Creating a Lake

[EddieWalker]

Pat,

I forgot to respond to your point about oxygen in the water. I don't have a good plan for that other than to see what happens and address it when it becomes a problem. From my experience with koi and goldfish ponds, you can tell when the water lacks oxygen by watching them come to the surface to get air. I don't know if this will happen here or not.

My overall average depth when full should be 6 feet. There is about a half acre that is 12 feet deep, and a little more than an acre that will be 4 feet deep. There are also two large underwater islands and four smaller ones that might equal an acre, but probably not, that are in the 4 to 6 foot range. The of the lake along the dam is 8 feet deep and probably covers 2 acres. My bottom is irregular as can be, not to mention all my structure.

I'm hoping this will help create a quality environment for my fish. The reason for the underwater islands is to off steep drop offs for my preditor fish to hang out, but also allow me to grew water lillies and other underwater oxygenating plants that wont' be able to spread because of the rapid drop off.

My watershed is as much as a mile long at one location and several thousand feet over the rest of it. This distance should oxyginate the rain water as it travlels to my lake as well. Of course, this is all theory and in the end, I might end up with a fountain or oxygen tube. It's too early to tell.

Here are some pics from this morning.

The first pics shows my dirt pile on the edge of the dam.

Second pic shows my early progress at smoothing out the dirt.

Third pic shows the finished outside slope of the dam.

My goal is for it to look as natural as possible, or to not look like a dam at all. hahahaha Of course, that's impossible, but when the slope is covered in grass, it will blend in real nice. Or so I hope!!!

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

The pile was bigger than I realized, but after days and days of hauling dirt, I got er done!! Then after looking at the open space, I got to thinking that it would be nice if that area was a few feet lower. Maybe 4 feet at the tallest point. hahahahaha

First pictures is of the pile almost gone.

Second picture shows the nice, beautiful, open space that is left.

Third picture shows the new mound and Steph's son at the top of it. Give a kid a mound of dirt, and he's as happy as they get!!!!

Eddie

 

[scott_vt]

Pat,

I forgot to respond to your point about oxygen in the water. I don't have a good plan for that other than to see what happens and address it when it becomes a problem. From my experience with koi and goldfish ponds, you can tell when the water lacks oxygen by watching them come to the surface to get air. I don't know if this will happen here or not.

Eddie

Hi Eddie,
Up at Uncle Daves place we sliced a 55 gallon drum up the middle with torches and welded both halves in a wing pattern to a steel rod.We mounted the whole thing to an old telephone pole with pillow blocks. When the wind blows this thing spins around driving an air pump which we run black pvc tubing to the bottom of the pond to oxiginate the water for the fish. Of course his pond is much smaller than yours.

 

[EddieWalker]

Hey Scotty,

Thanks for the ideas on building my own windmill. It's definately something I need to consider if I have an oxygen issue.


I finished hauling the dirt pile out of the lake. It rained on me before I could finish, and dealing with the mud two days later made for some fun tractoring. Not!!!!! But it's done, so that's all that matters.

Now I'm waiting on the burn ban to be lifted and I'll burn the last of my wood and gargabe. What's left after that just becomes more structure for the fish.

The picture is of the area the dirt pile used to be.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

There is a 40 percent chance of rain tonight, 30 percent chance tomorrow and another 40 percent chance for Friday night and Saturday. The forecast seems to change every time I check it, but the overall theme seems to be that for the next ten days, it's probably gonna rain a few times.

My goal today is to get some seed down. It's warm enough out that I think Bermuda will work, so I have 50 punds of the good stuff. That means it's 98% pure hulled seed.

First thing I did was drag the ouside of the dam with my log drag.

The pictures are before and after shots of my dam. Rough from the dozer tracks and blade, then smooth from my drag.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

The log drag really is one of my favorite attachments. In just a few passes, it turns rough dirt into nice and smooth. It fills in low spots and knocks down high ones. All by just draging it behind the tractor!!!

The first picture shows it behind my 35hp Century tractor. It's an 8 foot length of Oak that's about 18 inches thick with some cyclone fence wrapped around it. The logs weight does most of the work. The dirt builds up in front of it and disapears into the low areas. Then the cyclone fence helps smooth it all out. The fence is actally about 12 feet long, but branches get into it and kink it all up. I used to mess with it, but quit when I realized it didn't really make any difference.

The second picture is a drag I made from two very large, very heavey fork lift forks. It's way too heavy for normal use and a real pain in the but any time I do use it. It's great for hard, dry soil that needs breaking down and smoothing out. That's what I'm doing in this picture. It's terrible in loose soil. My tractor doesn't have the power or traction to pull it under all situations. Hard and flat and it's amazing. Soft and loose and we don't move. I've had to point the tractor down hill on many occasions just to get it to move.

Eddie

 

[3RRL]

Eddie,
Looks like you getting a lot of work done lately. All that nice dirt work makes me jealous! That will look really nice all green.

I had a question about your Bermuda grass. When and how cold does it get at your place?
Reason I ask is out here we are going to over seed the fairways with Fescue for the Winter in 2 weeks. Our Bermuda starts going dormant shortly thereafter and putting down Bermuda seed now, sometimes it doesn't germinate. We tried that and got much better results doing it in April. Even then if it does, the small plants never did any good during our mild Winters. So we over seed with a cooler climate seed in the Fall and Bermuda late Spring.

 

[EddieWalker]

Hey Rob,

Our summer heat ended a few weeks ago and our daytime highs are in the mid to high 80's. Perfect for bermuda grass. The temps should stay like this until December. Then it could get cold any day. Might be the middle of the month, or even later.

