mucking my pond

case245 · Jun 3, 2013

jinman may I ask how much did that run to get a dozer in there to clean it out and how big is your pond

Depmandog · Jun 3, 2013

Jinman, how long had your pond been dry? I suspect a guy could drain his pond in the early spring (even cutting open the dam), and still find muck / mud under a dry crust in late fall.

OP, you have a huge project in front of you. Please bring in the right equipment, such as a wide tracked excavator sitting on swamp mats as a suggestion.

pjbci · Jun 3, 2013

When i clean out an old pond for a customer i usually drain one year then go to work the next summer and its almost always still difficult to work in spots with a wide track dozer.

jinman · Jun 4, 2013

case245: My pond is about 125' x 200' because it has a little peninsula sticking into it on one side. It was built in 1941 as a fish breeding pond for the soil conservation lake we have. It had silted in for 65 years before starting. The dozer I hired was essentially $1000 per day. He was here for 2-1/2 days and my bill was $2425. I wasn't really happy with the work because the young operator had never done a pond before and I had to tell him how to get started. His boss didn't show up until about noon on the first day and never returned after that. With track loader, you can dig fine, but the muck wants to stick in the bucket. He spent probably 1/4 of his time cleaning out the bucket. I also had a place for spoils immediately outside of the pond. I think a dozer would have been better because you could start at the edge and work across with straight pushes. That's what another dozer operator with lots of pond experience had suggested. Anyhow, after 2-1/2 days, the job was still rough and unfinished, but the operator had to go to a contract job building pads in the oil/gas fields where they were contracted. I did a tremendous amount of work by myself on the banks and dam (my avatar is from that). My tractor did a lot of work, but the muck was out of the pond and there was no danger of being stuck; just long hours of hauling load after load up and out. In the end, I am very satisfied with the result.

Dean: That pond had been bone dry for six months. It was so dry on top that I could easily drive my nearly 6000 lb tractor across the surface. However, down 18" and the "pie crust" turned to filling. The more muck there is in a pond, the worse this situation is because the crusting surface will prevent evaporation and all that water will be sitting in the muck. I don't think it would have completely dried up in two years. That's about how long it took for all the spoils to dry after they were piled about 10' high.

pjbci: That's exactly why they used to use draglines for ponds. However, draglines are now rare. These days an excavator with a long reach arm is preferred. If I ever redo my job, I'll get it done with an excavator, but I'll have to build a better access road because big equipment requires lots of room to maneuver.

case245 · Jun 4, 2013

i wouldn't let a youg guy start to dig if he showed up I grow up on a cat 943b if I could get my hands on one I could do it myself just got to to watch you don't start to sink if you do you need to put trees under the tracks

case245 · Jun 4, 2013

my ponds 400ft by 160 wide that 943b dig it took 2 years when my paps was not working

pjbci · Jun 4, 2013

Heres a couple of pics of muck in a pond that was allowed over a year to dry. Notice the left side of tractor is on good firm soil and the right is out of sight. It was just a small damp spot that we had run back and forth over all day pulling out a layer at a time. Then this happened. Two bulldozers, a backhoe, numerous broken chains and half a day later we got back to work.