Draining pond questions

[ericjeeper]

How long do you think I should let my pond sit empty.. Before trying to push it out to make it larger and deeper? I spoke with a local excavator buddy.. He suggested pushing the muck to one side and having it dipped out.. Well I have no dipper.... All I have is a pusher.. A D300 massey Dozer..I was sort of hoping I could just push the muck out of the bottom and off to the downhill side to let it dry out then doze it out later..
About how deep do you think a small bulldozer can sink? If I get some free time tomorrow I will post some pics of it without any water in it.. It never was very large,.I built it just for swimming purposes. basically a walk in beach from one side to the greatest depth of 5 feet along the dam.
The pond is 4 years old. made of clay dirt.
I am to poor/tight to hire an excavator to dip and swing the muck out..

[Common Tator]

I honestly don't know the answer to your question. What I do know is that this was tried with our pond before we bought the place, and it was a good thing they had a second tractor here to pull the first one out of the muck!

[Sawmill Jim]

You might use a foot or so of your blade an row it out when it dries up some When i was working on my pond i planted a T D 15 B twice took two large tractors a block an lines to get it out

[Old Vet]

Originally Posted by ericjeeper

How long do you think I should let my pond sit empty.. Before trying to push it out to make it larger and deeper? I spoke with a local excavator buddy.. He suggested pushing the muck to one side and having it dipped out.. Well I have no dipper.... All I have is a pusher.. A D300 massey Dozer..I was sort of hoping I could just push the muck out of the bottom and off to the downhill side to let it dry out then doze it out later..
About how deep do you think a small bulldozer can sink? If I get some free time tomorrow I will post some pics of it without any water in it.. It never was very large,.I built it just for swimming purposes. basically a walk in beach from one side to the greatest depth of 5 feet along the dam.
The pond is 4 years old. made of clay dirt.
I am to poor/tight to hire an excavator to dip and swing the muck out..

Probity not above the exhaust pipe. I had a Caterpillar D2 buried to the seat one time. It took a Caterpillar D6 to pull it out.

[ericjeeper]

I am going to wait a couple of weeks.. Hoping the spring rains will too.. I have access to plenty of 135+ horse tractors if I do manage to get it mired in.,
But I would rather not have to experience this. I am hoping to almost double the surface size of the pond and at the same time catch a little more run off too.By extending the pond over towards a ravine coming off the alfalfa field.
I use a spillway to maintain the depth as opposed to a pipe of any sort. and it has worked well for 4 years. ( good sod established and all)
When I built it I had dreams of the kids swimming a lot in it.. Well when the "Killer frogs" showed up my 16 year old daughter refused to swim.. Heaven forbid that one little 3 foot long water snake showed up. I had to much grass along the edges.. Gave them good place to hide. I am going to keeps the banks sprayed back this time.

[Chuck]

Oh, you'd be surprised. I'll be interested to know how you do. I've been working on one of my smaller ponds for over a year - that muck never really dries out! If I could get a huge excavator in here for about a week, I'd be in heaven.

[uncle Will in In.]

Take a shovel out in the pond and dig a few holes about a foot deep. If you don't hit dry hardpan subsoil, you'll probably sink your crawler.
If you can keep the pond dried out until we get a summer dry spell, you might get along OK.
If you had an old fashioned "Slip Scoup" You could hook a long cable to it and pull it through the pond without getting the crawler down in the slop. Of course you'll need Paul Bunyan to handle the scoup UNK

[ericjeeper]

I will post some photos here later. The pond is now double in size. I worked on it all day til my knees are plum tuckered out.Steering clutches are all foot controls.
I am trying to get a deep spot down to 10-12 feet. Trust me this is a lot of digging.. But I will git r done.
My daughter was taking photos as I went along.

[Wis Bang]

After High School I worked weekends for a local excavator, a small tyme guy. One Saturday he was clearing a one block square lot of vegitation w/ a 955 CAT. One edge had a wide dirt 'shoulder' along the road where trucks used to pull over & park resulting in a puddle.

