Farm Pond: Laying Pipe and Starting The Dam. Part 4 of ?

hey there welcome back to Farm Craft my name is John we are building a pond and here's a quick recap we cleared the site and piled up all the brush then pushed the topsoil off and truck that out then I prep the dam area and dug the keyway then I push the remaining topsoil off of the bed of the pond and then started pushing clay to fill the keyway and now we're ready to put in some pipe this is a critical step because right now the water doesn't have anywhere to drain to and if it were to rain the whole site would turn into a giant mess the pipe is going to give the water a way out so here's the deal this is right smack in the middle of the keyway and this is right where the pipe is going to go that's kind of the natural valley of this hollow and then I went over that pile on the other side I stacked some rocks right there to Market and that's where the the natural runoff goes so that's where my pipe is going through so it's about time I showed you what we're building here so this is the hillside it's in a natural depression and water would run from out from here into the page and down the hill um before I started and I'm gonna damn it up I'm gonna stack dirt all in there so that the water doesn't have any way out so if we take this this is kind of the front view of the dam put f for front and then we'll go to a side view so looking from this direction who am I writing is terrible looking from this direction this portion here turns sideways is this here so there's going to be a 10 foot wide level strip right across the top so that you can drive across the top of the dam and it's about 10 feet tall the final height remains to be seen we'll see how things go now you want a three to one slope here so I need to come from this 10 feet I need to come 30 feet three to one and meters wise is about divide by three so ten feet would be about 3 meters and 30 feet would be about 10 meters so 30 feet plus the 10 plus the 30 is 70 total so I need 70 feet of pipe to span the base of the dam right in the middle and this 35 here that I've drawn in is just if you go from the actual Center because it's 70 feet divided by 2 is 35 feet on either side so hope that makes sense so what we're going to do here we're going to put a pipe and this is six inch schedule 40 PVC and really I would I drew it above just for clarity but it would be kind of at grade here and then it's going to have some slope as it comes here so that the water doesn't pull in the pipe you want the water to flow through this pipe and then you need a t to set your water levels so the water level is going to be you know somewhere like that so we're going to have a standpipe that comes up right there and when I'm building it I'm going to install this pipe but anytime what it rains and water tries to come behind the dam it collects in this area it's going to have access to that pipe and it's just going to run through the dam and out when I'm done building the dam and it's time to start filling the pond all you have to do is put a cap on this pipe block that opening and then the water is going to fill up until it gets to this height which of course you cut that pipe off at the right height so that then the water goes in to the T and out so this section of pipe right here is really just for during construction but it's absolutely necessary because every time it rained you'd end up with a mud pit unless you have a way to drain it so that's what that's going to do so that's what we're doing today we're going to install this 70 feet of pipe and this standpipe now my standpipe I'm going to make it 12 feet it you know I certainly won't need more than 12. um I'll end up cutting it off and I've got 100 feet of pipe they come in 20 foot sticks so four of them will give me 80 feet so I'm going to be sticking out on the end here and we can cut that off later but if I want to add additional height to the dam then I can do basically that and I've got enough pipe over here sticking out off the page to accommodate for that so there you go clearer's mud clear as clay so I need to dig a trench with a decent slope for for the water and the pipe is gonna the end of the pipe should be about right here at 35 feet so then it'll be down in the ground here and I'm going to dig all this out to make kind of like a sediment Pole so that that has to fill up before the pipe starts taking any water so then the whole time I'm working on this any rain will collect to this point this will be the low point and then just go in the pipe and go down [Music] what I'm digging through here is all that Rocky material that I didn't want in the middle of my dam I initially had thought that was a rock pile often Farmers especially in the old days would just pick an area and put all their field of stone in one spot just to get it out of the field and I thought that's what I was digging through but once I realized it it just kept going deeper and deeper and deeper it was just a seam of rock that was unusual for how the rest of the area is but anyway this is where it ended up and my pipe needs to go through this area so I'm just getting it out of the way all right [Music] foreign [Music] so here I really start digging the trench uphill is to the left downhill is to the right and I'm just trying to eyeball the The Trenches I dig it to give the pipe a little bit of slope you want the the water to drain you don't want any standing water in it okay foreign so here's the uphill end of the trench and now I'm digging out a sediment pool just above it there's a really thick layer of good brown clay here that's going to be good for the dam and then as soon as I hit red clay unfortunately shortly after I hit some