Creating a Lake

[EddieWalker]

Here's Blue again on the orange line. This is the end of the dike. Now I have my perimiter defined, I can start the building it.

The spillway will be in this area. I just did a quick look around and liked what I found. It will work real nice for a grass spillway down to the creek.

 

[EddieWalker]

The tree in the middle of the picture is where I'll dig my keyway. The tree was big enough to stop my dozer. I can dig around it or use the backhoe. For bigger trees, the backhoe is much faster at taking them out.

 

[EddieWalker]

I had a few hours left of daylight, so I cut a ramp into the end of the berm. My thought is to keep pushing dirt down to where I can load it.

 

[Panache]

I have a ram pump in my pond. They need head to operate. 15 ft plus. There is a rotary pump also available. It needs not head but does need moving water. My ram is a Fulton. It was made by a gentleman outside Atlanta.

 

[EddieWalker]

I'll have to measure it, but I might have enough of a drop along with the moving water to make the Ram work.

I've been downloading diagrams and reading up on it, so when I finish the dirt work, I'll try to build one.

 

[EddieWalker]

I went as far as I dared with my dozer into the swamp. Nothing scares me like watching her tracks sinking into the black goo!!!!!!!!!!!

At this point I switched to the backho to clear brush. I took out everything I could reach and shoved it asside.

 

[EddieWalker]

The swamp is going to be an issue. Too much water.

I dug the core trench, or key way, from the farthest I was able to get the backho. Then I followed my marks that I made laying out the shoreline and elevation changes.

The shallower I got, the less I dug. The minimum is 2 feet by 2 feet. I'm 6 feet by six feet at my deepest.

The water came rushing in all along the trench. In places it was coming in so fast it caused ripples and was moving dirt.

 

[EddieWalker]

The water will only be about a foot deep in the photo, so it's the smaller part of the keyway.

This is a good photo of how it works to lock in the water and keep the dike, or a dam, from sliding or leaking.

 

[EddieWalker]

There's a few things that have to be done for the dike, or dam, to hold water. The keyway is one. Good soil, the proper slope and size are also required. But compaction is what I understand to be the second biggest reason for leaks after the keyway.

Since I don't have a sheeps foot for compaction, and the dozer isn't the best tool for it, I'll have to get it by building it in small lifts and continously going over the same ground.

 

[HuckBB62]

Eddie, I don't have as much clay as you're showing but up here, the dirt work guys say that using water along the way really helps move the dirt to higher compaction. It's seeming to work on my dirt but I have a lot of disentegrated granite and some sand with little clay. Just an idea. I'm building up areas and have thought about getting some kind of heavy roller setup. Any old grist mill wheels laying around?! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[ocaj11]

Eddie,

Thanks for all the photos. I just finished reading the entire thread and will follow this one until you are finished. I'm currently living outside of Texarkana and we're going to build a lake on 60 acres there this summer. I'm confident we will have at least 10 surface acres of water.

I'll be visiting pondboss regularly to make sure we build the dam properly. I certainly don't want any leaks down the road....

Good Luck!!!

 

[TNhobbyfarmer]

Just finished reading this post from beginning to end. I plan on building a pond/lake on my place in the next couple of years. My initial thoughts are that it will be around 3 acres. I honestly didn't realize how complicated these projects are until reading this. I guess I will need a lot of help and advice. I was hoping to get a lot of free help from the NRCS, but an earlier post seemed to indicate that they don't do much of that anymore. I have also heard that they aren't nearly as free with their $'s as in the past. Does anyone know how much I should expect to pay for a consultant to come in and help me lay out the project? I'm probably going to get sticker shock wnen I start to get a handle on the bottom line of this project.

 

[Panache]

NRCS designed my pond. In 96 it cost ~$3 per yard of dirt moved. This included the stand pipe and all clearing.

 

[leaddog]

Make sure you don't have any roots in the dam fill. When I was working with the scs people for mine they told me about a pond that had a root running under the dam and after a few years it decayed and the water flowed out. They said it looked like a big whirlpooland there was now way to stop it. Water is very hard to control. Good luck, looks like a great project.
leaddog

 

[EddieWalker]

As the weather warms and the ground dries up, I try to get a little further into the lake area to clear brush. I'm terrified of getting stuck, but dumb enough to keep pushing it.

My latest brain fart was to knock over the sapplings and run on top of them to stop from breaking through the solid surface into the bottomless much below.

The idea worked, but the sapplings fought back.

This is where they got me.

 

[EddieWalker]

I cleared the brush as good as I could, but there was a tree dead center in the middle underneath. The real problem with the tree was the root ball was filling up all the space under there.

My only choice was to crawl in through the back, twist and suffer until I got it off. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

This cost a little over $8 to replace, but over 6 hours of work!!

 

[notamustang]

Nice project, cute dog and girlfriend /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif I hate those 6 hour projects for 10 minutes worth of work. Looking forward to further posts and completion.
Steven

 

[GuglioLS]

You go for it Eddie - It's your land and "Dam" the government . This country was founded on private land ownership and the pursuit of happiness. Glad to see your are doing both. Enjoy your Pond Lake.

And keep those toys out-a-the muck.