speaking of water and lakes ...

daTeacha · Nov 13, 2006

You have a large irregularly shaped pond of indeterminate and variable depth on your property. You need to treat it with Copper Sulfate to control algae, but the local EPA is very strict about the application rate. You need to find the volume of your pond. How can you do so simply?

Filling it in with your loader and counting the number of buckets of gravel it takes is cheating!

BTDT · Nov 13, 2006

Throw a log chain into it leaving one end out on the ground. When it freezes drag it up on the bank. Clean out pond, make it deeper, push it back into hole before spring.

Check with your county ext. agent and see what he recommends.

MossRoad · Nov 13, 2006

There is a formula out there somwhere. I saw one similar on the Indiana DNR website a long time ago.

People here keep mentioning the Pond Boss website. Perhaps they have the forumulas over there.

Jethro · Nov 13, 2006

There is no simple way to do this right. If you go by the book, you need to put on some waders and make multiple depth measurements. Use a small boat if needed. If you took 20 different measurements evenly spaced throughout the pond you would add those together and divide by 20 to get the average depth.

Then you need to calculate the surface area. Again, since it is irregularly shaped, make multiple measurements width, evenly spaced. Add these together and divide by the number of measurements you made to get the average width. Do the same for the length. Now multiply average length by average width. This is your surface area.

Assuming these measurements are in feet you should divide you surface area by 43,560 (1 acre) and this will represent your acreage. Now multiply the acreage by average depth in feet to get you "acre feet", which should be the referecnce you need.

daTeacha · Nov 14, 2006

This one's from a chemistry teacher guys. Think chemistry, solutions, concentrations, etc.

This is, of course, a hypothetical brain teaser, not a real situation.

john_bud · Nov 14, 2006

daTeacha said:
This one's from a chemistry teacher guys. Think chemistry, solutions, concentrations, etc.

This is, of course, a hypothetical brain teaser, not a real situation.

Fine, Add a known concentration of a chemical that is easy to detect in PPB concentrations and is totally soluble. Wait a couple days for it to equilibrate then sample the pond for the concentration of the chemical in the pond. The dilution rate will tell you the volume of the pond.

If you want to get "fancy" make an approximation of the volume of the pond and add the chemical in an amount that will dilute to a predicted concentration -- then check your prediction.

jb