Bedrock it's kind of like a clay shale that really wasn't in the plan but we'll see how things go thank you pretty hazy yeah that's more smoke from those Canadian wildfires that holding Pond is probably at least six feet deep that's about two meters and then here's the trench and the pipe's going to go right through the dam right there but it's pretty late now Sun's going down we'll get that pipe in there tomorrow but this is really nice because even if we had a real downpour all the water is going to end up right here and that's not where I need to work obviously it would run over I mean I don't want it to rain but uh at this point if it were to rain it wouldn't be that bad and even if it was a torrential downpour it would come to here and then it would go through my ditch and it would find its way out without turning my entire work side into a mud pit and here's our pipe this is six inch schedule 40 PVC this is not foam core it's solid pretty tough stuff 20 foot sticks I wish I could have gotten the bell end but I've got to use couplers still it was uh the pipe in all the fittings was a thousand bucks which was by far the cheapest that I found another place wanted 1500 just for the pipe 100 feet of pipe no fittings good day today made some real progress see you tomorrow the Wildfire smoke is back unfortunately so you may see me wearing a mask some this Smoke Gets to me after a little while but I just eyeballed this trench and I think I got pretty lucky because I've got a pretty good slope on it the whole way you want at least a quarter of an inch of drop per foot I believe it is but I've got way more than that I've probably got half inch in most places if not more so we're going to put our first stick in and then a t and then we're going to come up well actually I'll put the T and then we'll go ahead and finish out the the drain pipe and then I'll come back and we'll put the standpipe in and then pack dirt around it to keep that stand pipe level and then we can fill in this trench and the pipe will be in and we'll be ready for rain that's nice so here's our schedule 40 PVC for those of you who aren't familiar schedule 40 is just a rating it has to do with wall thickness how much pressure it can handle blah blah blah why is it schedule 40 I have no idea I'm sure there's a reason but there's schedule 20 which is like weak you can bend it with your hand there's schedule 40 and then there's schedule 80 which is really tough and thick so um you know you may as well call it grade one two and three this is grade two there's probably more than just those three but those are the most common ones the ones that I've come across let's lay some pipe man that's even bigger than I'm used to I sincerely apologize one day I hope to graduate Middle School six and a half inches that is within spec all right so that's also six and a half so that's good it's hot today it's always a little bit stressful glue in PVC and it's important that these uh these don't leak because if water can get in here and leak out that's going to make a channel for the water to try to work its way along the pipe and make the whole Pond leak so you really want these joints to be good so plenty of glue and give them a good twist and then hold them until they're set foreign let go too soon it'll start backing out so don't first joint down the rest of them it's the same deal I just use a coupler instead of a t so glue one side glue the other side I'm going to do the stand pipe obviously I don't want a 20-foot stick sticking up there I'm going to do 12 feet that'll be manageable but it's actually quite a bit longer than I need but I'd rather have it a little long you cut it off later when you really have your Dam built and you know exactly what your water line is thank you [Music] all right on the standpipe that'll do it so how did I choose a six inch pipe for this Pond well let's go take a look at my pond for a second and I'll explain all right so here we are back home and this is my pond and we're looking at the back side of my dam that I need to mow but I do mow it at least once a year and keep all the trees off of it so your drainage pipe you have to size it based on the drainage area that the pond is is basically serving and my pond I got on Google Earth and I looked at elevations and I found that approximately 250 Acres drains to this Pond and that is a big catchment area that's a lot of water if it drains an inch an hour for four hours straight which I've seen it do that is a ridiculous amount of water to the point that trying to put a pipe in here that is going to handle that you know 100 year flood kind of condition is cost prohibitive I mean you'd be talking about a pipe that was six feet in diameter two meters it would just be ridiculous to try to do that now what you're seeing there is a trash rack that I've got a cattle panel around to protect it from beavers trying to jam it up but um underneath that there is a 16 inch schedule 40 PVC standpipe 16 inch rather than six and the horizontal pipe which is right here that is a 12 inch schedule 40 PVC pipe the reason for that is because a pipe that's in a vertical position tends to suck a lot of air and swirl and turbulence and it's going to have trouble filling a 12 a pipe at the same size as it so if I put a 12 inch standpipe this pipe would never fill up because it's not going to be able to draw enough water to fill up this horizontal pipe a 16 inch pipe will fill up a 12 inch pipe if that makes any sense so why didn't I do that on his well because the six inch pipe I think is is plenty and it doesn't need to fill up to handle it because the catchment area of his pond is about 10 acres it's probably less than that so this Pond has the