Another pond project

[FF117]

Well, a year and a half after purchasing our property, my wife and I are finally getting a pond built. After interviewing a few contractors, we hired the guy who owns the farm across the street. I have seen a couple of ponds they built and it seems like they do good work. They are planning on bringing in equipment on Tuesday or Wednesday, removing trees and topsoil on Thursday, then determine the water line on Friday using a laser. He said they would put out flags where the water's edge will be and then have me look at it to determine if any adjustments need to be made. He said it would be a few more days to build the dam.

The property is 30 acres and I'm guessing pond should be about 1 acre. Attached are some photos and aerial views. The property line is blue, the proposed dam location is red, and the white numbers are where the photos were taken from. The number corresponds with the order the pics are posted and the white line extending from the number is the direction that the camera is looking. I included an aerial view with 10ft topographical lines also. Hope this makes sense. I'm not very good at explaining things.

I'm open to any suggestions. Maybe something you would have done different, or some things to look out for during the build. I'm thinking about having them put in a small sand beach, but I'm not sure. Does anyone have a beach and if so, how do you like it?

 

[ITHINKICAN]

Congratulations on the pond project. You have a great looking property. I like the rolling terrain and mixture of cleared and non cleared with scattered trees. Have you decided on a depth? We hope everything goes well. Look forward to seeing lots of pictures. Good luck!

 

[EddieWalker]

Sure looks like a pretty place for a pond. Is there any way to make it bigger? One acre is a nice size, but if there is any way at all to make it bigger, you won't regret spending the extra money on it. No matter how big it is, you will always want it bigger.

Eddie

 

[FF117]

Not sure of the depth yet, but I am guessing 15-20 feet. I would really like to make it bigger, but I have to be realistic about my budget and if we go bigger the north side would have to be built up some and cost would rise exponentially. That being said, if they get the water line laid out and it seems too small, I'll probably have them make it bigger. I have a friend with a 3/4 acre pond and it seems like a good size, so I figured an acre would be ok.

 

[JKirkwood]

Have you located your home build site or any out buildings planned? I like the view from the lower right of position 3. Screens out the view to the neighbors and would have a nice view of the pond. Not sure of the North orientation. Beautiful property. My BIL has redug his pond 3 times getting it to hold level, even with it setting on Missouri clay. Just plan on more building sites as you expand for equipment & workshops & barns for all the extra equipment all TBN's seem to aquire.

 

[ryer]

FF117,
In my humble opinion EddieWalker is right. I have a lot of water on my property and have expanding my capacity for nearly 15 years and it is always better to dig the original pond as large as possible. 15-20 ft is awful deep for a pond in my opinion. Are you building the pond for cattle, or fishing or just for the view? In my experience fish will never use the deeper water in a pond that deep. The oxygen level and the sediment just don't mix for them. If cost is a factor like it is for me...if your contractor is charging by the yard or just the size of the pond, you might want to consider a 1.5 acre at 6-12 ft in depth over a 1 acre at 15-20 ft. Also, if it is for fish, it is better to leave humps and ridges and some area even as shallow as 2-3 ft for fish structure. Your fish will do much better than being in a giant bowl shaped pond. The sandy beach will work just make sure that you know which way the bulk of your wind (i.e. erosion) is coming from and put it on the opposite side. I learned the hard way that wind and waves and sand beaches don't mix.

 

[FF117]

Ryer,

The depth of 15-20ft is solely based on my totally untrained eye and only in a small portion of the site. Although you make a good point that deeper is not necessarily better and I will check with the contractor to see if they can avoid going too deep and possibly go bigger. I intend on stretching it to make it as large as the site and my budget can handle. I will know more about the overall size and depth later this week. I am paying by the hour, but he gave me a cap dollar amount that he guaranteed not to go over. I'm sure he overestimated the cap amount by quite a bit to cover his butt.

We are building the pond for several reasons: the view, improved property value, swimming, and some fishing. I do intend on having them leave some humps and ridges as well as adding man made fish habitat. I've been reading on Pond Boss Forums and have some good ideas. Regarding the beach; we have prevailing winds out of the west, so are you suggesting that the beach be on the east?