Winter lasts about two months. Same as summer. It will get into the teens with daytime highs in the 50's on average.

The bermuda grass will stay green until the second or third freeze. Last year it was still green in January. I usualy plant rye grass right after holloween so it's green when the bermuda turns brown. Then when the rye grass dies off in spring, the bermuda is already growing.

I think I timed it perfectly getting the seed in right now. According to our Saturday morning plant guy on the radio, September is the perfect month for planting just about everything here in East Texas.

My big delima was weather to buy hulled or unhulled seed. Due to the drought and uncertain rain conditions, I chickened out and bought unhulled. The hulled will germinate faster, but if it sits too long, it will rot. Too risky at $4.25 a pound.

Eddie

 

[RobJ]

Eddie what other Texas do you live in? I think the TV guy said it was 82 this morning at 6:00am. Highs in the mid 90's. High yesterday was 93 if I recall. I was sitting outside at 6:45am with my daughter waiting for the bus watching sweat beads coming through my shirt. Earlier in the week we had those 60 degree morning and dry air, that was nice. Gonna get some more on Monday I hear, real good chance of rain on sat-sun. The elkhart place got 3.5" the other day.

As for Bermuda, when I researched it for the Elkhart place, I was told June was the best time to plant. It needs warm weather to get going and some water.

Here's hoping for some more rain!

 

[CharlieTR]

Eddie,
If you are interested in the windmill thing or building pumps you might want to check out O'Brock Windmills. Search on obrock windmills and there web site has a pdf catalog. In the back there are plans for Ram pumps, towers, windmills, etc. I have not ordered any but they seem fairly cheap $20 or less.

 

[scott_vt]

Afternoon Eddie,
Here is a pic of that contraption we built. You can see it in the distance off to the right, and we painted it patriotic red /white and blue I think its the marine in Uncle Dave http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/photos/53419d1144676277-just-another-saturday-vt-862072-vt1.jpg

By the way, the island with the flag is Gilligans Island Thought you might want to know

 

[EddieWalker]

Rob,

Guess your getting more heat than I am. It was in the 60's this morning and our high's are still in the low to mid 80's. No rain though. The forecast was as high as 70 percent for rain over the last three days, but nothing happened.

Good thing I bought that unhulled seed!!!


Charlie,

Thanks for the tip on the windmill site. They seem kind of pricey, but like most things, it costs about as much to make it yourself as it is to buy brand new. If I decide to go that route, I'll be sure to post it.


Scotty,

Thanks for the pic. Very nice!!!


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

 

[RobJ]

Eddie,

Sitting here Sunday night it is wonderful out now. We might hit the 50's tomorrow morning, I'm sure yall will. Yall didn't get any rain last night (Sat). That was a huge looking front last night, LOTS of noise but we only got 3/4". I was hoping ELkhart got some more.

Gonna be nice for another few days, then another front this weekend they say. Just in time for the bow season opener.

 

[Bird]

Eddie,

Sitting here Sunday night it is wonderful out now. We might hit the 50's tomorrow morning, I'm sure yall will. Yall didn't get any rain last night (Sat). That was a huge looking front last night, LOTS of noise but we only got 3/4". I was hoping ELkhart got some more.

Gonna be nice for another few days, then another front this weekend they say. Just in time for the bow season opener.

Yep, that front looked impressive yesterday morning, and according to the news reports, some of this area got an inch of rain. I got less than one-tenth of an inch. However, it was 58 this morning with 55 forecast for tomorrow morning, so that's great. The electric bill should start coming down.

 

[RobJ]

We only managed about 64 or so, still nice! Maybe lower tonight. But time to open the windows, I hate when it's warmer inside than out and running the AC to cool the house!!!

 

[meadowlarkponds]

Eddie,

4.3 vs 5 acres isn't that big of a deal and with 8 foot depths over most of it, you will have as large or larger volume of water than most 5 acre ponds.

I wouldn't call it a 4 acre pond, I'd call it just under 5 acres.

 

[Bird]

We only managed about 64 or so, still nice! Maybe lower tonight. But time to open the windows, I hate when it's warmer inside than out and running the AC to cool the house!!!

Our forecast was for 55, the "official" low at the airport was 49, but my own thermometer only got down to 56. And yes, it's nice to open windows again because it's not unusual for us to have the A/C running when it's cooler outside than inside.

 

[kubota7800]

How many years is it going to take to fill your pond?

 

[RobJ]

How many years is it going to take to fill your pond?

Depends on what it catched. This lake took 2 weeks earlier this year. Best guess if you count all the back up about 2 acres, maybe a little less. Pretty deep around the dam. That's an older D6 in the pictures.

 

[EddieWalker]

Still no rain, so if nothing changes, it could take years to fill. What you can't see from the pictures or this thread is that I've been changeing the lay of the land on my property. 300 feet above the shoreline is a road that crosses my land. It also acts as a funnel to catch more rain runoff and direct it to the lake. I've done this in other areas to get every acre of watershed that I can. I've looked at my maps and know for sure I have 40 acres of watershed, but it could be as much as 60 or more. There is lots of grey areas on my neighbors land that could go either way.

The last rain we had was 3/4 of an inch one day and 1/4 of an inch the next day. Every drop soaked into the ground. I need either a very heavy rain, or enough rain to saturate the ground so I can get some runoff.

Heavy rains are very common here, but we're into the second year of a very bad drought. A five inch rain can happen, and has plenty of times. If it does, I'd think it would half fill the lake. In theory, it could fill in a few weeks or just a few heavy storms.


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