Pond Construction & Repair ยท Greenwood, AR
Pond construction and repair in Greenwood
New ponds cut with a core trench and a spillway that fits the watershed above them, and old ponds that lost their water put back right. Dam repair, bank reshaping and the dig that finds where it is going.
Diagnosis
Why a pond will not hold
A pond that drops an inch a day in July is not always leaking. Evaporation and a hot pasture take more than people expect. A pond that keeps dropping through a wet October is telling you something else.
Most of the ones we open up fail for a handful of reasons. The dam got built out of whatever was scraped up nearby, topsoil and sand included, and water found the seam. There was never a core trench, so the dam sits on the same porous ground the water is trying to get through. A sand or gravel lens runs under the basin and out the hill. The pipe through the dam has no anti seep collar and the water is walking right down the outside of it. Or muskrats have run the bank full of holes below the water line.
There is also the spillway. A spillway cut too low bleeds the pond off every time it fills, and one cut too small blows the dam out in the storm that finally tests it. Neither one is a leak, but both look like one from the house.
Finding out which of those you have takes a machine and a person who has opened a few. Guessing at it with a load of bentonite is how people spend money twice.
The fix
How a pond repair goes
Four steps, in this order, on most of the repairs we take.
Get it dry
The pond gets drawn down or pumped off so the dam and the basin can actually be looked at. Wet guessing is not a repair.
Find the seam
We open the suspect ground with the track hoe and follow it. A sand seam, a rotten pipe or a dam with no key under it all look different once it is exposed.
Cut a core trench
The trench goes down through the porous layer into tight clay, then gets backfilled with clay in lifts and packed, so the dam is keyed into ground that holds.
Spillway and banks
The overflow gets set at the right elevation and sized for the watershed, banks get reshaped to a slope that will not slough, and bare dirt gets seeded.
Questions
Pond questions, answered
Is my ground good enough to hold a pond?
Around Greenwood a lot of it is, but not everywhere, and it changes across one property. We dig test holes in the basin before anybody agrees on a price so you know what you are building on.
How big a pond can you build?
From a stock pond for cattle to a several acre pond with a built dam and a piped overflow. The watershed above it, not the wish, sets how big it can be and still fill.
Will bentonite fix my leak?
Sometimes, on the right kind of basin leak. It does nothing for a dam that was never keyed in or a pipe that is piping water along its outside. Diagnose first, then buy material.
Do you need to drain the pond to fix it?
For dam and core trench work, yes. Bank reshaping and some spillway work can happen with water in it. We will say which one your job is before we start.
What time of year is best?
Late summer and fall, when the pond is low and the clay is workable. Frozen or saturated ground stops this kind of work cold.
Can you clean out an old silted in pond?
Yes. Silt comes out, the basin gets deepened where it makes sense, and the spoil gets spread or hauled depending on what you want the pasture to look like.
Find out where the water is going
Send the address and how fast it drops. We will come look at the dam.