JKirkwood,

That sucks about your BIL's pond. I sure hope we don't have any problems like that. Your right, position 3 is our top choice for a home site, but that may change. Who knows, we are still a long way from building. That photo faces almost directly west. We were initially planning on putting the pond on the south side of the property, which would allow south facing windows overlooking the pond, but after talking to contractors we decided that this would make a much nicer pond and it would be more centrally located on the property. Windows facing west over the pond will probably be good too.

Thanks for the opinions, keep'em coming.
Shawn

 

[ryer]

ff117,sorry I miss worded what I was trying to say,you would put your beach on the west side of your pond.Pond Boss is a great forum.In my opinion the addition of water of any size to your property is a win win for everyone involved.Make sure your contractor cuts steep sides to the edge of the pond (3or4 ft)otherwise vegetation will grow out and take over your water in no time and swimming will go out the window.Down here in my neck of the woods everyone has a pond or two and after they fill with water we all say the same exact thing"I should of run that water that aways over there some":laughing:

 

[FF117]

ff117,sorry I miss worded what I was trying to say,you would put your beach on the west side of your pond.Pond Boss is a great forum.In my opinion the addition of water of any size to your property is a win win for everyone involved.Make sure your contractor cuts steep sides to the edge of the pond (3or4 ft)otherwise vegetation will grow out and take over your water in no time and swimming will go out the window.Down here in my neck of the woods everyone has a pond or two and after they fill with water we all say the same exact thing"I should of run that water that aways over there some":laughing:

I was afraid you were going to say that. The west side is where the dam will be and opposite of the house. Maybe it would be OK on the south because we don't get a lot of wind out of the north.

 

[ryer]

FF117,the first pond I built was right off my front porch about 60 feet away.We always wanted a pond "right in our front yard" so i dug it and it was only about 1/3 of an acre.All we have here is sand but we wanted a beach area with no vegetation where we could pull up and park the paddle boats,put up a gazeebo and bbq area.I built up this area about 70 ft by 30 ft and it was nice.We had shot the grades so I knew the maximum water level but I never thought about waves and how high they can become even in a small 1/3 acre pond.Most of this pond is surrounded by trees but a large field to the south was my undoing as we have a strong prevailing wind from the south.You would not believe how fast that beach washed away in one afternoon in fact When I saw your photos of where your pond will be I saw a lot of open area around your pond site and my first reaction was...boy you are going to get a lot of wind on that water. I think though, if you put some small rip rap or railroad ties and built that area up a little bit it will be fine. A lot of guys down here like to build a beach sandy area that slopes gradually right down to the water and without vegetation...unless the cat tails take over which you don't want...usually all that sand just silts your pond. I thought of this because I don't know if you have sand on your property or whether you were paying to have it hauled in. That could get expensive if it washed away. This is the only reason I mentioned it...because of my experience. What kind of soil do you have there? I do not know although I was born probably pretty close to where you are at, at Chanute AFB, Rantoul. In the end, it always works out for the best...just thought I might save you a headache. P.S. It's always worth it though, I think, because this is the view off our front porch. The 1/3 acre pond has been expanded now to 2.5 acres and it runs back into a heavily wooded area and I am ready for the next phase

 

[FF117]

Thats a nice view from your porch.....2.5 acres, wow. We live in Quincy, about 3 hours west of Rantoul. Thanks for pointing out about the wind, I hadn't even thought of it. It's crazy that your beach washed away in a day, bummer. Maybe the south side is best for our pond because we usually get north winds in the winter when the pond will be frozen, plus there are trees to the north that may deflect some of the wind. I don't know, maybe we don't need a beach, just thought it would be nice. Guess I can always put that money toward a bigger pond.

I don't know the first thing about soils, but if you get under the topsoil, it's pretty much clay. According to the county's website much of our property is "Bunkum" and "Wakeland", but I have no idea what those are, even after a google search. I do have to haul in sand, so I don't like to idea of just losing it in the pond.

 

[piller]

Advice so far seems to suggest bigger is better as far as ponds go. I'll suggest however that you consider a pond size that is appropriate for the site and for you.
Several posts mentioned problems with erosion and wind on larger exposed ponds.

