Re: Excavator Question

Posted by Randy-IA on May 26, 2020 at 21:51:15 from (174.243.82.186):

In Reply to: Excavator Question posted by Vicinalvictor on May 26, 2020 at 14:14:46:

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, but it doesn't have to be precise like you were building a highway grade.

Te 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 done easier with a dirt mover behind a tractor. [IMG][quote="CVPost-Vicinalvictor"](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.

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