Excavator Question

Thinking about having a pond dug, my question is: How big and how deep of a irrigation pond can a medium sized excavator dig? I'm thinking something rectangular with sloped banks.

Not to be smart, but that is kind of a vague question. Do you plan on loading the dirt out on trucks, if not will there be a dozer to puch the fill away from the pond area ? Do you have some type of timetable for bow long you would like it to take ? I am just trying to get a handle on the situation. I have 23 years seat time on heavy equipment since I made it my career. Little better description of the job would help !

Ponds are best when designed for the drainage area, then go from there. An excavator can dig an infinitely big pond given enough time and money.

before you take one shovel out make sure you have all your permits and it will help if you get one from God. some states will lock you up for make a pond .

NRCS will do a lot of the leg work for you.

Mine is about 300ft long and 120ft wide. About 4ft deep. I like it. One end isn't hardly banked at all, sort of a v channel which is nice because i can control the depth a little with just about half hr with a shovel making trench. Probably have done that 3-4 times in 15yrs. Ends up in county ditch. Reason being there is nice trees around it. If its too full my ducks start drilling into the bank eventually they'd get to the roots. Something to think about.

As David G touched on in his post, picking the location is key. A spot where rain water would gather and supply water to the pond. Then you could design a water drain system should the pond ( tank in Texas) over fill. You'll be surprised just how must dirt comes out of the hole. I know a lot of pond or tank owners that have made decent money selling their dirt.

Thanks, that was my next question, where to begin with the permits, etc.....

The pond I am thinking about is at the low end of a field, next to a wetland, but not in it. High water table, with hard pan. Water naturally drains into this low lying area. It is also next to a paved road, that often times when it rains hard, the roadside ditches over flow and run across the low lying field and into the wetland. There is two TransCanada natural gas transmission lines that run through the wetland approx. 150' from where I want to have the pond dug, and a natural gas pumping and meter station across the road from where I want the pond also. If I get the ok to get the pond dug, I would also like to have fish in it, but not sure how deep it should be since I live in Michigan and it would freeze over in the winter.

This excavator has a 30' reach and can go 20' deep. How far would the reach or width be if the pond is dug 5' or 10' deep?

Is the property zoned agricultural or designated as a farm getting a reduced rate on property taxes?
That might help the permitting process.

But 150 feet from what actually looks like a wetland to the average joe citizen is likely definitely a protected wetland in the eyes of the MDNR.

Local NRCS will help

I think the NRCS is a good place to begin, just not sure if their office is open during this pandemic.

I don't know how it is in Canada, but you don't mess with wetlands in the U.S.
If you do, the government will get after you big, time.

If stocking fish the pond will have to be deeper to prevent freezing solid . And also have enough volume so the fish do not suffocate while the pond of frozen over .
Generally if stocking fish in a pond with a shallow and a deep end . No matter how far down the pond is dug. It will never be too deep .

Good ol bummer and thinking a mud puddle should be regulated under waters of the US

(reply to post at 14:14:46 05/26/20)

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quote](reply to post at 14:14:46 05/26/20) [/quote]

Well, it seems you have an excavator that has a thirty foot reach. If you don't want to get it's toes wet and have the room the pond can be dug about 40' wide to get much depth in the middle. Of course, that's not how an excavator would be used. You would estimate how deep you want the center of your pond, where you want the center of your pond, and about where you want the edges of your pond.

In the center area you would put some stakes with cut and how much (ex- 10'), move away from the center and put some stakes in with the word cut (ex- 9'). This will help keep you on track to a smooth bottom slope, but it doesn't have to be precise like you were building a highway grade.

The bigger the pond the harder it will be to deal with the spoils. My experience is that digging a pond bigger than an excavator swing diameter would be easier done with a large tractor sized earth mover. But as was mentioned if you have a parade of trucks taking the dirt out then you are good to go. Otherwise you will be swinging the same dirt over and over and over as the pond gets bigger.

You said the area has a hard pan. How deep? How thick? An 18" deep waterhole is a cesspool.

Ponds are done haphazardly if you want to have fish and just weeds and algae. The oxygen content available to fish needs to be considered, how brackish the water may get also need to be considered. How much continuous fresh water will flow through it? Field runoff will have a lot of fertilizers in it. That's bad for a pond. You can make a pond twenty feet deep and forty feet around and it likely won't support fish. Think of an aquarium, there isn't enough surface area for the transfer of oxygen. Then the competition for that oxygen goes up with the natural addition of water weeds, algae, and decomposition. Pretty soon a poorly engineered pond that looks good on the surface is a death bed for whatever is in the water.

Sorry, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. Just wanted to let you know all the things that need considering.

My uncle built a lake once of nearly 60 acres. It required an earthen dam almost 400 feet long and 40' high. The lake was dug to about twenty feet deep in front of the dam (from the water line). He had to put in a 40" vertical pipe overflow system as well as an emergency high water overflow at one end of the dam.

This lake prospered. There was another lake this one abutted to that was held back by a vertical poured concrete dam about 30' high. The water was aerated as it fell over the high dam into the lower lake. This was in Georgia where there isn't a lot of row cropping done, so very little fertilizer inflow.

Good luck, YMMV but you know the NCRS will have better advice than I do.

(reply to post at 21:51:15 05/26/20)

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Since the site won't let me edit, I want to say I mis-typed NRCS.

When we built ours we bought a scraper and took all the black dirt off where the pond was going to be built and then started to take clay for the dam until it got to wet-then took the dozer and finished the dam. The last dirt we moved was with the excavator on the deep end. I wanted to go deeper but cold weather set in and we were done. No permits-all runoff from my ground---Tee

Dressing the top of the damn with black dirt

faced the front of the damn with crushed rock



view from the top of south dirt pile-had huge pile of black dirt on each end--hauled the north one to the field


View from the north end

The Mrs. just got the flowers planted at the shelter---That's all---Tee

just a sloped hole in the ground will not do much for pond or fish. they need to have good supply of water and and overflow so water can move thru. I am looking at building couple and the site have change several time to get the right area for water and away from crop ground at least 1/2 mile . will have a water hydrant for cattle in pasture around it. they will not have access to it

I called the Department of Environmental Quality, and their offices are closed due to the virus until at least the end of July. NRCS office has not returned my phone call. So it looks like nothing gets done until there is an inspection of the site, site plans and permits.