Building a Small Pond in Very Sandy Soil

all right well we're just moved in on the next little pond job and uh this one's going to be another you know what i would call a pothole it's not even going to be as big as that one down there but just uphill from the neighbors pond you can see where they've kind of gone through and marked this little back end corner they want that to kind of curve around the stakes kind of come back in a little bit actually you can see the shape where you killed the grass that's the shape of the bank that he wants to just kind of have that little curvature in but other than that it's just going to be a square pond so that's kind of the extent of it over there there's a corner over here and then there's a corner you know back here behind me to my right so [Music] [Music] anyway we're just setting up on it this morning um as far as getting in and figuring it all out so i'm gonna go through first off and i'm just gonna kind of cut the perimeter just to mark it and shape it and then that way the landowner you know he's here they're only here on the weekend so i want to make sure and get the pond at least shaped while they're here and then they can say you know yeah we like it uh and then once i once i get that shape determined i'll start stripping off all the top soil we'll stack it all we'll stack most of topsoil he wants this low spot just kind of filled in a little bit down here um just so it's not so steep when they come through and mow and then the rest of the topsoil we're going to put over here he's going to use it be able to be able to push it out and kind of build more of a basin because where he's putting this pawn is really kind of kind of on top of the hill um i tried to tell him just to put a you know pawn bank right down there but he he wanted to dig the hole and have it be a dug hole instead so okay you know whatever um so he'll be able to have all that topsoil and he'll be able to just you know waste it and be able to kind of extend the basin because just looking right out here you can see it that's kind of the high point where those couple little trees are at that's kind of a high point then it tips off the other way so he's gonna have to do some some grade work to you know encourage water to run into the pond because he just doesn't have a whole lot of natural uh basin here that he's where he wants to put the pond so anyway let me start to get this perimeter cut and uh we'll give you some updates along the way all right so we've shaped out our perimeter so you can see now our little curvature we bow out there and i kind of i swung that corner a little bit wider than the head stake just so it's a nice round um but then squared it off round out this corner this whole edge is basically squared off round out that corner a little bit square it off and then here we have another one of these bulges so this one the round it doesn't really square off in between it rounds out all the way so you can see it's got this i don't know what you call this mickey mouse ears you know two the bulge over there and a bulge over here and it's just a little flat spot in between i don't know if they're planning on putting like a little you know pavilion or something here on this piece or if they want to put a dock there um but i've got the rough shape done and then i've just got right here in the middle where i know it's gonna be deep where i'll dug me a little test hole we've only got like 18 inches of topsoil here and then we hit good clay so that's really great um i'm gonna be able to get them a good little bit of topsoil out of here but then it's gonna be on clean clay so stripping back the top so it won't take me too long like i said i'm going to be pile on top soil but waste it down there in that low spot um honestly with a little bit i got here i'll probably just waste it all down there in the low spot and then he can pack it with his tractor to to put it over here if he wants to you know build a little levee or whatever to help direct water flow but i need to figure out where they want to you know what this little shape is for where they want to put a dock and whatnot because they're digging this pond purely for recreation they said they want to have a fishing hole maybe a swimming hole and so i need to know exactly what they want in that aspect so that i can help shape the pond because i told them you know i'll build in some benches and some shelves and stuff like that to get more fish structure so anyway for now i'm gonna get all the topsoil stripped off of it and i'll start deepening and rounding out this end and hopefully they'll come back and tell me what to do well we ran into a bit of a problem and you can see now a what looks like a total mess um i started in on right in here on this end of the pond and i i started digging a little you know test hole just to see what we had for the soil profile and i went down through about 18 inches of topsoil and then hit clay and so i was like all right we got clay we're good to go i didn't go into the clay i just said there's clay so i opened up the whole shape of the pond i stripped all the top soil off over there and then i started on that end and i went to get me a big bite of clay and i broke through the clay pretty much instantly and hit sand again so we have 18 inches of topsoil about 12 to 18 inches of clay and then we hit sand so to give you an idea of the profile i mean i've buried the topsoil there now but basically that's topsoil that's clay and then red sand and now we're down on uh tan sand and right below that we hit a white sugar sand so i started i went as deep as i could over there well it went down to like almost 20 feet and it just sand all the way down we came over to this end we dug a similar test hole sand down to it was down to nine feet and we just said well it's going to keep going so