While working on that side he ran out of fuel about ten feet into the lot and the puddle drained into the tracks he had made and the puddle drained around one of the machine's cats. In the time it took for me to drive a backhoe a few miles away to get the truck w/ the fuel tank & get back; it was stuck. After fueling & bleeding the injector lines, I had to drive the truck back & return w/ the backhoe so we could dig the 955 out.

Now this was a loader w/ out growlers on the cats....You're mileage may vary...

I went to College in Scranton, PA and one afternoon my roomate & I were exploring w/ my '62 Willys Jeep above the cut for I-81 we came up over a rise w/ just enough room to stop. A drainage ditch that entered a coregated pipe to drop down & under the highway was blocked making a mudhole.

There were tracks where a larger vehicle had jumpped the rise and clawed out of the mud. I'm getting ready to back up when my roomate said 'try it!' and after getting his promise to help get unstuck; I pulled slowly forward feeling the front axle sinking in the mud until the back wheels left the hard pan, felt like driving off a curb. The Jeep immediately stopped & going into low range didn't help.

One front wheel was visible from the warn hub up, the other wheel wasn't visible, just the top of the tire!

Nearby was a bunch of softball sized rocks & we made a pile in front of the bumper to support the base of the bumper jack and were able to jack the front end up & add rocks under the front tires & back out...

One suggestion would be to find a diaphram mud pump like the 'Morrow Mud Hog' & pump most of the goo out of the pond - or - barter with someone w/ an excavator to scoop it out. I'm afraid you will spend more time un-sticking your dozer than pusing slop out of the pond.

edit: I guess it wasn't that bad.

[ericjeeper]

The bottom pic is before I started the extension. I sort of outlined what I was planning.. I still have a lot of dirt to move before the rain comes Wed.

[Old Vet]

The pictures came up after I posted.

[PoorLiLRichGirl]

Forbidden
"You don't have permission to view these pictures on this server".

[rambler]

I see red x's and am forbidden from the links as well. Bummer. Really wanted to see them.

--->Paul

[OkieDavid]

Really it's the "wrong" time of the year to take on this task IMO. I'd wait until the end of your spring rainy season, drain the pond, let it sit "dry" for a month or more then give it a shot. I'd also have a backup plan in place to get it back out before fall rainy season starts. Here in Oklahoma, most pond work is done in July/Aug timeframe.

[arabian knight]

Originally Posted by rambler

I see red x's and am forbidden from the links as well. Bummer. Really wanted to see them.

--->Paul

OK Right click on the X.... then go to Properites... Copy properties and then Paste that addy into a new broswer window and you will see the picture . The links do not work at all. But I was able to see all the pics that had the Red X's
Hmmmm after I did that now they look like they are showing up in the post hmmmm
And NOW the links are working which are the same pics~! hmmmmm

[Old Vet]

What I really want to know is the dog helping you move the rocks? It looks like that in the first picture.

[Common Tator]

[ericjeeper]

Or you could do what I did.. Got tit done in two days.
I cheated a bit.. I had a friend bring his dozer too. He has a cat d5 which is a little bit larger than mine.Plus the fact he has been an operator for 40 plus years. It is done. The Muck is pushed up and out of the way.The dam is finished inside and out. I will have to take pics tomorrow.. It is almost dark and I just got in to eat. First meal of the day at 8 pm .. The deepest spot is a little over 8 feet. I am happy with the overall outcome.. (less yard to mow). LOL
But I did upset the wife.. she said that WAS her favorite part of the yard..It still can be..She will just have to swim to it.

[ericjeeper]

Originally Posted by Old Vet

What I really want to know is the dog helping you move the rocks? It looks like that in the first picture.

Them is not rocks.. them is mudclods.. He is down there trying to catch tadpoles that were swimming for their life in the puddles.. They is gone now.. I told my farmer buddy that it will be a drought year.. LOL Just my luck

[arabian knight]

It sure does look like he is pushing it. lol