The gully to pond project

[mike69440]

Thanks Prokop. That's exactly what I'm hoping to do. When I look out from my house, I want to see two ponds instead of erosion gullies.

Yes,
They will look som much nicer when finally filled.

I've still got to seed around mine.

 

[pacerron]

Jim
I came across your 6.10.11 post on the "gully to pond project" a couple evenings ago and became interested to the point of going clear back to your post of 10.10.10 which I believe was the first. It looks like you are making significant progress and have well thought out your plan. As your posts went along they answered questions that came to my mind from the previous posts. One point that I think I am clear on concerns some dozer pictures that you took on 12.18.05 with a Fuji MX2900. These must be the twin ponds adjacent to the lake. What year did you build these? I took a look on Google Earth last night and the ponds I enclosed in the red box must be them and the red oval your current project. See attached....
Something you haven't gotten into yet is the perimeter sloping and preperation for erosion around the edges of your new ponds. Unless you intend to not mow or trim these areas getting the slopes to the water edge where you can safely back a finish mower on a tractor down them will be a blessing from now on. I did a little pond about 20 years ago to fill a gully in the middle of a 10 acre field. The dam is only 300 feet long but there are places around the perimeter that require a weed-eater and/or hand push mower to look decent. Not fun with old age.
Ron

 

[jinman]

One point that I think I am clear on concerns some dozer pictures that you took on 12.18.05 with a Fuji MX2900. These must be the twin ponds adjacent to the lake. What year did you build these? I took a look on Google Earth last night and the ponds I enclosed in the red box must be them and the red oval your current project. See attached....
Ron

Ron, I'm not sure how you identified my camera. Maybe the info stays with the image when it is posted on TBN. However, the MX-2900 was my first digital camera and one that I used for thousands and thousands of pictures, but I found it horrible for taking aerial shots from a plane because of the delay between pressing the shutter button and the shutter actually opening. Our Canon Power Shot S5-IS is a much better camera and the one we have been using for years though it also has a short button-to-shutter delay while it calculates the best settings in Auto.

Did you read through my whole long thread from 2005/2006 called Silt Happens!? This link takes you to the point where the Liebherr track loader started to dig out the old silt. Those two ponds by the lake were first created in 1941 when the soil conservation lake was built. They were the fish breeding ponds for the lake and their dams were cut to dump the fish into the lake. At some point, the dams were restored and the two ponds became separated from the lake. There is a property line between the ponds. They are on separate 11 acre tracts of land, but I own both tracts.

I won't be doing a lot of finishing type mowing around my new ponds. I back my rotary cutter down the banks which is easy with the HST transmission, but also very tedious. It's a heck of a lot better than using a weedeater though. Later, I'm sure I'll also buy a sicklebar mower because my lake frontage and most shorelines are accessible with a sicklebar. I'll make the banks sloped where possible and I have a plan for controlling erosion with a combination of terracing and riprap. What you cannot see from the Google Earth photos is the topography that has produced these gullies in the first place. My whole property is sitting on the rim of a bowl, but it's not a smooth rim by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[jinman]

Rons post above made me check my latest photos. I've finished the core trench and have started filling it with compacted clay. I considered renting a compactor for this job, but my backhoe weighs almost 14,000 lb and seems to be doing quite well. When I fill the bucket full of dirt and roll with the front tires, it does a good job of compaction. It's just a very boring and tedious job. Here are a couple of pictures of the core trench completed except for loose material removal. After removing the loose dirt, I wet the trench down well and started filling with clay. The lowest part of the trench has been built up about 3' with clay and I'm happy with the result. I'll try to get some photos of the filling in progress soon. I've had a lot of distractions this last week and haven't made as much progress as I'd like to. The 102-104 degree heat hasn't helped either.

 

[EddieWalker]

Looks good Jim.

Do you have any moisture in your clay so it will compact? I found that my front tires worked great for compacting my soil, especially with a full load in the bucket, but if the soil is dry, it will never compact no matter how much weight you put on it.

Eddie

 

[jinman]

Eddie, I'm lucky that the trench is close enough to the house that I can string a hose down and put a sprinkler on the clay as needed. So far, the fresh-dug clay is moist, but some of my clay from my piles needs some moisture added. You are sure right that dry clay does not compact. So far, so good. I'll try to get up a picture of the trench being filled soon.

 

[pacerron]

Jim
I looked at a topo map around reservoir #14 and see what you are up against. There are many varieties of clay soil and Eddie has a point. I used some excess clay to level the floor inside of a 64 x 84 barn thinking that since it becomes like concrete in the hot summer outside sun if it hasn't rained for a few days it would be a better surface than the limestone screenings I used in another barn which draws moisture out of the ground like a sponge, accelerating rust of metal. It turned out that the clay where I run tractors over is worse than your caliche; it has become an ultra fine dust about 2 inches deep, making the air dusty even when walking on it. Since we store hay in there we cannot wet it down without starting mold. I mention this since you are planning to put a road over your clay dam. We have grassing on our dam so it is not bothered by tractor treads unless it is wet, then it gets soft. The dam was built and compacted by a large dozer. Even so there was considerable settling in the deepest part, the center, that required more fill and leveling after a couple years. As your dam gets higher and wider at the base it is very import to have very good compaction as you go.
I also too thought a sickle bar mower would be good for mowing the back side of the dam from the top and then up from the bottom which left a few feet in the center not reachable. I had one anyway to cut grass hay.Adjustment for that much down angle of the new Holland cutter wasn't good for the mechanism. We use round-up spray along the top edge of the back side now which takes care of the weeds there without any new erosion. The wife does this plus weed eating the front side from the top to the water level about a foot below. She also does the mowing there where I can't back down with the finish mower.
The EXIF data is included with your images. You can probably remove it with your ACDC software if you want to for the internet. Your Canon camera has a custom menu that you can set for pictures from the air, see page 96 of your manual. If you have lost the manual you can download it at Canon U.S.A. : Support & Drivers : PowerShot S5 IS I have a friend with a wing-over aircraft that has prop-open side windows. Hanging out the window with my old powershot pro 1 camera in a preset custom program is the way to go.
I notice you normally use auto in your Canon which is part of your problem with a delay. You are even using full time auto focus which means it is constantly adjusting to what it thinks that your subject matter may be. From the air at minimum altitude from a light plane you are well into the infinity range so you can set that. Also with the range of ISO speeds you have available you should have no problem using a small f-stop which will give you the maximum depth of field and be able to set a shutter speed that is fast enough to not be bothered by turbulence or the forward movement of the aircraft.
Nothing set in stone but I have learned a lot from others experiences. At this age the challenge is remembering!
Ron

