mucking my pond

[case245]

I want to or try to muck my pond with my 7040 the muck is 4 feet deep or maybe more I took a truck load out in an hour an a half in the swallow part bout 2 feet deep the big part is 400 feet long and 150 ft wide I cant afford to rent a large dozer or shovel

 

[daugen]

how deep is the water in the deep end over the thicker muck?

wonder if there would be a way to pull a drag bucket of some sort from one side to the other. Or an old broken snow plow
bent into a scoop and then dragged... Just drive a long line around the end of the pond and pull from the other side.
likely a dumb idea

 

[pjbci]

I hope somebody has a good solution here for this. I did the math on it and came up with 635, 14yd truckloads. Thats an almost impossible task with the time it took for one load. I have a pond roughly half this size that has muck about the same depth as yours. I plan to pull it out with my tractor and dirtpan when it dries enough to work. Like i said, i hope somebody has a good idea here because maybe it will save me some time also. Good luck with your project.

 

[case245]

12 feet deep how would you keep it straight and drag with what a 8500ib tractor wont do it

 

[case245]

it might be more then 4 ft of muck the ponds been there 29 years it was 16 feet deep now its 8 12 ft deep max the Kubota wont hold up to that kind of abuse its red sand and clay

 

[BleedingOrange]

Would dynomite work ? LOL It would make for some great video.

 

[dave1949]

Can you pump it down with a trash pump or open up the outlet/overflow to drain the pond? Hard to make suggestions without pics.

 

[DKCDKC]

I'm facing digging out a silted up, three-quarter acrea pond on a healthy stream. Those around here who have done it advise just draining the pond and letting it dry, then hiring a contractor for a day to dig it out. My CUT just isn't up to that kind of work. Fortunately my pond has a drain - if I can find it in the mud. Some neighbors just rented a trash pump for a while and drained theirs that way. I'm going to pile the material in a large pile next to the pond - as I did when I built the pond. I then nibble away at the pile for fill for various projects - I always need fill. Only negative is that draining the pond will kill the last of the fish there - but the herons have got most of them in the shallow water anyway.

 

[muddstopper]

The easiest way is going to be to drain the pond first. If you have access to a drag line, then greatl, but the mud you stirup with the dragline will kill the fish anyways. Once the pond is drained, let it dry out for a few days before starting work. Start at the shallow end and scoop the mud down to hard earth. My pond is on bedrock so once dug back down to bedrock, I can put a truck in the pond area to load and hual if I have to. I suspect somewhere the bottom of your pond should be pretty firm as well. I would open one single trench from shallow end to the drain, thru the middle of the pond before working toward each side. This will facilitate water drainage out of the rest of the muck. Expect water to build up as you dig, at least until you get your trench dug from one end to the other where the drain is. Might want to keep a check on grease in the wheel bearings if you get water levels that high.

 

[jinman]

Here is a small dry pond.


Here is my tractor searching for the bottom of this "dry" pond.



Here is the track loader I hired and the true depth of the muck.




Don't ever think that mucking a pond is a trivial matter. If you can't afford the right equipment, can you afford to have your tractor stuck in the bottom of the pond with a big rainstorm on the way? Just a thought. . . Good luck and be careful.