this is a big uh really kind of screw up on my part and i i feel like an idiot because this pond down here can't really see it behind the top soil but it doesn't hardly hold water and you can see well that gives you a little better idea of it and i thought well you know he's he's down the hill maybe and and you can see there's a natural draw down through there so i thought well who knows you know maybe that one's just got problems and we talked to a neighbor the day i came and looked at this that's his house right over there so he's got a little pond in here somewhere and he said oh yeah no problem he said man i you know went through gumbo and down through clay and then more gumbo and he said i didn't hit any sign of sand until about 15 feet i thought okay we're good to go but not the case here i looked up after we discovered this today i looked at the homeowner's uh well report which that's his pump house right there and sure enough one foot of topsoil two feet of clay and sand down to 35 feet is what the driller said so that's not gonna work our hope our original plan on this pond was to you know slope in just like i've been doing them slope into about four to five feet and then drop straight off down to about 10 to 12. we're not going to be able to do that on this one because we just don't have well yeah we just don't have the clay to do it we don't have enough surface area and we don't have enough clay so we're going to have to just slope it in you know 45 degrees as best we can all the way down to the to the middle this is all clay sort of material this is all clay material it's still not going to be enough to to line the whole thing um so we are going to have to bring in some clay which you know we're looking at options on on how much it was going to be to haul it in and or you know what what our options were as far as doing like bentonite pellets or doing like a rubber liner or something like that and ultimately just trucking in clay is gonna be the most cost effective and the most realistic so i'm gonna finish rough cutting i'm shut down for today um he said he wanted this white sand or tan sand or white sand below it uh and he was thinking about putting sand all the way around the perimeter of the pond just you know aesthetic i don't know i'm kind of running out of places to put stuff to be honest with you um so we may discuss that again tomorrow and see if he really thinks he wants to do that or not because excuse me i've only got six hours in it so far and i'm ready to already line clay all back there but like i said the issue is i'm just kind of running out of space to stack stuff so there's uh topsoil this is basically top soil over here too uh just real sandy subsoil it's got some clay mixed in it but it's mostly topsoil really and then yeah the clay is just kind of scattered as i started coming back i started you know shaving off that foot of clay basically and just kind of lining it up along the bank where it needs to go anyway because we're going to have to seal this because even the topsoil is so sandy we're going to seal this all the way to surface otherwise the pond will always stay you know 18 inches down or whatever the topsoil thickness is it'll never get above that level and you'll have this weird pond with just kind of a muddy bank well hey like that and we don't want that we want a pawn that looks nice so yeah uh interesting bit of a challenge i feel like i've done because had i looked every other person i think that's called me i've tried to look for a well report in their area and this guy i just i i guess i've been on a good a run of good ponds and so i didn't even think about it um and sure enough it's glaring right there in my face so yeah definite uh dunce move on my part i feel like an idiot for that not happy with it so oh well we'll be back tomorrow and see how she [Music] goes [Music] [Applause] [Music] do bye [Music] yeah all right so here's the grand reveal on the pond and i gotta say this one was absolutely the most challenging one i've done um and the most involved one i guess i've done i say involved because you can see there's no piles left we went ahead and leveled all the piles and you know my my thing right now that i'm you know offering to people basically is look i'll come in and cut you a hole real quick and then if you got a tractor or dozer you spread the dirt and you know get yourself a real cheap pond but you know he's just got a little he don't have a front end loader on his tractor and i said man these piles are they're going to be a lot of work and so he said well just just waste them and you know we had quite a few man there's a big pile here sandy top soil there's a huge pile of top soil over there there's a little bit of white sand that we left up on top for them they're going to use that just to you know make a little beach area or whatever and he's got a little bit of clay left so i left that piled up but there was a huge pile of sand in here real clay sand and uh just spread all that out into the goal see this whole pond if you look over there this whole thing is sloping that way that whole hill and really they put the pawn in about the worst spot you possibly could really because this is sloping away over here and everything everything is wanting to slope away over here this hill is sloping out towards the road so you know everything's wanting to slope away and so we we tried to waste as much of the dirt around the bank here as we could and he's going to do a lot of work on his box blade to actually try to you know pick this up and make it more like a bowl so that water that falls around the edge of the pond will run in not just what falls right in the pond um anyway you can see we we finished out with our kind of original design just kind of two little bulges coming out there and a little bit on the inside just