My house, barn and pond project

[rexcramer]

Yeah Eddie when the pics go small just click on them again and they get big again. I have no idea why it does it that way.

I thought you might like that 1150 since its the little brother to your dozer. Your post "Creating a Lake" inspired me to keep a lot pics of my project, since I learned so much from your pictures and description.

Because of certain government agencies I had to move all the sand with my equipment instead of just digging the pond first like a person normally would. So by August I had moved about 1500-2000 yards of sand myself with just a dozer, backhoe, and 5 yard dump truck.

Finally in August I got the last permit I needed and the friend that loaned me the dozer came in and dug out my pond with his 320C Caterpillar excavator. Its not really a huge excavator for pond digging but it dig a fine job.

Here are some pics of what the pond was like after just pushing sand out with the dozer. Some are after recent rains and it became pretty sloppy

 

[rexcramer]

Here is Sam riding in the dozer. He loves riding in the backhoe the most, where he just looks out and watches the tires go round and round.

 

[rexcramer]

Once we got the excavator out there I had sand coming out of my ears, and eventually, clay. My property has about 6 feet of sand and then pure clay as far down as we could dig.

I thought we would hit another layer of something else but nothing but endless clay. I had to get rid of it somewhere wo I used it for driveway and landscaping base and then put sand and dirt on top. It is almost like cement when dry, but really messy and slick when wet.

We didnt start digging the pond until October, which caused a few problems with my deer hunting.

Chopper (my buddy) started by excavating an area bigger than the 150x120 size of of the pond to a depth of about five feet, and windrowed all the sand to the side. This way he could windrow the next piles of sand to the edge of the pond and keep it separate from the clay. The entire time he was digging I was hauling dirt with the dump truck also to help give him room to work.

 

[EddieWalker]

Your post "Creating a Lake" inspired me to keep a lot pics of my project, since I learned so much from your pictures and description.

Rex,

Thank you for the kind words. It's nice to hear that my obsession and compulsive picture taking wasn't too much!!! I actually took thousands of pics of the project and have been working on getting them in order. Steph took hundreds of pics too, plus others took pics that they sent me that makes it hard for me to organize them. To top it off, I didn't spell the name of the lake right for awhile and that got things all out of wack too!! (Thanks again Bird for the help)

Your project is a scrap bookers dream. I think that the more pics you take and post here, the easier it will be to go back and follow what actually happened. The best thing about TBN is the advice and suggestions you will get from others that you never thought of yourself. The next best thing is having it all documented on a permanent basis. I've gone back to look up threads from years ago that I posted just to see what I did and why I did it. I read some of my old posts and have no idea what I was thinking, or that I was capable of those ideas. It's truly amazing sometimes.

The pics are opening for me like you said. Thanks.

Eddie

 

[rexcramer]

Yeah I go back and look at my pics now, and even though they are only from last summer and spring, its almost impossible to envision my house being this forest and mudhole instead of a house. 20 years from now it will be even more hard to imagine, so I am glad I have the pictures now.

 

[rexcramer]

Well getting back to the pond, here's a not so good pic I took as he was digging deeper. After opening the whole pond area he has gone along the back side of the pond and dug as deep as he could. On the back side of the pond there wasn't much room for sand so dug along the back real steep and then did all the rest of the digging from the front and kept windrowing the dirt and clay forward.

Notice the huge chunks of pure clay. For those of you planning to dig a pond with a backhoe, you will never get through this stuff with a backhoe, you need a 25 ton excavator to get through this junk.

 

[rexcramer]

This is when he was done digging. On the third day he brought in a 850G dozer and had another guy spend all day going up and down the pond, pushing clay up and at the same time packing clay down with the dozer tracks. This worked very well, as at this time my pond is only about 12 feet deep but we have had some heavy rains and the pond sides have retained their shape very well with almost no collapsing.

I stuck a 16' 2x4 in the middle of the pond for perspective and thought I had a picture of it but I guess I don't. You will see it in the last pond pic of what it looks like now, with only about 4 feet of it sticking up.


The first couple are from the bottom of the pond looking up. The final size of the pond is about a half acre and the deepest hole is 25'

 

[Dirtnut]

here is what u need.

 

[rexcramer]

here is what u need.

Now that is a pond digging machine. Is that a five yard bucket?

 

[Dirtnut]

not sure of yards. but from cab scale 20+ ton in one scoop depending on material. have to guess 12-14 yrd.