Building a 5 Acre Pond with 850 Dump Trucks of Clay! (FINISHED)

folks at home welcome back to the five acre pond build and if you missed the first videos in this series i'll put a link down in the video description and we're at the final steps of building this pond last week the guys dug out some trenches and built up some road beds we also built the famous alcatraz island and little pockets like this one that i call clyde's cove we also got the location of the dock picked out so you'll be seeing more of that later so the pond dam is complete and the last big step in this pond build is we have to line the entire bottom of the pond with a two foot clay blanket and that's gonna take around 500 more dump trucks of clay so we've already hauled in about 350 loads of clay to build up the dam and that was kind of spread out over the course of a few weeks but we got some tropical storms and heavy rain in the forecast so our plan is to try to get 500 truckloads in here in three days and guys i'm gonna tell you that's an aggressive plan because as you've seen in the previous videos we have a lot of breakdowns and trucks that get stuck and things just don't always go to plan but the guy over at the clay pit said he's got the trucks and loaders and he's sending them our way fast so the guys got an early morning start and the trucks are starting to roll in and right here around the dam it's a little bit too steep to push that clay up the hill so they're using the bucket to put that clay in place and then they'll come back over it with the roller and pack it in and right here at the dam this is the deepest part on the pond and it'll be about 12 feet deep so for bass ponds around 12 feet deep is really all you need because the majority of the fish are gonna live in that three to six foot depth throughout most of the year and one big problem you get when you start making ponds deeper than 12 feet is that it creates water quality issues so sometimes you'll have less oxygen down in the deep water and so for instance when you have the fall turnover that's where the all the water on the bottom of the pond flips and makes it to the surface of the pond that can create problems for the fish and in some cases even fish kills but there are a couple of advantages to deep water if you live in a colder climate area where the temperature drops below freezing a lot of your bait fish like threadfin shad and tilapia can go down in that deep water and survive but with us being in south alabama near the coast really the only advantage of having that deep water in our pond is that it'll give the bass a cool spot to hang out during the summer months so we're definitely happy with that 12 foot depth and i'd say probably 60 to 65 percent of the pond is in that four to six foot range so next up the guys are going to dig out an area that we're going to put our fishing dock and if you missed this discussion in a previous video the problem with building a dock on a clay-lined pond is that the clay liner is only two feet thick and when you're building a dock most people like to set the pylons about four feet deep so in our case that would have punched a hole right through the clay liner so what we're going to do is we're going to dig out a hole four feet deep we're going to fill it up with four feet of clay and then once we line the entire pond that'll add another two feet of clay on top of that which will give us a total of six feet and that'll be plenty to build the dot and in our case we just decided to go with a square 20 by 20 dock with about a 16 foot walkway and we'll always have that option to go with a floating dock if later on we decide we want something bigger but if you build a pond you just have to have a dock on it that's where we'll set up our fish feeder and before long sarah will be out there snatching them bluegills out of the water so i got him to add the dirt that he just dug out to the top of alcatraz island because after we shot the elevations it was around two feet above the water level and now this is gonna put it up closer to three but it was that red sandy clay and so now alcatraz is a red island and the trucks just started piling in so the guy over at the clay pit said he was going to bring in another excavator and so now he's got two buckets loading 16 trucks and the pit's only about three miles away so the turnaround time is quick and it's starting to rain a little bit and that's not a big problem because we got the roads in really good shape as long as we don't get any of those really heavy rains that wash out the roads we should be good and as you can see we started in this back left corner and the guys are slowly working their way out and eventually the trucks are gonna have to get on the clay to turn around and so at that point we're probably gonna need some drier weather so while we watch these guys work i want to take a minute to highlight one of the comments in the last video so tnt blast says you should use a piece of the oak tree to make a coffee table to make a replica of the pond by carving out the contour lines now that is a cool idea and i've already started looking into the process but that's one of the things i love about youtube i'm sharing this pond building experience with you but you guys are giving me some great feedback and ideas that i wouldn't have thought of myself but it's all about the timing because if i would have thought of this idea a year from now it would have been too late because the easiest way to build a table like this is wait for the pond to get complete and all the structure to go in but before it fills up with water fly a drone over the pond and use this 3d software that creates a 3d model that shows all of the contour lines structure in the pond including the island and rock piles trees and everything and then it creates a file format that you can export and import that into a cnc machine that you would use to carve out the oak table and then most people go back in after that with an epoxy that gives it that blue water tint so i can already picture having that coffee table showing the island and brush piles and being able to point at it on the table and show someone exactly where you caught that fish that's just a really cool idea so tnt send me your address i'm going to send you out a package for that one so we had some more rain come through but so far it hadn't been enough to shut the project down but that leads me to another question that i get asked a bunch and that's how are you going to fill the pond up with water so typically when you're building a pond like this you need about a ten to one ratio of watershed and what that means is if your pond is five acres you need about 50 acres of watershed draining down into the pond and that's right about where we're at we have about 55 acres uphill of this and we'll rely on that watershed to help keep it full and we're just outside of mobile which is one of the rainiest cities in the u.s so even though it's really hot in this area and you lose a lot of water to evaporation that surplus of rain offsets that but as a backup next week we're drilling a well out here that'll probably be somewhere between 100 and 150 feet deep and we're gonna use a five horsepower pump to pump the water out of the well and just assuming you have a good water table down there a five horsepower pump would give you somewhere around 100 gallons per minute and so just assuming we didn't get any rain or have any evaporation that pump would take around 65 to 70 days to fill this pond up but again we're just hoping to use that as a backup if we have some droughts and rely mostly on the rain and watershed now we're going to get down here on ground level that way you can see the depth of the liner a little bit better and you can definitely tell they're packing it in thick right here and this is the most important area of the pond because that's where all of the water pressure is going to be pushing down on this clay blanket right