mucking my pond

[daugen]

guys, as someone who has always wanted to put in a pond myself, I had no idea that digging it out totally was a repeated necessity.
The question is, how often. Does a liner help or is the natural bottom an "aid to digestion"? Assume a non spring fed pond one hundred by two hundred,
and only local grasses, not trees, any idea how much muck will accumulate each year?

this is really a fascinating discussion for someone who hasn't run a big excavator. My major concern is does one have to do this every ten years? fifty?
boy I think the muck would be nifty stuff in a garden.

 

[Verticaltrx]

Case245, heres a thought. In my area good topsoil is hard to find and most ponds around here fill in with topsoil. So when i clean one out for a customer i always ask if they want me to pile it up so they can sell it. Most dont want to but some do. Im not sure about your part of the country but here topsoil in a pile is selling from $4-16 a yard. Check around with some contractors and see if that might be an option for you. You might even make money off of your cleanout. The math i did earlier in this thread comes out to about $34k @ $4 per yd. Hope you find a suitable solution.

Using the muck/silt as top soil sounds like a good idea, but it's actually pretty infertile stuff. We had a pond cleaned out a few years ago and they piled all the 'soil' in the woods. It was a huge pile about as big as a two-story house. To this day, very little will grow on it, just a few weeds here and there. My theory is that the silt they dug out looks good, but is actually just comprised of tiny particles with no nutrients.

guys, as someone who has always wanted to put in a pond myself, I had no idea that digging it out totally was a repeated necessity.
The question is, how often. Does a liner help or is the natural bottom an "aid to digestion"? Assume a non spring fed pond one hundred by two hundred,
and only local grasses, not trees, any idea how much muck will accumulate each year? this is really a fascinating discussion for someone who hasn't run a big excavator. My major concern is does one have to do this every ten years? fifty? boy I think the muck would be nifty stuff in a garden.

The aforementioned pond was about 60yrs old and was never very deep to start with. It was 3/4 of an acre and had silted in to about 4' deep. They took it back down to 12' deep at the dam. Took an excavating contractor 2-3days with a large excavator and two dump trucks, for a cost of about $3500. The work was done in a time of drought and they trenched through the dam a few days prior to starting (very little water in the pond at the time.)

If you want a pond to not slit in there are a few things you can do when building it. First make it plenty deep, the last pond we built was about 26' deep at the dam. Second, there should be plenty of grassed area surrounding the entire pond. Thirdly, the water coming into the pond will be best if it's from springs, second best from a stream going through a 'riparian area' which is basically a grassy swamp area by my definition. If you have any more questions on ponds just ask, we have 7 ponds on our farms ranging from 1/2ac to a few acres.

 

[Xfaxman]

I'm right in the middle of that as well I feel for ya !!!!!

I've been digging a ditch to drain this continuously but have been pumping it with a trash pump! It rained and this is the result !!! I feel I'm back to square 1 again !!!

The main reason I decided to do mine myself, was the 4" steel drain pipe that was put in the creek and the dam built over the pipe.

Right click each picture to open in a new tab or window.


These were taken about 9 months after I started removing silt, moving 4.5 cubic yards at a time, working on it as conditions and other obligations permitted.

I picked up a rate sheet from an equipment place the other day and was surprised to see I could rent a 47,000lb excavator with a 42" bucket for $1600 a week. Fuel would probably run you another $1,000 plus whatever other charges there are (delivery, insurance etc).

The question is "how many weeks"? My bucket was 7.5 feet wide and held 1.25 cubic yards.

Says it has 32 feet of reach. Given the dimensions of the pond you listed you could possibly do one pass down the middle moving dirt to each side as far as you can reach (lets say 40 foot or so swath since you have to pile) then a pass down each side moving the dirt up out of the pond. All assuming of course it is in a fairly open/flat area with no access issues and the dirt can be put to each side and dealt with later. Never having operated a big excavator maybe someone else can chime in on how realistic a plan that is. Biggest problem I see is the pass down the middle would probably be really mucky. Got trees you could use to make a mat as you go like they did in the TV show Swamp Loggers?

Dirt is not the correct word, think "pudding"

guys, as someone who has always wanted to put in a pond myself, I had no idea that digging it out totally was a repeated necessity.
The question is, how often. Does a liner help or is the natural bottom an "aid to digestion"? Assume a non spring fed pond one hundred by two hundred,
and only local grasses, not trees, any idea how much muck will accumulate each year?

this is really a fascinating discussion for someone who hasn't run a big excavator. My major concern is does one have to do this every ten years? fifty?
boy I think the muck would be nifty stuff in a garden.

It took 38 years to build up to five feet in my pond. NRCS said it's drainage area was 958 acres.

The spillway was dug out 9/20/2009, to drain the pond.


10/29/2009 and 10/30/2009


May and June 2010

 

[pjbci]

Using the muck/silt as top soil sounds like a good idea, but it's actually pretty infertile stuff. We had a pond cleaned out a few years ago and they piled all the 'soil' in the woods. It was a huge pile about as big as a two-story house. To this day, very little will grow on it, just a few weeds here and there. My theory is that the silt they dug out looks good, but is actually just comprised of tiny particles with no nutrients..

Thats kind of a plus if you ask me, people complain when i deliver topsoil thats come from a pasture or feild that is full of weed and grass seeds even though i tell them its going to have seeds in it. They will usually gladly pay a premium price for pond cleanout material, or topsiol out of a wooded area if you tell them what it is. Like I said, ask a few local contractors or lanscapers to see what its worth.

 

[charlz]

Yeah I don't know that it is infertile so much as simply sterile with no seed load. Here it is mostly organics, old leaves etc that end up in my pond, I would think it would be pretty good stuff but have never tried it.

 

[rd_macgregor]

There are a lot of variables at work. First off, there is almost always a bit of sloughing of the sides of a pond, just from wave action. More important is incoming sediment. If the pond is spring-fed, then keeping vegetation (grass) cover around the pond will minimize sediment movement. If the pond has surface water flowing into it, then how well vegetated the drainage basin is becomes critical. Extensive, fall-tilled fields upstream from your pond can shorten its life to a few years, whereas permanent pasture or forest land is much less likely to silt up the pond appreciably...you'd likely get decades out of it.
In some ponds, organic matter buildup can be significant. In the example I gave above with a wooded watershed, there might be leaves and small woody debris washing downstream into the pond. If there is significant fertility in the water, you might also get algal blooms (or other water plants) that can totally cover the water surface. In addition to killing fish when this stuff decays, it can build up a pretty thick mucky/organic layer...but I doubt it would fill in a pond in less than a couple of decades (unless it was really shallow to start with).
My pond is nearly totally silted in, but, even if the cost of restoration wasn't prohibitive, the environmental permitting/management restraints are outrageous(since the pond is in a stream course, rather than a dug-out).
BOB

 

[case245]

my dam has steep sides use a 40ft reach shovel the thing 400ft long x 150ft wide I wish this was simple its red clay if that helps its feed by 2 springs @ daugen its wasn't cleaned out since build almost 30 years ago