Clay for pond lining

[JeremyL]

I have a "pond" that doesn't hold water. After lots of research and conferring with experts, I'm pretty sure what I need is a couple of truck loads of good clean clay to spread over the bottom.

But I can't find a source of clay near Louisville, KY. Anybody have a suggestion?

 

[Bird]

I have no idea what kind of clay you can find in that area, or what it will cost, but I think bentonite is probably the best, but also probably the most expensive for that purpose.

 

[chh]

You would need several inches of clay spread over the bottom to get a good seal. I have always heard bentonite would do it mixed in with the current soil. You can also get plastic pond liners made for any size pond.

 

[EddieWalker]

How big is the pond?

To be watertight, I've always read that you need it to be two feet thick. Any thinner, and the water will go through it. When I hit sand while digging my pond, I dug out the sand extra deep and then filled and compacted it with 2 -3 feet of clay.

One yard of dirt will cover 12 square feet. A one acre pond will need over 3,600 yards of dirt to create a water tight seal. You really don't want to do this.

Betonite is an expanding material that helps stop or slow down a leak. It really needs to go where the leak is. It's not a pond sealer, and it requires clay for it to work. The clay has to seal the majority of the water, the betonite will only help the clay. Not replace it. Betonite is also expensive. Allot more money then clay.

If the pond is too big and/or clay is too expensive to bring in, rubber liners are your next choice. Again, lots of money.

Some ponds are better off being filled in and turned to pasture. It's a hard decision to make, but sometimes, it's the only realistic option.

Good luck,
Eddie

 

[JeremyL]

The "pond" is small, about 170' by 200'. It has a nice dam and appears to have held water recently. (I have had the property for 3 years.) After a good rain water will be collected and then slowly dissappear. It drains all the way out, so my diagnosis is that the leak is on the bottom. No signs of water leaking through or under the dam. Our geology is lots of old, layered, cracked limestone; not the best for ponds, but neighbors all around us have perfectly serviceable ones.

This is small enough for a rubber liner, but $$$ and the fact that we have horses who might sometimes take a stroll through the pond makes me hesitate.

2 FEET of clay, Eddie? That is a lot of clay. The only source of bentinite that I can find is from Southern States at $10 for a 50# BAG. So back to my original question: where can I get truck loads of clay (or bentonite) near Louisville? I can spread it and work it in with my box blade; the bottom of the pond is fairly level, and there is good access into the bowl for my Kubota. I have scraped around with my box blade hoping to find a hole or other source of leak.

 

[JeremyL]

Pictures are worth thousands of words.

People in the bowl for scale.

The pond filled all the way only once in the past three years. (Ofcourse we have had a couple of bad drought years.)

 

[Western]

Jeremy,
try the pondboss.com site. allot of helpful info on pond problems..Your certianly not the 1st with this problem.

 

[The Dougster]

I feel your pain.... I have a pond that has leaked for many years... In January, I hired a fellow with a dozer to see what he could do... first thing he did ws get in the bottom and start digging to see if there was any clay there that might hold water... no clay, he promised to stop digging and go home and only charge for the time spent.
He did find clay about four feet below surface and thought there was sufficient clay to work with. I gave him the go ahead. Four days and $5K later, I had a beautiful and quite enlarged hole in the ground.... Now, if it would only rain. lol Good luck with yours.

 

[czechsonofagun]

Pictures are worth thousands of words.

People in the bowl for scale.

The pond filled all the way only once in the past three years. (Ofcourse we have had a couple of bad drought years.)

Thats a nice looking pond. We are lucky enough to have good water shed above us, we are a starting point of a creek and it never dries out completely. But it is low now even we had rain.

 

[Egon]

Bentonite is one broad clasification of the many forms of clay. It's probably one of the better know ones as in one of its forms it may be used as a sealer or to increase the weight of the fluid [Mud] when drilling holes in the ground.

For the situation as seen by us a liner may be the way to go. The liner can be placed and then dirt placed on the liner to protect it from damage.

 

[JonR]

Jeremy, a friend told me his father had a pond that wouldn't hold water when he was a kid. His dad fenced off the pond and brought in a bunch of hogs, kept them in the pond-pen for a few weeks or months, when he took out the hogs his pond held water! ...fwiw
-Jon

 

[Redneck in training]

We have the same problem with our pond. The pond was built in 2004 and was never full. In fact first year it was just a mud hole with 3ft of water. Therefore I bought 14 tons of bentonite and hired a guy with bulldozer to apply it. He used a spreader and was circling the pond until run out of the bentonite. The bentonite was covered by about a foot of dirt. Then the water level rose to about 8 to 9 feet (about half full). Originally before the bentonite was applied the pond would go up a foot during heavy rain and then dropp a foot in less than a day. After the bentonite the water level was dropping few inches a day. Therefore we bought a sealer from Seepage control Seepage Control, Inc. -- Specializing in construction of liners for sealing lakes and ponds and applied it. It lowered the water loss to about one inch a day but it didn't stop it. I calculated the loss is about 5 gal/sec depending on water level. Assuming that I have single leak I also calculated that the leak was about 6 ft deeper from certain water level coinciding with depth of the hydrant take off.
My next step will be a "milk test". Since I suspect the water is following the hydrant pipe due to lack of "collars" I will dive there and pour milk in the water to see if it gets sucked in around the pipe or other places in the pond.

