OP
jinman
Rest in Peace
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2001
- Messages
- 20,387
- Location
- Texas - Wise County - Sunset
- Tractor
- NHTC45D, NH LB75B, Ford Jubilee
Mike: The spillway looks muddy, but I drove the Mule across it and up the hillside yesterday while taking these pictures. It was pretty darn muddy, but I made it up just fine. It only takes a couple of days of sunshine for the overflow swale to dry up. With a week's worth of clear days, you can drive anything across it. I do need to get some grass going though. It would keep the mud from sticking to my tires.
Bird: Those are actually van tracks instead of pickup tracks. Earlier in the day, Kathy and I had been driving her van. We decided to drive down to check the overflow. It was a little soft, but nothing serious. I don't think we spun at all while turning around or driving across the dam as you can see in the 4th photo. Considering that we got an inch of rain on Saturday, I'd say the drainage is pretty good and the dam is solid. That little bit of gravel also helps tremendously.
Eddie: You can bet that I am thrilled to have this pond full. It has taken a year for it to fill up. I was afraid it would leak, but it held water like a Mason jar with the lid on it. Now I need to get some grass down and I'll probably mix in some Bermuda since everyone tells me it does pretty well. I would have never attempted it, but your post about your lake has made me determined to give it a try. You are right about the snakes though. We do have lots of little water snakes and a few cottonmouths. You can't eliminate them, so you just have to be aware and stay alert.
Dirtworksequip: Thanks for taking the time to draw such a detailed response to my post. You are absolutely right that during the time the pond was completely dry would have been a perfect time to install an overflow system. I did consider it in my plan, but after looking at the history of this pond in the 15 years I have owned the property, I decided a wide swale overflow would work just fine. Here are my main reasons:
1. We are in a semi-arid area of NW Texas. Just 50 miles to the north you will find areas where even mesquite has to struggle to establish itself. Our total rainfall is primarily in the spring, and is followed by four months of hot and dry. We don't experience large rainfall events greater than two or three inches very often. Most of the time, it's a challenge to keep sufficient water in a pond to keep fish alive. Overflow normally only happens once or twice in a 12 month period. Because of that, the native grass in the swale between my ponds has grown in and is sufficient to almost completely eliminate erosion. Right now there is very little grass, but it will be back soon when I seed in the overflow area. I used to have a culvert pipe installed in this area, but I made the decision to take it out because it wasn't performing any useful function. In the first picture posted as an attachment, you can see the area between the ponds has a green tint. That's the grass that never washed out.
2. By far, the most severe erosion problem leading to silt in the second pond is a deep gully along a hillside leading into the pond (visible on the right in the second attachment). The hillside between the ponds belongs to me, but the area of the gully is just over the property line on someone else's property. My property is the part at the top of the second photo with all the deep gullys that "want" to become ponds. The neighbor's property line just skirts the right edge of the second pond. In a heavy rain, silt does come down this gully, but even that is limited by vegetation that has established itself.
So, for now I decided that there were other things I needed more than a controlled overflow into that second pond. I have a larger project with multilevel ponds and overflows at the top of the second photo. I hope to eventually collect the water that made all those gullys into a nice lake. Then, I'll be able to release just what is needed to keep my fish alive in the ponds between dry spells. At least that's my plan for now.
Bird: Those are actually van tracks instead of pickup tracks. Earlier in the day, Kathy and I had been driving her van. We decided to drive down to check the overflow. It was a little soft, but nothing serious. I don't think we spun at all while turning around or driving across the dam as you can see in the 4th photo. Considering that we got an inch of rain on Saturday, I'd say the drainage is pretty good and the dam is solid. That little bit of gravel also helps tremendously.
Eddie: You can bet that I am thrilled to have this pond full. It has taken a year for it to fill up. I was afraid it would leak, but it held water like a Mason jar with the lid on it. Now I need to get some grass down and I'll probably mix in some Bermuda since everyone tells me it does pretty well. I would have never attempted it, but your post about your lake has made me determined to give it a try. You are right about the snakes though. We do have lots of little water snakes and a few cottonmouths. You can't eliminate them, so you just have to be aware and stay alert.
Dirtworksequip: Thanks for taking the time to draw such a detailed response to my post. You are absolutely right that during the time the pond was completely dry would have been a perfect time to install an overflow system. I did consider it in my plan, but after looking at the history of this pond in the 15 years I have owned the property, I decided a wide swale overflow would work just fine. Here are my main reasons:
1. We are in a semi-arid area of NW Texas. Just 50 miles to the north you will find areas where even mesquite has to struggle to establish itself. Our total rainfall is primarily in the spring, and is followed by four months of hot and dry. We don't experience large rainfall events greater than two or three inches very often. Most of the time, it's a challenge to keep sufficient water in a pond to keep fish alive. Overflow normally only happens once or twice in a 12 month period. Because of that, the native grass in the swale between my ponds has grown in and is sufficient to almost completely eliminate erosion. Right now there is very little grass, but it will be back soon when I seed in the overflow area. I used to have a culvert pipe installed in this area, but I made the decision to take it out because it wasn't performing any useful function. In the first picture posted as an attachment, you can see the area between the ponds has a green tint. That's the grass that never washed out.
2. By far, the most severe erosion problem leading to silt in the second pond is a deep gully along a hillside leading into the pond (visible on the right in the second attachment). The hillside between the ponds belongs to me, but the area of the gully is just over the property line on someone else's property. My property is the part at the top of the second photo with all the deep gullys that "want" to become ponds. The neighbor's property line just skirts the right edge of the second pond. In a heavy rain, silt does come down this gully, but even that is limited by vegetation that has established itself.
So, for now I decided that there were other things I needed more than a controlled overflow into that second pond. I have a larger project with multilevel ponds and overflows at the top of the second photo. I hope to eventually collect the water that made all those gullys into a nice lake. Then, I'll be able to release just what is needed to keep my fish alive in the ponds between dry spells. At least that's my plan for now.
However, when I step back and look at what it was when I bought it and what it is now, I can find real motivation to continue.
