Silt Happens!

[jinman]

Good morning, Alan. The song, "How Dry I Am," certainly applies to us, even if it is another type of "dry" they are talking about. It's so dry here that I saw a prickly pear cactus with a case of Evian water in the checkout at Wal*Mart.

All kiddin' aside, we are very dry and I think even dryer here than you. The areas east of I-35 seem to get rain more than here as we are on the edge of the arid west. All that said, my pond is retaining water like a fat woman's ankles. The darn thing just refuses to dry up much. It's only down a little over 3' while our lake is down nearly 6'. It seems the ratio of surface area to depth makes a huge difference for evaporation. I am very pleased with how tight my dam must be and how this pond really holds water. Perhaps the trees on the hillsides around the pond provide some evaporation reducing shade, but overall, there is something that works and I'm a happy guy.

I'm sorry to hear about your pond. Wat is its depth to diameter ratio? My pond is about 100' diameter and 12' deep in the middle with very steep banks. I think that's the real reason its level varies so little.

 

[EddieWalker]

Alan,

Sorry to hear about your pond. Hope the weather changes for you pretty soon.

I've been reading about ponds drying up over at PondBoss and seeing some of their pictures is real depressing. Some are totally dry with others just about there. The fish are a total loss.

Jim,

Interesting how two ponds so close together can have such a significant difference in water loss. I would have thought that evaporation would be the same for any body of water. I guess it makes sense that a deeper pond might not evaporate as fast since a shallow pond would have warmer water temps. I wonder if it's more that you just have a better build pond that doesn't leak as much as the lake?

Love to see some recent pictures of them!!!

Eddie

 

[wushaw]

My little ft. pond hasn't been full since June 08 and it has many acres for it's water shed.
I have even had several inches of rain in the last 30 days, the ground just soaks it up and very little runoff.

 

[jinman]

Interesting how two ponds so close together can have such a significant difference in water loss. I would have thought that evaporation would be the same for any body of water. I guess it makes sense that a deeper pond might not evaporate as fast since a shallow pond would have warmer water temps. I wonder if it's more that you just have a better build pond that doesn't leak as much as the lake?

Love to see some recent pictures of them!!!

Eddie, here are some pictures I took yesterday. The first couple are of the small pond I cleaned out. You can clearly see by the grass line that the water is only down around 3'. The second group of pictures are of the lake. The overflow in the first two photos shows the water level is down about 6'. The water normally sits about 18" from the top of the platform when the lake is full. I added some other pictures along the shore at my property. In one photo, there is a 2' piece of rebar sticking in the ground right where the floating dock was when you were here, Eddie. You can see that our lake is down much more than my pond. Also, I could walk across the inlet from my place to my neighbor's place. It's only about 3 feet deep. The final picture is my silted pond that I have not cleaned out. The mound in the center is usually an island instead of a peninsula.

It's dry here, but I've seen much worse. One year, both my ponds completely dried up and I could walk across the lake to my neighbor's place on dry land. I don't ever want to see it that dry again.

 

[EddieWalker]

Hi Jim,

Great pics, it's still an amazing setting. I think that the shoreline being so gentle make it still look nice when the water is way down. I see the difference in the ponds and it makes me wonder even more if that depth of the shoreline and the amount of shallow water is what causes the different rate of evaporation. The shallow water has to get warmer then the deep water, so warmer water would evaporate faster. Of course, the larger body of water would probably warm up faster then your tree protected smaller pond too. I guess I don't know enough about this to make a good guess. It is interesting.

Eddie

 

[John D]

Started this project last oct and got rained out. Started at the dry shallow end and got about 20ft in and the rain got me.

 

[jinman]

Started this project last oct and got rained out. Started at the dry shallow end and got about 20ft in and the rain got me.

John, I think as dry as it is now, I'd get a trash pump and get that water out. With the forecast, you may have several weeks to finish or at least make some more progress. Nice start though. . . .

 

[warhammer]

Wow, that sure is looking a bunch deeper than when you started!
I have a couple of ponds that are silted in like yours that I would like to try cleaning but there is still a foot or two of water in the middle so I guess I will have to entertain myself by just doiing a thorough cleaning on the banks for now.

Warhammer

I missed getting pictures of most of the second day's digging because I had to go to my grand daughter's birthday party, but suffice it to say that it was just more trips and the pond just got bigger and bigger. On the third day of digging, I had to go to work, so I also didn't get a lot of photos. The dozer ran to the end of the time I had paid for (24 hours) and then I took over the job to finish the cleanup. Here is my tractor parked in the bottom of the pond. I still have several hundred yards of digging and shaping to do. More pictures will follow tomorrow.

 

[John D]

John, I think as dry as it is now, I'd get a trash pump and get that water out. With the forecast, you may have several weeks to finish or at least make some more progress. Nice start though. . . .

Thats funny Jim. I did just that and had it just about done and we got another rain so I said the heck with it and started reskinning the barn.

 

[wushaw]

Just wait till July-August when we surely don't get any rain to finish draining and cleaning out.