We also priced a liner. The average estimate was about $25000/0.7 acre plus labor. Another disadvantage of liner is that it prevents mineral exchange and the pond becomes a "swimming pool" and has to be treated with chemicals.

Jeremy, a friend told me his father had a pond that wouldn't hold water when he was a kid. His dad fenced off the pond and brought in a bunch of hogs, kept them in the pond-pen for a few weeks or months, when he took out the hogs his pond held water! ...fwiw
-Jon

This method works as long as the seepage is caused by permeability of the material. If the leakage is caused in example by crack in the underlying rock it will not work. It works as the feeces promote bacerial growth that seals the leakage. In the part of Europe I am from fish farming is one of the big industries with thousands of ponds. They seal ponds with manure or other biomas such as grass clippings, straw, leaves etc. When pond is built in difficult area it is covered with about a foot or more of biomas toped with 2 or 3 feet of dirt and compacted. It might take more than one season to seal.

 

[ultrarunner]

Jeremy, a friend told me his father had a pond that wouldn't hold water when he was a kid. His dad fenced off the pond and brought in a bunch of hogs, kept them in the pond-pen for a few weeks or months, when he took out the hogs his pond held water! ...fwiw
-Jon

That's how I was told my Great Grandfather built his pond. It was a pig hollow and then he layered it with straw and soil on top of it. I guess clay is decayed bio mass and the pigs speed up the process?

 

[Redneck in training]

Here are few pics of our pond.

 

[chh]

Jeremy, a friend told me his father had a pond that wouldn't hold water when he was a kid. His dad fenced off the pond and brought in a bunch of hogs, kept them in the pond-pen for a few weeks or months, when he took out the hogs his pond held water! ...fwiw
-Jon

I have people do the same thing with cattle. They feed round bales in the bottom of the pond and let the cattle churn it in.

 

[Bird]

I have people do the same thing with cattle. They feed round bales in the bottom of the pond and let the cattle churn it in.

I had a neighbor do just that. He said he and his son had a bunch of old, poor quality round bales of hay and they busted them up, unrolled them and covered the bottom of the dry pond, then fed good bales right in the bottom and he said that pond has never gone dry again, even in the driest weather. But of course, it helps if you have a good sized herd of cattle to tromp on it.

 

[firemen122]

I have a "pond" that doesn't hold water. After lots of research and conferring with experts, I'm pretty sure what I need is a couple of truck loads of good clean clay to spread over the bottom.

But I can't find a source of clay near Louisville, KY. Anybody have a suggestion?

The old timers around here swore you could fence off a bunch of hogs in that bottom, let em root with a little water flowing in and they will seal the pond. Never done it , but know of several ponds that were supposedly created by this method.

 

[Egon]

Sheepfoot packers are quite common. Are we gonna start several new classifications called "Bovine Packers" or "Pigs feet packers" ?

 

[bindian]

When my new pond http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/projects/135413-i-finally-started-my-pond.html was leaking, I "googled up" on Bentonite. Bentonite works great for spot leaks, like near a drain pipe. Just dump it overboard and it will find the leak. For a whole pond, I found online, you need to till the Bentonite into the existing soil and pack in it. I found a 18 wheeler truck load for not that much down here. But I just added 6 inches of clay to the dam and repacked the whole dam. It all depends on your soil type to how much bentonite is tilled in. I would find a pond expert in your area and pump him for information.
hugs, Brandi

 

[tugboat-2]

When I first dug my pond, I was completely ignorant and just used the top soil and dirt I dug out to build the levee (I want to call it a d-m darn but they censor the word so I'll call it a levee).

So anyway it leaked down every year and so during the drought of 2007, I dug it out deeper and wider etc and got down past the earth into the nice gray clay. I scooped up bucket fulls and went to the pond walls and dumped the bucket as high as it would lift then smoothed it down to the bottom with the bucket bottom, row after row all the way round the two ends and the levee.

I'm not sure how thick the clay is but certainly not two feet in most places and likely only inches thick in most places but its plastered on and smoothed down and it has NOT leaked since, stays nice and full and it is only fed by spring snow melt and rain. Lots of hills drain down to it also but it doesn't leak!!!

Before the drought,...my local pond guy told me to put lots of bottom-feeders in and they would stir up the bottom and the stirred up dirt will plug the holes. Said it worked for him. Then came the drought so I didn't get to try the fish. Just a suggestion.

CHEERS!
. . tug