The gully to pond project

[MarkV]

Jim I was thinking the other day that I hadn't seen anything about your pond project for awhile. Looks like you have made a great deal of progress. Thanks for the up date.

MarkV

 

[jinman]

Got started on my 2nd dam today. This one should not be nearly as involved as the first. In the first photo, you can see the gully with trees from last summer. Now, the trees are bare and I started cutting through the gully and removing all the silt off the bottom (about 2' of silt). I cut a trench wide enough that I can compact the whole width with my wheels (double the tractor width). If it is too narrow, only the sides get compaction. When the trench is complete, I'll use the backhoe to cut into the hillsides on each side of the trench to form a core trench perpendicular (approximately) to the trench. Actually, this trench is sorta S-shaped so it will give the dam better support than a straight through trench. I made good progress today by getting 3/4 of the way through the silted gully. Of course, I have several trees to also remove.

 

[jinman]

Well, I just thought I was going to make it all the way through my gully. Yesterday, I had a lesson in getting my butt whipped by silt/mud. I only got about 25 more feet down the gully before it became impossible to haul out the silt. Any load of more than 1/4 bucket would sink my front tires to the axle. I tried my best to work ahead of me by removing silt and then backfilling with firm soil before the next bucket full. As I got to one point, I found that as soon as I removed silt, the hole filled with water seeping from the surrounding silt. Any soil I put there would become wet and boggy. I even turned around and tried my backhoe. I put buckets of silt on what I thought was a gentile slope. It seemed to hold fine. I made progress and got another 10 feet down the gully before the inevitable happened. MUDSLIDE! What a mess! About 2 yards of muck came sliding down and back into the gully and flowed around my left rear tire.

Before I got stuck, I raised the outriggers and got out of there. I took my smaller tractor in and pushed the silt into the end of the fresh trench and left it. I have the trench long enough to start on the dam, so that's what I'll do. I need to get as much done before next Wednesday as possible. That's when the next chance of rain is forecasted by the weather guessers on TV.

I spent the rest of the day yesterday cleaning up the sides of the pond and hauling out dirt/sand. I also cleared the dam area of trees and hauled them off. I'm ready to start building another dam if this dam project doesn't kill me first.

Oh yes. . . I'll try to not forget the pictures today.

 

[EddieWalker]

Good to hear you made it out without getting stuck. This time of the year, it's deceiving what's dry and what's a trap. I've forgetten this a few times and spent hours working on getting back to solid ground!!!!!

Eddie

 

[pacerron]

Well, I just thought I was going to make it all the way through my gully. Yesterday, I had a lesson in getting my butt whipped by silt/mud. I only got about 25 more feet down the gully before it became impossible to haul out the silt. Any load of more than 1/4 bucket would sink my front tires to the axle.
Oh yes. . . I'll try to not forget the pictures today.

Sounds like a mess. Were you going forward to fill your bucket with silt, then raising the bucket to back out when your front tires sank into the muck?

Have you ever tried leaving your filled/partially filled bucket on the ground when backing out with just a slight forward tilt so the back of the bucket
won't dig in, but your load won't fall out?
Sometimes that works as the bottom of the bucket becomes a sled. You can control keeping your front wheels on top of the ground by the hydralic controls of the bucket...
I have a bucket that is known as a convertible manure/landscape bucket that is flat on the bottom that works well that way.
Ron

 

[jinman]

I remembered to take more photos yesterday, so I hope they help to show what I'm up against with cleaning out this gully so I can build a pond dam across it. The first thing I did yesterday morning was to take some shots of my progress to this point. The first few photos show the base of the gully has been widened and clay filled in to give me a solid work surface. This was previously 2' deep in silt and another 1' of soft clay. I had to remove all of that and then add clay so I could drive in/out of the gully with a full bucket. Luckily, if you look at the sides of the gully, you can see red clay. By widening the gully, I was able to use the material from the sides to fill the bottom successfully.

The third picture shows where this method finally played out. The silt was so thick and the water coming in so fast that I could not get a firm footing. Even digging out silt with my backhoe didn't work because the ground was wet so far down that I would probably have needed to remove over 4' deep to get to dry soil.