here in this 12 foot depth so we finally ran into a small snag a couple of the loads of clay that got dumped had big chunks of rock in it so rather than risking it and leaving that rock in it the guys decided to get on the excavator and dig that area out and then we're gonna go back in with some good clay so they've just about spread the clay to the island here on the second day so we're still on track and on schedule and they're gonna spread that clay to just above the water line on the island but not completely cover it because it's harder for grass to grow in clay than it is that sandy material that we have out here so so far the only plans we have for the islander we're going to plant it in grass and get some pet ducks that we hope are going to use it to stay away from the predators and then possibly plant a single oak tree in memory of that big fallen oak but if you guys have any better ideas of something we should build initially there were some comments about building a bridge and i kind of agree with a lot of other people that said don't build the bridge because that would just let the predators get on the island and it would defeat the purpose of the ducks sleeping out there so we're not going to build a bridge but if you guys have any other ideas of something we might build on the island leave them down below so the packer has done a really good job at getting everything compacted like it's supposed to be but i found the best way to get clay packed in there really tight and that's have a few hundred seventy thousand pound trucks drive over it man that stuff is packed in as tight as it can get there's no way that water is gonna make it through that but as you can see that's that good clay material if you ever wanna know if you got good clay just ball it up in your hand and if it stays in a ball it's good if it falls apart it's too sandy everything got dried out really quick and it's turning into a dust bowl around here and let's go take a look at the road system that these trucks are using to come in and out so initially we tried to build a single road that was wide enough for both trucks but they were having an issue squeezing by in a couple different spots so you can see we built them another little small road right there through the peanut field and that's definitely helped with the production so we're almost through with the second day here we've averaged a little over 150 trucks a day but unfortunately that big thunderstorm finally came through and you can see here these last few trucks they're going to really struggle to get out and it wasn't so bad whenever they were running on top of the sand because it just lets that water go right through but trying to drive on this slick clay is a completely different story and the guy at the clay pit called and said he was having the same issues so unfortunately we have to shut the project down for today and the last truck needed just a little bit of a nudge to get out but now that we've gotten this far along with the clay we no longer need that road on the other end of the pond so you can see the excavators in there digging that road out making it a little bit deeper and from here on out we're just gonna have the trucks come in and out of the same entrance so take a look at that guys our first rain and the pond is holding water that is definitely what you want to see let you know you got the right kind of clay a good compaction and we finally got some water in the peanut pond and speaking of peanuts let's check in on them and see what the peanuts are looking like they're getting there a couple more weeks i'll be ready got about 20 to 30 more trucks to go we got to get the back side of that island and then this part of the road that they've been driving in on so now that we closed off one entrance we're just backing each truck in and as the guys say out here it's like painting yourself out of a pitcher but they just got finished with clyde's cove and just for an update after this clay blanket is completely done the very next step is going to be to go in with the vertical drain pipe and that pipe is going to have a valve on it so as soon as we close that valve which will probably be this coming week that's when we're going to start filling the pond up with water so next week we'll see the final pipe get installed we'll also start setting the structure in the pond like the big oak throne so that'll get put into place as well as all of the other pieces of the oak tree that we saved the limbs and things that are going to go in the shallow end we're going to go in and set all of those and tie them down with bricks and rope that way they don't float back up so we'll also be getting that will installed and potentially pumping some water in so we're right here at the end and it's getting pretty exciting now we're coming into that last shallow stretch of the pond they're putting a few loads in the area where he dug that dock out and there it is guys the very last truck is coming somewhere right around 850 i have to go count them up but i can't believe we got it done in three days a big shout out to all the crew the clay pit guys the truck drivers and the pond builders got a lot of work done in three days so i was reading through some of the comments yesterday and benjamin says hopefully it's ready for water because you got a perfect opportunity coming and that's fred with 9 000 truckloads of water and he is dead on so tropical stormfred or what's left of him is coming directly at us and for those of you that have been around a couple of years you can remember right after we built the last backyard pond hurricane gordon came through like five or six days later and flooded it and created all kinds of erosion problems so we've been there and done that but hopefully fred won't be too bad on us i'm not so worried about the clay areas i'm really just concerned about the dam because it doesn't have grass established on it yet and i don't want a big heavy rain to come through and wash it all away now let's take a look at some of the game camera footage soybeans are a buck magnet goodness look at all the bucks out there i definitely think that the bucks prefer the soybeans over the peanuts and the coyotes coming back through again and you can definitely tell that the bird migration has begun i have seen thousands of birds out here today man look at that so we're going to do something a little bit different in this video normally we would show a moby feeding video right at the end but four years ago to this exact day bonnie clyde and sheriff were in the 300 gallon aquarium feeding and check them out man they were so small back then and unfortunately we lost the big bluegill named sheriff i'm pretty sure heron got him back during the winter time so you can tell that bonnie and clyde aren't quite as aggressive as moby is but i'd forgotten all about this clip of clyde check this out [Music] guys clyde just knocked water out of the tank and here's a current look at what bonnie and clyde look like today you can tell they've definitely put on the pounds sorry moby we skipped you this time we'll get you in the next video so in the last video i showed you a new bull frog that was showing up at the pond and now he's become a regular every night he sits out here right around this rock so i've let you guys name all of the pets from day one why don't you go ahead and leave a name for the new bullfrog garden all right folks that's going to wrap up this video make sure you're subscribed we got a lot of interesting things coming up with a tropical storm out in the gulf and the pond only been a couple of days away from completion so the next few days should be exciting but thanks for following along i hope you all enjoyed this one and we will see you all next time

Channel: BamaBass

Views: 471,815

Rating: 4.9652195 out of 5

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Id: 8yt0heEw_CU

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021