Digging a pond.

PineRidge · Jul 18, 2006

If your pond is going to be of any size you will be moving massive amounts of soil. It can be done if you have lots of time on your hands.

My neighbor rented a large dozer for 30 days to make his pond. The pond turned out great, and it's large enough that he has a jet ski.

Timber · Jul 18, 2006

Ponds are a great project. There are several ways to do them. My Dads pond had a small river running by it and a low water table so he had kind of a swampy area. We dug out the pond and diverted the river through it and made a set of locks on the other end to control the level and to let the top skim off. He has an old Dynahoe that made shot work of it. I have built smaller ponds with liners for Coi fish, more water gardens then ponds. Filters and pumps are important to keep them clean and there are a lot of options depending on what you do. When it comes to ponds this is what I tell people
1) The pond as a whole is the life form. The fish,plants,water,bactera,bugs are the cells of the body. You are building an eaco system and is subject to the seasons. Algey blooms in the spring, over population by the fall. Never the less they are about the most peaceful thing you can add to your property.

dirtworksequip · Jul 18, 2006

MarkV gives good advice. Till the area you are working in. It makes digging the dirt with the FEL 10 times easier and you will put less stress on your loader. Go straight into what you are digging.Don't try to dig with just one side or corner of your bucket. You will twist your bucket or damage your loader frame. Have fun!

npaden · Jul 18, 2006

A couple things I thought about since I posted yesterday.

1) Make the pond a little bigger. You can buy a 30'x50' pond liner for around $1,000 and that would make a nice sized pond. That would make a 20' X 40' pond once you factor in the amount of extra liner you need to go down the sides and overlap the top.

2) You are going to have some serious ups and downs going in and out of the pond with the tractor. The smaller the pond the more this is a factor. My pond is only 3' deep but it was a wild ride in and out of the pond digging those last few buckets. You might want to make a more gentle slope or at least you need to have a ramp on one side to get in and out of the hole. On my pond one side is sloped gradually and the other sides have a steeper slope. I also dug a plant ledge on one side to grow plants in.

There are lots of other ideas you could consider. Check out www.pondboss.com there are lots of good ideas there.

Greenhouseray · Jul 18, 2006

Thanks everyone for your replies. Much appreciated.
Of course I can use the tiller. The most obvious stares me in the face but I don't see it. I guess thats the best part of these discussion forums. Thanks Mark for helping me to see.
Went down to register for Medicare today. Maybe age has somthing to do with it.
Greenhouseray

Renze · Jul 19, 2006

What generally works best on hard soil is to lift the front wheels of the ground and vary the digging depth with the bucket tip/tilt only. Especially when you have only 2wd.
With 4wd it still works best this way in hard soil, in loose soil it works best to tilt the bucket down forward and use the lifting during scooping to get weight (and traction) on the front wheels.

Saturday i levelled a truckload of ground asphalt, trucked in by a friend of my brother who works on major roadways. this stuff is so heavy that, when pushing the bucket into the pile, it pushes the loader down, and the oil through my safety valves, against the pump flow...

Just scrape off layers of about 3 to 5 inch at a time, this will reduce the required tear out force.

3RRL · Jul 20, 2006

Ray,
A couple of things I've learned from TBN when using the FEL to dig a large area. Don't try to dig too deep when taking a cut. Ever had a buddy give you a hair cut? You end up with a bunch of "gouges" and will have to ry to flatten them out while you're driving in there. Once you get them, I found it REAL hard to get everything flat again with the FEL because you're constanly diving over a hump or ditch and that repositions the bucket relative to the cut you want to make. I now try to take a 2" or 3" (maybe 4") cut and drive forward until I get a bucket full. That works good for me on larger surfaces.

Another thing, if you can swing it, definitely buy a boxblade with scarifiers. You'll more than likely find a million more uses for it anyway. Loosening the soil is always better. I drag the boxblade down behind when "scraping" with the FEL...so I get 2 buckets full... moving alot more dirt per pass. Plus the boxblade tends to level somewhat the dipsy doos left by the FEL. May sound dumb but it works for me.