gives a little character uh and we put a little bench over here for a little um you know spawning spawning bed a little crappie ledge but other than that all the way around it's just smooth down into the pond now the challenge what happened i don't remember if i even talked about this another video we went through about two feet of sandy topsoil about 18 inches of clay and then it was sand sand sand sand all the way down i dug down to about 20 feet hoping that i would hit another bed of clay and it was just still sand so that had us scared um we almost quit on it and filled it back in we shut down for the day that was on saturday we shut down and said well let's look at some options let's think about what we can do started looking for trucks we had a line to buy clay i didn't think it would be enough to to fill everything like we wanted to do but it looks like it now that clay multiplied i think a lot of the sand that was right underneath of it still was pretty heavy in clay and so as i started you know digging and stacking and really trying to preserve that clay i'm just kind of trying to pack some bank here but as i started trying to preserve that clay it kind of multiplied and we ended up you know the polish kept getting bigger and bigger and so um i said well we'll go with it you know and like i said i managed to get it all packed in here and slicked off and i'm walking down in here looking that's a little bit of sand mixed in but that's not a leak um even all the way down here right here where i'm standing i actually dug a hole about 15 feet 20 feet that's where i pulled all that pile of sand out of up there and then threw clay back in on top of it so we had plenty of plenty of clay you know in my mind there's always still just a little bit of nervous like what if what if i missed a spot you know but it's laid in pretty deep this this middle trench again this sand here is the stuff that i spilled it's not sand exposed this middle trench was down to about i'd say 14 feet deep and so it's got at least a foot of clay that i threw back in on top of it and packed in with the bucket of course the other challenge was the banks were too steep for me to really track up and down and when i tried to track up and down them at first they wanted to to kind of break apart and you know the clay didn't want to stick so you know the real issue is the sand this bank that that sand has to stay stuck or the clay has to stay stuck against the sand and that's really the scary part like you look here this is this is scary this is scary that this could be a leak but we've at least got the bottom of it filled enough that the bottom is not going to leak out of it i'm sure of that and so i think as long as we can get a a light rain hopefully to kind of get this clay wet and get it to swell and kind of bond together i think it's going to be just fine but yeah this is the again the most challenging one i've done because of that happen to dig all the sand out and then re-line it with clay and so you know fingers crossed it's all going to work out but like i said i think worst case is if there is a leak it's going to be somewhere along one of these banks and so the pond will the bottom is going to fill up with water they'll have water in it and then if it if it starts leaking we're going to know where to target the leak because of obviously where the water line stays so anyway jump up here on the other side and let you all see it again but interesting interesting i know i'm just talking and i'm kind of kind of rambling but sam left up here on top he's going to spread all that with his box blade just just wasted it you know um i guess i'll show you down here below the edge oh i did one other little thing i did here i built this little terrace to come out because this hillside is starting to come down it does start to go out that way some but they'll catch at least all the water off their property so it'll right now it'll hit this terrace and then it'll come sideways into the pond the same thing he'll he'll go over that with his box blade and just you know round it over and smooth it so it's not it's not gonna look all choppy like that it'll be a nice smooth transition be easy to mow over so down here below you can see where the fence has it's well now you can't really it was where that wood post is right there it was pretty low and so they'd asked me that when i first started so can we can we put a little bit of dirt in there just to you know just so it's not quite so steep when we come through on the mower i said oh don't worry about that we'll take care of that so now this whole thing is is sloped and again it's you know i i rough cut as best i could grade as best i can with rosie and then just track it in but he's got a lot of work to do with his box blade and he's fine with that so yeah very excited another one done i had um 16 and a half hour 17 hours 17 hours in this one with just that just rosie no dozer no tractor assist just rosie and had there been had there been good clay and we wouldn't have to do all that work with bailing out sand and then lining over it that would have saved several hours i would have been done done i mean i finished it yesterday um yeah i'm going to save several hours worth of just farting around to put it nicely is the way i felt like i was doing but it all worked out in the end i guess [Music] you

Channel: Tom Brueggen

Views: 6,460

Rating: 3.9473684 out of 5

Keywords: Farm, homestead, Houston, Texas, east, pineywood, Nigerian, dwarf, goat, timberking, sawmill, beekeeping, pond, canning, prepping, preservation, kids, family, self employed, link belt, DJB, CAT, garden, organic, all natural, forestry, goat farming, breeding, excavator, dump truck, bulldozer, construction

Id: 5EV3fdl2qbQ

Length: 21min 43sec (1303 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020