-Streamin
I work with a guy here who has a pond in Lynden NY, and he has had major problems keeping water in it. Not enough clay in his area. But that does not mean your property is the same...
I wanted to go 20 feet as well, but hit glacial till at ~12 feet. and it slowed my digging process down quite a bit, so only went into that 2-3 ft because it was costing me a fortune in fuel.
Yes, the total water surface area when full will be 1.5 acres. That is both ponds combined. The one with the island is just over 1 acre.
Digging a steep slope with the excavator was not a problem. Spreading the clay on a steep slope with my bulldozer was. The sandy loam is such loose dirt, any steeper an angle and the dozer would spin it's tracks and not climb the bank. I almost lost the dozer in the water one time because of this. That scared me enough to abandoned the 3:1 slope and go to 3.5:1 or 4:1 in some areas.
As far as how long it took me? Well, I have owned the property for 5 years now, and the pond digging took me 3 years. First year all I had was the dozer, that didn't work out due to the soft clay when I got deeper. The next year I bought the excavator, finished digging the small pond, and 1/2 the large one. Summer 2008 I finished digging the large pond, and spreading the clay on the banks of both ponds. There is still a chance the clay lining will not hold water properly as I could not get a sheepsfoot roller on it to pack it in, so I'm crossing my fingers. Due to a combination of only packing it with the dozer tracks, and heavy rain, some of the clay lining sunk into the pond, in 2 areas, so might have to fix that this summer.
As far as cost. Well, I have $80,000 tied up into my Backhoe, Dozer, Excavator & Dump Truck. I'd say in the last 5 years I have spent another $5000-$6000 on maintenance & repair. And the Diesel fuel bill for the property since starting the ponds is $12,000.
However, those prices also include using the equipment to log 10 acres of large trees, and putting in 400 ft of my driveway, amongst many other tasks. I sold about $8000 worth of firewood to help offset fuel costs.
As far as hours spent moving earth, I would have to guess about 9 weeks worth of vacation time digging dumping, piling & pushing dirt. At about 10 hours per day on average. So lets say 600 man hours. Most of the time I had my dad helping, but honestly, I would have to wait for him to get back with the dump truck to continue digging with the excavator, I really needed 2 dump trucks & drivers. If I had hired an experienced crew, I'm sure they could have had it done in 2 weeks, maybe 4 guys. An excavator, dozer and 2 dump trucks. So roughly 200 man hours. Basically 1/3 the time due to their efficiency. All in all, to pay for the pond to get done, it would have cost me roughly $20,000. However, understand I would have had to pay for 10 acres of land to be cleared & logged first. The forest is worthless to loggers, I had a forester come in and look, so getting a logging crew in and making money off the trees was not an option.
I know my bother asked about getting a 1 acre pond excavated, and the cost was $6000 for fuel alone, plus the labor. Excavated ponds on a flat lot are the most costly... And that was like 4 years ago, before fuel prices went crazy.
I did not buy the equipment just for the ponds. And if I had to pay crews to do all the work I have done in the last 5 years... Well, I would have never been able to afford that.
I estimate I have logged 2000 trees. At least 500 stumps that weigh in excess of 10,000 lbs, some of them 20,000 lbs +. I have tons of silver maple trees, and they have huge root balls that won't let the dirt go...
-Eddie
All the equipment stays outside in the weather. Nothing else I can do at this point in time. The plan is to build my carriage house this summer, and then a 40 x 60 barn the following year. Then I will finally have a place to work on this equipment. That "small truck" is a Ford F8000 tandem dump truck.
As far as the bridge, I did not finish. Most likely, I will just span the pillars with 4 steel I-beams, and cover them up with treated wood to make it look mainly just like a dock.