Dam Failure - Any Suggestions?

[justinramani]

Good Afternoon,

As the title says - our dam is almost completely compromised. Its holding back about a 1 acre pond that is an average of 5-6 feed deep. The dam was installed before we purchased the property and it just couldnt handle all of the rain that we have had recently in NC. My wife and I dont really care for the pond, so my first idea is to drain the pond, grade down the dam and just install a culvert to deal with the spring that feeds the pond. As you can see from the picture its a pretty large washout that we are dealing with. Does anyone have any ideas that might help us get out of this situation? If the dam completely fails its going to wash out the only road that allows us access to our house.

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[AchingBack]

Quickly find a family of homeless beavers.

 

[Snobdds]

Go get some bentonite and patch that spill up. Then figure out a long term plan.

 

[dmccarty]

.... As you can see from the picture its a pretty large washout that we are dealing with. Does anyone have any ideas that might help us get out of this situation? If the dam completely fails its going to wash out the only road that allows us access to our house.

Thanks in advance!!!

Sounds like you need to drain the pond to get rid of at least some of the water to protect the dam and thus the road. You might have to rent a decent size pump and hoses to move the water out of the pond. I am not talking about some little itty bit pump, though that might work, but a pump on a trailer from a rental yard to get this done ASAP. The Corp of Engineers had to do this on a local lake where there was a drainage issue. They had to draw down the water on a part of the late where I think the drainage had clogged up and then build a new drainage.

Given that amount of rain we have had recently, and what we might get tonight, good luck!

Later,
Dan

 

[justinramani]

I just tried to locate a trailer mounted pump, but the closest I can find is over 60 miles away. Do yall think that the 4inch trash pump would work?

 

[newbury]

Good Afternoon,

As the title says - our dam is almost completely compromised. Its holding back about a 1 acre pond that is an average of 5-6 feed deep. The dam was installed before we purchased the property and it just couldnt handle all of the rain that we have had recently in NC. My wife and I dont really care for the pond, so my first idea is to drain the pond, grade down the dam and just install a culvert to deal with the spring that feeds the pond. As you can see from the picture its a pretty large washout that we are dealing with. Does anyone have any ideas that might help us get out of this situation? If the dam completely fails its going to wash out the only road that allows us access to our house.

Thanks in advance!!!

View attachment 483013

I'd cut a bigger hole in the dam to let it drain more before it failed catastrophically and washed out the road.

 

[Streetcar]

Start the 4" pump as soon as you can run it until pond is dry

Do not breach the dam as it will be hard to control the flow through the breach

 

[justinramani]

I thought about that. I'll go out tomorrow and dig out a trench for overflow. We wanted to let things settle down a little before we did that. Our neighbor upstream plugged his pond overflow, which is helping a little.

 

[Rustyiron]

If that's your road the water is running over, who ever built it did not put in (or size) the overflow properly. With a pond (and water) you need a plan "B" to handle too much flow for plan "A", your pipe.
Water should never flow over the berm/dam.

 

[oosik]

Doesn't your pond have an overflow? In any case a 4" trash pump at approximately 24K gallons/hour will take 65-70 hours of continuous pumping to completely drain your pond.

I'd be very careful about any type of overflow trench. Chances are the water will erode the trench and you might end up with a big gulley. Might be better to get some 6" plastic pipe & elbows and make a siphon over the dam. This will drain the pond without the chance of washing out the road.