Redigging a pond.

[KENB]

We have an old pond (small tank) that has sediment built up over the years. I think it used to be about 6-8' deep, but now only about 3'-4' deep. Some places even shallower. I am draining it and it is almost all drained at this point. My question is, how long will it take to dry out if it doesn't rain too much. I have been told that old ponds will never dry out, but I don't know if that is true. Seems like given enough time, it would dry out eventually. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this? During the months of June-August, I have seen times where we got nearly zip in rainfall. I was hoping that during times like that, it would dry out enough for me to dig it out some with either a dozer or maybe even my Mahindra 4110 FEL. I was thinking I could do this myself since I would not be starting from scratch. I guy quoted me about $10K to do the job with his dozer, and I thought that was high priced. Anyway, do you think it will dry up in a reasonable amount of time??

 

[SPIKER]

Not sure where you are, but yes 10K sounds very HIGH unless he is going to inlarge it to 3~4 acres! around here a NEW pond of 1 acrea is about 5~8K and cleanouts can be about 1/2 as much if there is lots of mud. rent a 20~40' track hoe and do it or rent a dozer. don't try the tractor & fell unless you enjoy getting stuck, see the dozer pictures up one post!

Mark M /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[Taylortractornut]

The only way Id redig it with a tractor is to make slab mats out of timbers slabs or left overs. youd have to lay one down after it was assembeld and dig out over the edge of it and then omove the mat up abit.after a few yards youd have to lay a new mat behind or infron of the first one and keep going till across. Id hire a long or medium reac h hoe. I dont recomend doing it yourself as Ive had to go unstick some good sized hoes for the rental companies here. A good operator can take 3 logs and mat with them and go out a ways into the pond to dig it out. The last excavator i went to get was a home owner rented a 312 Cat from United and got it down in a pond they had seen me run the same machine in a pond with the logs to go out and dredge from the middle out. Another thing is an experience operator can tell when he is on the bottom Ive seen new operators dig past the clay when opening a pond and cause seepage.

 

[EddieWalker]

I'm not sure were Centerville is, but I'm in Tyler and did what you're doing last year.

My pond was so full of sediment it was creating islands of it and just looked aweful. The pond is about 2/3 of an acre.

I rented a pump and ran it for three days to drain. I also dug trenches with a shovel to get all the water I could to the lowest spot to pump out.

It took another month of sitting to dry enough for the clay bottom to start cracking.

I have a Ford/New Holland 555E backhoe. I also have more time than money and thought it would be a fairly simple task to dig it out.

The first ramp I made into the pond ended in quicksand. The silt was bottomless and I just sank. I'm not a great operator, and it takes awhile to get unstuck. I also get scared picking up the backhoe and moving it around, so I go real slow getting unstuck.

I ended up building a big ramp in with a solid footing and just started working my way in. This was the hardest part, because I had to get down to solid ground under the silt. Some places were 4 feet deep of silt.

Once I had a place to manuver, then it got allot easier. Just load and haul. I spent a solid month working on it.

Now it's refilling and I just replanted bermuda seed yesterday around it.

 

[Lazy]

Hi
I sure would like to see some pics. I have a small lake or pond depending on who you are talking too. I need to do something to raise the water level. I think there might be a leak. if it was full it would be just over an acre.

Charlie

 

[theboman]

Sounds like it's time to rent an excavtor.... What a weekend project of digging the crud out.... The following weekend using your stuffies to landscape with all this new gooy stuff that'll be great to add to gardens, etc..

 

[Bird]

Ken, I don't know how big that pond is, but the price sounds to me at least 5 times what I would expect. My brother had a pond that was about 8 feet deep. It was in a location that we coud siphon most of the water out, over a period of several days of course, then he used my little Homelite pump to finish pumping it out. Next he rented a dozer for the weekend to make the pond a little deeper and to enlarge it by going around a couple of big trees to have an island. I think in two days we put about 12 hours on the dozer, but after the first two or three feet the ground was so hard that the only way the dozer blade could break it up and move it was to tilt it so he was digging with one corner of the blade. So the job didn't turn out nearly as well as he had hoped. So a couple of weeks later, he hired a professional with a dozer that had ripper teeth hinged to the back of the blade. That guy knew what he was doing, and when he backed up, those ripper teeth tore up the ground, then as he went forward, they swung back behind the blade and just drug along. In 10 hours at $60 an hour, he made that pond about 14-15' deep, went on around the island, etc. So altogether the job didn't cost my brother but about $1,000.

 

[jinman]

Ken, I think your ideal time for cleaning out your pond has already passed. The wet season is here, so my guess is that it may be late June or July for ideal condions, even with the draining. All that silt can trap a lot of moisture. My ponds dried up and had cracks in them 3" wide, but I couldn't even drive a little Ford Jubilee over it without sinking into the muck.

Anyhow, as Bird said, you can get a dozer in there for $60/hr and it won't take long. If the operator can get a nice straight back-and-forth push, he'll be done in a day.