I've got two ponds on my farm. One pond we call our wildlife pond. It's spring fed and about 1/3 acre in size. The pond is hidden, we have sloping land that goes down to it from open pastures on either side and there are trees all around the pond. We get some good winds on the pastures but the pond is very quiet, private, and protected. We sit down there and listen to the water falling over rocks as it exits the pond and goes down stream through a grove of hemlocks. We have flying squirrels, deer, herons, wild ducks, all kinds of colorful salamanders, frogs, turkeys, etc.

If I wanted to I could easily build up the height of the dam so that the pond was no longer hidden and increase the pond size to about 3 or 4 acres. We like the pond just as it is. I've considered perhaps adding another small pond downstream and/or upstream, to create a series of smaller ponds.

We have another spring fed pond that is a little over an acre in size, in the middle of a pasture, exposed, with no trees. It's a good source of water and has nice views but we don't spend much time there. I think this pond needs some trees around it.

Just something to consider.

 

[FF117]

piller,

Thanks for the advice. I definitely plan on planting trees after the pond fills and we hope to get the wildlife viewing opportunities that you describe. I've been worried about erosion since it was mentioned here, especially with all the open field to the south.

Well, things have been moving fast. They got the equipment moved yesterday and got a lot of work done. The dirt has been working good and things have been going smoothly. Unfortunately though, my estimation of a one acre pond was optimistic. Based on the grade it only made sense to put the levee in one place. We tried to maximize the water surface area while still allowing the back side of the levee to be mowed easily. All I have now are cell phone pics, but I'm going back out tomorrow and will take some with the real camera. Good news is, it looks like it will be under budget so I can have the beach built and maybe get some other work done. They might be done by the weekend, which is good because we may get some precipitation on Saturday.

The equipment they are using looks pretty nice. They have a Komatsu D65px and a Komatsu PC300LC excavator.

 

[FF117]

Went out to inspect the work today. The levee is almost done, but there is still a lot of finish work to do around the edges and the back side of the levee. The original plan was to install a pipe for overflow, but with the limited amount of drainage to the site we decided to just put in an overflow spillway on the north side. It will be wide and is in a place thats already covered with vegetation. Not installing the pipe was at the suggestion of the contractor. This caught me by surprise because he would be making more money by installing the pipe. The edges of the pond will have a steep initial drop (to keep out the cattails) and a ledge around the outside. The edges still need to be worked so that I can mow up to the water. It's still a little hard for me to visualize.

Total depth will be about 15-16 feet. This is deeper than I wanted, but the topography dictated the depth. Beach will be on the south with the bottom contoured to hold the sand in place.

 

[ryer]

FF117,
Looking good, you are really going to have a nice pond there but also that's some very good looking soil you have to work with there. I take it that is your daughter? Is she smiling because daddy has made a big hole in the ground or you told her she could drive that big dozer, or maybe she knows something we don't. Keep up the good work.

Ryer

 

[jinman]

It looks like your plans are going nicely and great progress is being made. The fellow obviously knows what he is doing with the equipment. When your daughter is grown, you'll have that picture to show her and bring a smile to her face.:thumbsup:

 

[EddieWalker]

Great pictures and a beautiful lookin dam!!!! Nothing like pushing dirt around into something that will become permanent and totally change the land for all eternity.

Congratulations,
Eddie

 

[FF117]

Good news: The dam is complete and they spread top soil on the back side tonight. They made a nice shelf as wide as the dozer all the way down the south side. This will serve partially as the beach and the rest will be fish habitat.

Bad news: They hit sand yesterday...a lot of sand. They spent a lot of time digging it out and backfilling with clay. He said that they dug out enough sand that they could have put the dozer inside the hole. Needless to say, I don't think we're still under budget, even without the overflow pipe. Also, the back side of the dam ended up steeper than we wanted. I'll probably have to mow up and down instead of side to side. Although if I had a small lawnmower it would probably be OK. He apologized repeatedly for this, but explained that it would take a few more days to push enough dirt to make a noticeable difference in the grade. It's not a perfect world.

The dam has gotten pretty large and the pond pretty deep. I'm guessing close to 20 feet. This is good and bad. Bad because it makes a lot of useless water and will take a long time to fill. Good because if we have a drought there will be plenty of water and we can put geothermal lines from our future house on the bottom. There's still some grade work to do around the edges and they have to finish up on an old pond site that I'm having them clear. Assuming no problems, should be done tomorrow. That's good because it is getting dang cold and the ground will be frozen soon. Sorry for the long post.