Pond repair

[bluedog225]

I’ve got a bulldozer coming out to clean up my little pond. It’s dry now. It’s been there for the 20 years I’ve had the place. But about 5 years ago the dam on the right blew out during a flood. I’ll get a pic next time I’m up there. The gap is about 5’.

In addition to cleaning out the area, getting the trees off the dam, and getting the silt out, I am going to patch the breach with packed clay. Plenty of clay.

I was thinking of using concrete bags to form a spillway at the location of the gap. That is something maybe 12 inches below the dam that would allow water spill over the concrete instead of punching a new hole. Does anyone have any experience or advice on doing this?

I’m not in a position to actually put in a formed spillway. It’s a small pond that’s on a creek that she usually dry.

Seems like the important part would be to excavate down to good soil, then lay rebar across the run of bags. And punch rebar through the bags into the adjoining runs.

 

[rooster59]

Around here it’s usually a big buried horizontal culvert, then back a ways into the pond, a standpipe and a pyramidal rebar stick / beaver screen on top of the standpipe. Also some sort of emergency overflow that’s concreted to prevent cutting into the dam.

 

[bluedog225]

It’s a pretty small pond. Though I wish I could do something like that.

 

[tarmy]

If you have the entire pond being reworked…why not put in a drain line in so you can turn the water over each year?

 

[bluedog225]

If you have the entire pond being reworked…why not put in a drain line in so you can turn the water over each year?

I’m not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean, drain it and refill it?

I’m not sure that’s going to happen given our water supply issues. I’m happy enough that sometimes rain and fills it up.

Before the dam blew out, it held water for probably a decade or more. May have seen it dry once. The wall biologist said it was a healthy pond, notwithstanding in the alge bloom.

 

[C-S-H]

An outlet structure like Rooster59 noted is best. Make sure it is big enough to crawl into for cleanout. For a spillway you can use a geomembrane and armor stone.

 

[bluedog225]

An outlet structure like Rooster59 noted is best. Make sure it is big enough to crawl into for cleanout. For a spillway you can use a geomembrane and armor stone.

I’ll see if I can find one. Thanks

 

[tarmy]

I’m not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean, drain it and refill it?

I’m not sure that’s going to happen given our water supply issues. I’m happy enough that sometimes rain and fills it up.

Before the dam blew out, it held water for probably a decade or more. May have seen it dry once. The wall biologist said it was a healthy pond, notwithstanding in the alge bloom.

All I was referring to is being able to drain it to do future repairs/clean up…and to replace the water so algae and clarity could be improved.

 

[zendriver]

I’d be more concerned it’s water sources a dry creek

My last property had 1/3acre pond that was only fed by runoff it was lush and beautiful in the spring, but by the end of summer, it would drop 3 feet

 

[Danno1]

I was thinking of using concrete bags to form a spillway at the location of the gap. That is something maybe 12 inches below the dam that would allow water spill over the concrete instead of punching a new hole. Does anyone have any experience or advice on doing this?

Check over on Tractorbynet. IDK if there are any recent builds, but 12-14 yrs ago there were a few dam builds documented on that site. A few were even in Tx.


.

 

[Codyboy]

I would definitely install a overflow pipe or two.

My pond Originally had a single 12" HDPE corrugated pipe.
The guy told me it should be enough.
Well he was wrong and it could not keep up with the amount of water coming in from a small dry creek. Not sure how much watershed that creek takes care of but there are two other large ponds before mine. Probably at least a 1000 acres or more. Wish I knew a way to figure it out.
We had several inches of rain fall a year or so ago and it was going over the spillway for about 2 or 3 days. Luckily it did not wash out.
Actually the spillway would have been the third line of runoff but the actual overflow wasn't designed correctly as the grade was too high.

I had the guy come back and install another 12" pipe and rework the 1st overflow which is not really an overflow but it takes the incoming water and reroutes it before it gets to the pond when it is at flood stage level.