Aaron
Well-known member
Unfortunately I didn't grab the camera to take pictures of what our pond looked like before the backhoe got there. It was roughly 6 feet deep in the center and 40'x30' with 1:3 slope.
For the first year ever, it dried up completely at the end of July and I had to tank water for almost a month. Even with 800 gallons of capacity, that got old real quick.
We had planned to get it dugout this year, and the pond being dried out made it all the better. We did this project in the first part of September. This operator is one of our neighbors and has been running heavy equipment since he was about 10 years old. He's a heck of a good operator. We rent a 160 acre pasture from his brother.
The initial plan was to dig an additional 6 feet for a total of 12 feet deep and square it up with 1:1/1:1.5 run sides. But as he was digging the south side, the clay was like concrete and after just scraping for a few feet, it turned to blue rock and gravel and there was a little water trickling in! He dug the rest of the pond out, took the hoe into the bottom and started digging further. He went down an additional 12 feet in the center and water was pouring in. By the end of the day, that smaller hole 12'x10'x12' was about half filled and had some where around 4000 gallons in it. By the next morning it was almost full, roughly 8000 gallons. The final size of the hole from the top is 80 feet long, 65 feet wide and 24' deep in the center.
While he was digging out one corner of the pond, he hit a huge rock. He started hitting it with the bucket and it broke up. 5 pure solid beautiful limestone slabs came out of the hole. If anyone wants a slab for a tombstone or yard sign, I've got these available at a price! They are about 8' long and 6' wide and 10" thick and weigh about 1 ton each.
I'm also experimenting with 'wet wells' and decided to put one in. He started trenching on the southwest corner 12' deep and hit bedrock that was climbing up to 8' before we stopped digging. That explains the water!
So I sent the machine to the northwest corner and crossed my fingers he wouldn't hit rock. He didn't and he got a 12' trench out about 100'. He dug a little deeper at the end of the trench for the 15" 20' double-wall plastic casing and tossed it in. It has a 4' solid pipe going into it and running along the length of the trench to transfer water from the dugout to the casing.
This is a diagram of the type of set-up I'm going to.
We filled the trench and did some ditching into the entrance on the southeast corner. The pond should hold at least 350,000 gallons when full, possibly up to 400,000. This is one project of 3 that we had him do over the course of 2.5 days. We crunched the numbers and both figured between digging and leveling dirt, he moved 4000 yards in the first day.
Dad surveying the quality of the work.
Now I just need to finish the intake line set-up, put my solar panels and everything else up (next spring) and put a top-notch fence around it.
For the first year ever, it dried up completely at the end of July and I had to tank water for almost a month. Even with 800 gallons of capacity, that got old real quick.
We had planned to get it dugout this year, and the pond being dried out made it all the better. We did this project in the first part of September. This operator is one of our neighbors and has been running heavy equipment since he was about 10 years old. He's a heck of a good operator. We rent a 160 acre pasture from his brother.
The initial plan was to dig an additional 6 feet for a total of 12 feet deep and square it up with 1:1/1:1.5 run sides. But as he was digging the south side, the clay was like concrete and after just scraping for a few feet, it turned to blue rock and gravel and there was a little water trickling in! He dug the rest of the pond out, took the hoe into the bottom and started digging further. He went down an additional 12 feet in the center and water was pouring in. By the end of the day, that smaller hole 12'x10'x12' was about half filled and had some where around 4000 gallons in it. By the next morning it was almost full, roughly 8000 gallons. The final size of the hole from the top is 80 feet long, 65 feet wide and 24' deep in the center.
While he was digging out one corner of the pond, he hit a huge rock. He started hitting it with the bucket and it broke up. 5 pure solid beautiful limestone slabs came out of the hole. If anyone wants a slab for a tombstone or yard sign, I've got these available at a price! They are about 8' long and 6' wide and 10" thick and weigh about 1 ton each.
I'm also experimenting with 'wet wells' and decided to put one in. He started trenching on the southwest corner 12' deep and hit bedrock that was climbing up to 8' before we stopped digging. That explains the water!
So I sent the machine to the northwest corner and crossed my fingers he wouldn't hit rock. He didn't and he got a 12' trench out about 100'. He dug a little deeper at the end of the trench for the 15" 20' double-wall plastic casing and tossed it in. It has a 4' solid pipe going into it and running along the length of the trench to transfer water from the dugout to the casing.
This is a diagram of the type of set-up I'm going to.
We filled the trench and did some ditching into the entrance on the southeast corner. The pond should hold at least 350,000 gallons when full, possibly up to 400,000. This is one project of 3 that we had him do over the course of 2.5 days. We crunched the numbers and both figured between digging and leveling dirt, he moved 4000 yards in the first day.
Dad surveying the quality of the work.
Now I just need to finish the intake line set-up, put my solar panels and everything else up (next spring) and put a top-notch fence around it.
