Anyone dug a pond before?

[WTA]

I dug one a couple years ago with just my farm tractor and the rear blade. I got about 8 feet deep and 50 foot across in 3 days. It's actually holding water good too in an area of dirt that wasn't supposed to hold water.

Well, it's now only about 5 feet deep from sand blowing in I guess and I am draining it to make it bigger and deeper. Also it just froze clear to the bottom and killed all my fish.

Is there a better way to dig one with a tractor or do I just have to spend the cash and rent an excavator? They are extremely expensive down here to rent with all the state fees, federal fees and of course the rip off dealer fees. Over 1000 dollars a day for even a small one. I don't want a pond that bad.

[20 20]

I dug one a couple years ago with just my farm tractor and the rear blade. I got about 8 feet deep and 50 foot across in 3 days. It's actually holding water good too in an area of dirt that wasn't supposed to hold water.

Well, it's now only about 5 feet deep from sand blowing in I guess and I am draining it to make it bigger and deeper. Also it just froze clear to the bottom and killed all my fish.

Is there a better way to dig one with a tractor or do I just have to spend the cash and rent an excavator? They are extremely expensive down here to rent with all the state fees, federal fees and of course the rip off dealer fees. Over 1000 dollars a day for even a small one. I don't want a pond that bad.

yep, dug more then one, also drained and dredged one{made bigger deeper}. An excavator is the best way to dig a pond. It is also best if redigging to drain completely. To answer your question whether you HAVE to have an excavator? The answer is no, you could dig a pond with a hand shovel . Digging with an excavator is just a whole lot easier

[WTA]

I guess I need to go talk to the neighbor then. Maybe if I can fix his dozer he will let me use it for a few hours. It's all I would need with that thing. It's a HUGE cat dozer off both tracks right now. He parked it on the snow then tried to drive it when it turned to ice.

[beenthere]

If your neighbor did that, then likely something is broken, not just "off both tracks". Or did you already check that out?

The $1000 per day does sound high, but think about the expense of the excavator, and would you own one and rent it out for less than that amount? Maybe that $1000 comes with the insurance policy that will fix what gets broken, or repair damage from tipping it over in the hole (seen a couple returned with such damage, and it wasn't cheap to fix).

What tractor and attachments do you have to work with? Where are you located?
How much time do you have available? Lastly, how easy is it to drain the existing pond and can it dry out for working?
A pic would be great to get a better "picture" of what you are faced with.

[eric and his rtv]

here's my pond-dig thread --

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/r...g-me-pond.html

[Dargo]

I guess I need to go talk to the neighbor then. Maybe if I can fix his dozer he will let me use it for a few hours. It's all I would need with that thing. It's a HUGE cat dozer off both tracks right now. He parked it on the snow then tried to drive it when it turned to ice.

I can tell you from experience, you won't dig much of a pond with a dozer. I don't care if it's a D11, you'll spend waaaaaaay too much time pushing dirt around and trying to get rid of it unless you only need to dam off a "V" shaped valley. Another thing with a dozer, you won't get any depth. Once you get down very far, you spend most of your energy just trying to get back out of the grade. A large track loader would eventually do the job but, again, you'll spend an awful lot of time.

If you're going for a huge pond a couple of large pans, a large excavator, a couple of dump trucks and a D6 sized dozer to spread the soil would get it done. It took me 3 full years to get my 1 1/2 acre pond dug. I didn't want a bunch of weeds etc., so I have some steep sides and an average depth of about 7' with a deep end of 22'. Without an excavator you'll end up with a rather shallow pond. I guess it all depends on what you want. If you only want 3' or 4' deep, I suppose you could push out a pretty large area with a large dozer in a week or two.

[Topstrap]

The one I put over the hill beside the house I dug with a lil 12,000lb excavator and tracked skid loader. You could pick one of these up pretty reasonable now with the tough times a lot of excavators are seeing and sell it when done to recover some costs. They do well if you have a skidloader or even your tractor with a FEL could move the dirt around you pile up. Spread and track in with the excavator, might take a while but when it's for yourself I never really consider how long something takes to do. I am doing it for my enjoyment and usually in between other jobs so it's not a rush job.

That sounds high but maybe that is for a pretty good sized machine. Usually a larger pond is easier dug with a dozer if it has a lot of surface area and not super deep. Digging a large pond with only an excavator you have to get rid of you dirt somehow so you'll need to haul or push it away from you. Depends on how your ground lays where you wish to put the pond at. Large flat areas can use a different machine/machines more efficiently than putting one in a steep valley that needs a tall wide dam.

Good luck

Topstrap

[WTA]

I went and talked to the neighbor and looked over the dozer again. It's just broken track pins but it's worse now. His rain cap blew off the muffler and the engine seized. Oh well.
I used to work at a dealer, not very long ago either, that let me take anything I wanted home from mini excavators to the giant ones. I miss that. Rentals for our customers never got over a hundred bucks a day either. It was a very nice dealer in Pa. All of our rental machines were mostly trade ins so maybe that had something to do with it.

I would like to get the pond at a full acre at least 10 feet deep. I think I have it figured out what I am going to do now. Offer up some dirt to the neighbor behind me. He has a motorcycle race track that he is always working on. He rents a big segmented wheel loader for it and he can move a hill with a lot more dirt than will be coming out of my pond in a couple hours. It's a really big loader. The back stop for my shooting range was just three bucket fulls in that thing and it's 25 foot tall, 20 feet wide. I talked to him and he is more than happy to take some dirt from me.

[tommu56]

The excavator that did my work charged 100/hr but I couldn't get half the work done in a day that he did.

So I'd higher it out If it was me unless you can get a deal on the rental

Were in pa are you?
The excavator is in Renova area that I used

tom

[Bandit4]

I hired the digging of my pond out. Excavator and driver was $85 an hour here in NC. I was digging the pond for fill dirt to build up a home site because my property is on the water. My problem was as soon as I got three feet deep it would fill with ground water. The next year I hired a long reach excavator so I could go deeper for more fill dirt.