Creating a Lake

[RobJ]

Rob,

Thanks for the update and pictures of your friends pond. It really looks nice with all that water in it!!! Kind of changes the entire look of the land. Now I'd love to see some pictures in the spring when the grass is all in. I bet it will be amazing!!!!!!!!!

Eddie

Well Edwin quickly sold the property but I think I still have access to it. Edwin just has to put a word in for me, he still touching up some places with the D6, I think they are going to try and plant a cover crop soon if they can. There is lots of good soil there, the lower area was all bottom land(some huge stumps still there). I would have loved to buy it and put a house right where I took the pictures. What a deal to, bought the 60-acres for about 65k, took 45k worth of timber off it (mostly oak, lumber guy said several trees were worth $1000 or more alone..BTW his first offer for the timber was 15k). Another good reason for the timber price? It was cut a couple a months before Rita.

These pictures were still back in April, it has suffered some but the branch has a spring running through it.

 

[slowzuki]

Its funny to think of years to fill a pond in. Around here if you dug a hole in the ground it would either fill in from ground water or it would fill in from rain within days.

I'm trying to dig a septic test pit but I am terrified it will fill in the day the septic inspector arrives.

 

[schmism]

I'm trying to dig a septic test pit but I am terrified it will fill in the day the septic inspector arrives.

ya but thats one of those things were your not saveing your self anything by "cheeting" on it.

a drain feild that doesnt drain is ... well worthless....

 

[RobJ]

ya but thats one of those things were your not saveing your self anything by "cheeting" on it.

a drain feild that doesnt drain is ... well worthless....

I gotta agree, If I dig a perk test hole and it even thinks about filling with water it's time to look for another spot to put the septic.

 

[rico304]

Rob,

Everyone else,

Steph and I went out to the lake site this morning for a walk and for her to take some pictures of the wild flowers that are in bloom. I decided to take my measuring wheel to see how big the lake actually is. When I first started this, the dam wasn't going to be half as big as it turned out, and I took my measurements based on an idea of where I expected to dam to be. At that time I came up with just over 5 acres.

Today I measured off a bunch of rectangles and triangles. I added up the square footage and came up with 187,310, or 4.3 acres.

I'm a little disapointed because I had it in my head that it was 5 acres. It doesn't matter really, but then again??? hahahaha

4 acres is still pretty good sized, and I did build the dam much, much larger than I ever planned or even imagined in my wildest dreams. I also have 12 feet of depth at the deep end and 8 feet through most of it, so thats a good thing. It's just not 5 acres.

Oh well,
Eddie

I have looked forward to everyones posts since your started your 5 acre project Eddie. However, now that I know that it is only a 4.3 acre project I'm not so sure it will be able to keep my interest. I wish you would have done these goesintas a while ago. It would have saved me a lot of time! hahahaha

 

[EddieWalker]

Just a quick update on my hole in the ground. It's now a muddy hole with a trace of water in it.

Last weekend, we had an inch of rain over a full day. It was slow and steady with very little run off. The next day I went to the lake to see if I got any water in it.

The first picture shows the lake. There is some, but this is the deepest end of the lake and it needs to have 4 feet of water just to get the other end wet.

The second picture shows the outside of the dam. I graded it out so that it's almost impossible to tell where the dam starts and where I cut the ground down a little for the water to run into the creek. You can also see in this picture how the bermuda grass is starting to grow. The grass in this picture was some of the first seed I put out, but as of today, I see small sprouts of grass coming in everywhere.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

Last night we had our first real hard rain of the season. In about 30 minutes, my rain guage showed 1.75 inches of rain. The ground is still sort of moist from the last rain, so this stuff was all run off. I was very exited this morning to see how my changes to the ground in my pasture and other areas of the land handled the rain. I eyeball most of these changes, so sometimes I find I need to go back and make a few modifications. hahaha

There is one spot that was pretty bad and I lost about 4 acres worth of runoff, but otherwise, it went pretty good.

I also had a problem with one of my culverts. It's the smaller 15 inch one, and the water wore away the dirt at the entrance to the culvert two feet back. The first picture shows this. To fix it, I'm going to stack 40 pound sacks of readi mix around the pipe with rebar pounded through it. That will be one of next weeks projects.

The second picture shows the big hole in the ground with a few feet of water in the deep end.

It's a start,
Eddie

 

[Nat]

If you are getting as much rain as the weather chanel shows there ought to be a bunch of water in it by now, may not want to invest in a pump for a while. I showed Vickie the oics of the lake filling, she is impressed. Later, Nat

 

[EddieWalker]

Hey Nat,

Tell Vickie we said hi.

The rains are about a hundred miles south of us. Some of the guys over at PondBoss are getting 7, 8, and even 11 inches out of a single rain. Here we're exited about every inch we get!!!!

There are still two counties between here and Dallas that are still under burn bans.

Luckily I got that grass seed in just in time and it's all starting to sprout. The forcast is mid 70's next week with a chance of rain on Tue. Perfect growing conditions for my grass. I'm more worried about that getting started before winter hits than I am about the water level. If it goes dorment too soon, it might not make it through winter. I know, who ever heard that you can kill bermuda grass? hahaha

It's probably safe now, but I'll worry about it until next spring.

Eddie

 

[JayDavis]

Most of the rain has been to the sooth of Eddie and to the east. Parts of LA and extreme east TX have gotten over 20" of rain this month. We didn't get any of that rain last night, Eddie, but we did get that nice slow rain Wednesday. Glad to see that lake filling up.