 

[jinman]

Ron, I have not lost my manual. Actually, there were two manuals that came with the camera (one was not English) and I still have both. I try to keep the manual in my camera bag, but often I don't have it along. Your info about the Canon's custom setting features is appreciated. I'll check it out and remember that the next time we are up in an airplane. My problem is that I need to do it ahead of time and remember it quickly when needed. Actually, the only aerial shots I've taken with the Canon were over Niagara Falls a few years ago in a helicopter. We went to breakfast and just carried the camera with us. When we saw the helicopter, it was a spur of the moment thing where my wife got up the nerve to try the ride and we took a aerial tour. It was terrific and the camera worked fine even though I didn't change any settings. We got some super pictures. Afterwards, my wife admitted that she had been terrified in the beginning, but loved it after we got over the falls.:thumbsup:

I know my dam is going to be a challenge to maintain. I actually have two dams to build and maintain. I plan to build the roadbed with compacted crushed rock. I have that on my current dams and it provides a good all-weather surface while holding up well to erosion. I may have to purchase some topsoil, but I think I have plenty to top off the dam. I'll plant bermuda grass on the sides of the dam. Using water sprinklers, I can get bermuda to germinate and start very easily in the spring. I may have to plant a winter cover crop if I finish the dam during late summer or winter. If so, I'll probably use winter rye and wheat until I can get the bermuda going in the spring. If I have real problems getting grass going, I'll hydromulch the whole dam.

Finally, I plan to do all I can with my TLB, but if I get in a situation where it just won't do, I'll pay for or rent a dozer or other equipment to come do a few days work.

 

[pacerron]

Jim,
Sounds good. There is a gauze type material with or w/o seeds that the county and homeowners really like to use on steep slopes now days that might be worth looking into. The cost of replanting and time to do it might level the cost. It took many years to establish cover and resulted in a lot of erosion repair along the way for our little clay based pond. We still have a few that we mark with posts to avoid backing the tractor wheel into. Back up mowing and twisting to see results in a real stiff neck. I have installed a mirror in the canopy that helps but am considering installing a back up camera like used on newer cars. Do you have any experience with these?
As far as your Canon camera and the custom set up, please don't wait till your friend calls and wants to take you on a photo buzz of your place. You need to set on your porch and make the program choices. Then test the results to see how they work from your porch. The memory should retain the custom settings when you shut down the camera, but that needs checked too. My old camera lets me set the focus point, the AV= f-stop or the shutter speed, the zoom amount of the lens and others. Yours does more. As a result there is no delay on the shutter release. Be sure to use the maximum resolution so you will have the maximum pixels available to work with. I recommend that for all shots. Why have a camera that has 8 MP quality and only use a small portion..
Here are shots of our little puddle recently after a deer repellant spray my wife mixes from egg, milk, etc. finally failed after 2 years of success. The night before the deer ripped a bunch of wave petunias out of pots on our deck just to be ornery. They didn't eat them.
Ron

 

[pacerron]

Is pondweed good or bad?
Last year first time Algae, this year floating pondweed. We built our pond in 91.
In 93 due to our stupidity of putting the level control pipe horizontally through the dam near the middle of the dam length the winter ice pushed the pipe up and during the spring thaw water leaking under the pipe from the ice swell began eroding the dam at the pipe. In a couple weeks the pipe wash out had lowered the
water level to about 25% of normal and made a need to haul in a lot of dirt to repair the dam. We put the overflow pipe at the far end during the repair and had it come up vertically through the water to the water height we wanted. That has worked fine and we have never had an overflow of the dam to date with the 18 pipe. As the pond refilled from rain and field runoff we stocked it with fish including a couple special carp to help keep the bottom clean. Haven稚 seen them for a couple years so they are probably dead. Last year, 2010 we began getting Algae around the edge of the pond for the first time during our August drought. We treated it with copper sulfate doing 3 doses over 3 weeks, each being 1/3 the amount needed for our size pond. It worked great and no more was required for the year.
This year some Algae is just starting again but a floating pondweed started growing in the shallow area a few weeks ago where the fish make their nests.
You can see it in the picture from the previous post. In the meantime it has doubled in area to date. Looking for a control on the net I find there are many
rather expensive treatments as well as less expensive but all are chemicals. While researching today I find that our use of a little bit of Copper Sulfate last year
has probably contributed to the growth of the pondweed this year. The article at Using Natural Ingredients for Algae Control and Pond Weed Control looks like using most of the chemicals for pondweed just makes conditions worse for the fish and will make the Algae worse, a vicious circle. The bacteria this site recommends sounds good but I have no experience with this problem or the solutions and am asking for other pond owner input who have had these problems as well as what to do to fix it. Or, is the pondweed a good thing if I rake some of it out to keep the spread under control?
Ron