Have you ever tried leaving your filled/partially filled bucket on the ground when backing out with just a slight forward tilt so the back of the bucket won't dig in, but your load won't fall out?

Yep, Ron, I tried keeping my bucket level, pushing down with it, half filling it, quarter filling it, cajoling, begging, praying, and cussin', but nothing worked.:confused2: I had to be able to dig below my solid surface and curl up. When I would do that, the wheels would just sink. Even when the surface seemed solid, the wheels went south. After all, I had just dug a trench 60' long by removing the same kind of muck, but when it started seeping water like this, it just could not be conquered. At that point, what I needed was a excavator that could rotate 180 degrees and put loads of wet silt into a dump trailer. Unfortunately, my backhoe only rotates to 90 degrees each way. All I could do is place the silt on the bank as in the final picture. That's what caused the great mudslide.

I think these photos tell the story. Sigh!. . . .

 

[jinman]

This next series of photos shows how I am preparing my core trench of clay across the gully. The first photo shows the area across the gully where the dam will go (the clear area with the tree down). I backed my tractor into the trench as close to the bank as possible and started digging to see how deep it would be before I found clay. The topsoil is just loose sand that almost came off in sheets. Sometimes the clay was only 2' down from the surface and other times it was 3' down. Of course, the thicker topsoil seemed to be up the hillside. I just really dragged the soil into the trench rather than digging and then hauled it out and piled it up with the loader bucket. That process went really quickly. I also spent a big part of the day yesterday getting rid of soil with lots of tree and brush roots where I'd removed it from the trench and had it sitting in huge piles. I hauled it and dumped it into another gully (no photos).

So today, I plan to starte building my dam. As the dam comes up in height, I'll remove more topsoil as necessary until I get the core trench all clay and higher than the normal waterline of the pond. I don't have to build an overflow in the dam since the overflow will be in another area of the pond. All I have to do is haul in clay, place it, and compact it before the forecasted rain gets here next Wed. night. I guess you could say I'm gonna be in a dam hurry.:laughing:

 

[radioman]

It appears that in last pic, you really should be laying it down in 2 inch increments and flattening it with bucket to prevent mudslides. Right now it looks like IMHO a disaster waiting to happen.

 

[pacerron]

All I have to do is haul in clay, place it, and compact it before the forecasted rain gets here next Wed. night. I guess you could say I'm gonna be in a dam hurry.:laughing:

Jim,
Since the stars and moon aren't up in your pics, I'm trying to get some bearings.
Is the corner of the pond I have circled in this pic the inland most of the 2
ponds you have side by side down next to Conservation Reservoir #14?

It would be helpful if you could take a shot toward your house and be back far enough to catch both of the new ponds your working on. It appears this second one will be at a lower elevation than the first. Will you be able to see the water on either of them from your house?
Maybe you could sketch the water areas in on a picture of how it will look when done.
The dam construction will be interesting to see in pictures.
Ron

 

[jinman]

Jim,
Since the stars and moon aren't up in your pics, I'm trying to get some bearings.
Is the corner of the pond I have circled in this pic the inland most of the 2
ponds you have side by side down next to Conservation Reservoir #14?

It would be helpful if you could take a shot toward your house and be back far enough to catch both of the new ponds your working on. It appears this second one will be at a lower elevation than the first. Will you be able to see the water on either of them from your house?

Patience; all things in good time, Grasshopper.:laughing:

EDIT: Your assumption is correct, Ron. If you look at your picture with the red circle, you can see a mound of dirt blocking your view of that pond. That mound of dirt is a huge pile of clay that I wanted to use to build the dam. My plan was to clean out the gully and then haul the clay straight up to the dam site. Well, well, well. . . I forgot to consult Mr. Murphy. I can't use that clay because I can't get a dry path up the gully. I could wait until later in the summer, but that would ensure that I miss the spring rains and have to wait until next year. I'll just wait and use that clay for my third and fourth dams in my multi-year dam building plan.:thumbsup:

BTW: I'll be able to see almost all of the ponds from my 3rd floor balcony, but only parts of them from the main deck. The dam hides a substantial amount of the 2nd pond.