it gave way again. It does't need that much dirt work to get to be a pond again. The original dam had a very gentle slope. I wanted to follow the original lines whick is about 30--35 angle. I was going to install 2- 8" PVC drains in the center and have a 20" concrete culvert for the spill way. Dam was origially about 8' high and the pond was about 1/2 acre.

The rest of the time we'd be clearing brush and 8"-12" Loblolly pines that have grown up in some of the pastures and around the fence lines, pushing brush in ditches, and leveling out dirt roads around the pastures.

We were also looking at a Komatsu D20A, but I think that might be a little too small.

Thanks-

 

[td25c]

The dam was but 30 years ago. About 10 years of neglect and a cloged spill way cause the dam to give way. About 5 years ago it was rebuilt, but the drain pipe was only 6"PVC and no spill way. The pond is fed by a spring and filled up along with heavy rains and no spill way it gave way again. It does't need that much dirt work to get to be a pond again. The original dam had a very gentle slope. I wanted to follow the original lines whick is about 30--35 angle. I was going to install 2- 8" PVC drains in the center and have a 20" concrete culvert for the spill way. Dam was origially about 8' high and the pond was about 1/2 acre.

The rest of the time we'd be clearing brush and 8"-12" Loblolly pines that have grown up in some of the pastures and around the fence lines, pushing brush in ditches, and leveling out dirt roads around the pastures.

We were also looking at a Komatsu D20A, but I think that might be a little too small.

Thanks-

That sond's like a job for a JD450 or a cat d4.The elevation of the drain is important.On a pond this sise I would go with one 12" drain in the center of the dam,and burry it 4 feet below the top of the dam.I build the spillway on one side of the dam and dug into undisturbed soil.keep the spillway floor 2 feet below the top of the dam.make it 15 to 20 feet wide and keep it fairly flat.The idea is in most rainfall the 12" drain will handel it.In the event of heavy rainfall you have the spillway.Hope this helps.

 

[panic button]

Thanks for the info!

 

[lgammon]

spill way in undisturbed soil is key

 

[WesternStar]

Make sure you take note of the soil material that you are working in, good clay is what you really want to hold water. If you have some spots of questionable material, try to make sure that it gets mixed in with the clay as you push out for your keyway, this will help prevent any leaks.

 

[Swamp rat]

Hello Bandit, I'm a Louisiana boy and all the ponds we did then were dug out with the Levee for a dam. Which works fine because the water height does never go any hidher than original ground elevation. I am now in N Georgia doing grading and all of these ponds have cores cut in and syphon pipes installed. The siphon system is nice because it will never cause a leak because its location in the dam is at full pool elevation. Also the are smaller pipes due to them being pressure operated and not gravity. On our cores i cut 20' wide until we reach sutable dirt or Rock. The reason for so wide is , i back fill with 9520 tractors w pull pans. A little overkill on width but it's packed well w the tractors and built quickly. In Georgia our plans require 8' wide minimum width and 6' minimum depth the entire length of the dam.

 

[jonnywalton]

Hello I have a Allis Chalmers HD6 EP Hydro Trans The number on the back of the transmission housing is 88Y24867
The Dozer mover forward and backwards then froze. Dose the Hydraulic pump control the trans or is their a converter inside the housing? It seems to be over filled with Transmission fluid is this a sine of the screen is possibly block not letting the flow of fluid to the pump making the clutches stick. The fluid is what make the clutches open which makes the machine work right? Also the Where is the the screen located ? If their is clutch problem will the fluid smell burnt! Dip stick is under the seat and look to be over full would this make it not move ?? Any Ides on the diagram, Clutches, and pump ? Do they sell parts to fix these and where ? Also parts for the main converter pump ?This was the future design for New Holland Dozer and Hitachi Dozer seems that they should have part available! Any one have idea on where I could get a ripper or winch set up and how to make a third valve for it ?

 

[Scrub Puller]

Yair...I have built hundreds of small stock water dams of say one to twenty five thousand yards of excavation...none of them had a core trench and it is not common practice over here.

The main problem at my present location is to find clay and I advise clients to do a few backhoe test holes before committing to the project. There is often five to six feet of granitic sand over maybe a couple of feet of clay on top of decomposed granite.

If you are carefull you can build a wall out of the sand and line it with as much clay as you can scratch up...hopefully more than six inches carefully track rolled across the front face. You can't offer any gaurantees of course and maybe I've been lucky but of about a dozen built close handy only one has leaked.

In any sort of reasonable country I have found a 'dozer built wall we be just fine provided the top-soil is well stripped and the base of the bank is ripped and the material is run out on the bank in shallow lifts.

I build the bywash dead level and as near as possible about twice the size of the gully or watercourse being dammed.

I refuse to mess around putting pipes throught the wall and in truth not many folks bother.

As mentioned up thread a syphon is safer and simpler. The biggest I have built was an eight inch floatig suction and it flowed a lot of water. I have been told that after the dam silted after a big wet the new owners did a modification and used it as a dredge...it's all gone now under a bloody coal mine spoil heap.

Cheers.