potential to see 25 times as much flow as his now his pond is on steeper ground it has to rain quite a lot before this Pond starts really showing an increase in flow because there's a bunch of mature fields and woods and everything that are draining to this point they absorb a lot of that water now his is on a steep hill there's a lot of clay there's not a lot of topsoil it runs off very quickly so his reaches Max flow very easily mine rarely reaches Max flow if that makes any sense but obviously this pipe is not big enough to handle the hundred year flood and that's where the spillway comes in that's what this is over here and I'm going to put a Spillway in on his as well my Spillway needs to be huge so we're coming down off of the dam now onto this flat area now this is not built up ground this is virgin ground and they just cut it flat with a dozer it's 60 feet wide and the most I've ever seen is about six to eight inches of water on this entire Spillway running into the woods right there so imagine six inches of water covering this entire thing and it runs like a river and that's why the pipe is flowing and yeah that gives you an idea how much water and how big your pipe would have to be to handle anything it's just not worth the expense to try to do that a Spillway you can cut it gets used intermittently it's relatively cheap and it protects your Dam now why is this so necessary because if water ever goes over your Dam and starts running it's going to take out your Dam the dam is just packed clay so if the water starts cutting a channel it's going to get through the roots of the sod and into just clay and just start washing it away and the lower it gets the more the rapidly the water is going to flow and it's just going to carve a channel right to the base of your Dam and it'll be gone you might think it'd be good to put let some trees or something grow on it to um to help protect it from erosion like that the problem is is like we've discussed those trees leave roots and when the tree dies the roots make water channels and it it basically permeates your Dam so that it's no longer waterproof so that's not a good solution either what you really have to do is just never let water no matter what flow across the top of your Dam if it happens just assume your dam is going to be gone and that will make you think very hard about how big does my pipe need to be how big does my Spillway need to be and the spillway is really what matters I mean if your pipe's too small your Spillway is going to be used too often and if it's used too often you might get erosion there and you will have a problem but if your Spillway is only flowing you know once a month or once every couple months something like that it's gonna you know the vegetation on it is going to be fine for that and you can deal with any little erosion you have by just putting some Stone where it erodes that kind of thing and for the most part you'll be fine but just make sure your Spillway is wide enough and low enough from the top of the dam that it's never going to flow on the dam itself so we'll talk more about the spillway when I get to building his but that's the reason I chose a six inch pipe four inch was not enough six inches is going to handle almost all the rain events that he has but some of them it will get overwhelmed and that's when the spillway will come into play so in case that wasn't clear under normal conditions water just flows into the pond and goes out of the standpipe right here once the flow of water becomes too great for the standpipe to be able to accommodate it in other words more water is coming in than the standpipe is able to put out then the water level is going to start to rise the water level of the pond at standpipe conditions is 12 inches below the spillway so once it rises 12 inches then the spillway starts to flow that allows some of that additional water that the pipe's not able to handle to get around the dam and if the flow is too great then even though the spillway is Flowing it will continue to rise and that's like what I was saying I've seen it about six to eight inches of water on the entire spill away flowing which is just a astounding amount of water I actually have an older video on this if you want to see it I will leave a link here and in the description but that's the beauty of a Spillway it's always there it's always ready to go it's not going to clog it's not going to wear out and as long as it doesn't erode and it's not being used too often it will protect your Dam all right enough yakin let's get back to work two more joints to glue now if you can get the pipe with a bell end what that means is one end of the pipe flares out and the other end of the pipe the narrow end will go into the wide end and uh you only have one joint to glue doing a coupler you got to glue both sides so it's kind of annoying but I couldn't get that pipe wasn't even available let alone just more expensive there's something kind of cool about working knowing that where you're standing is going to either be underwater or under like 10 feet of dirt you know this is all very accessible right now but it's soon to be no man's land kind of cool all right the pipe is in now I'm going to backfill but I just want to make sure there's no really big rocks against it going to be a lot of pressure there if you have a big old rock right on this pipe over time it could potentially cause issues [Music] thank you [Music] thank you so let me just tell you there's nothing like digging by hand on a hot Smoky day wearing an n95 yep I love that still going to use my Precision level and there's nothing that quite makes you appreciate an excavator like going from digging by hand to using the machine man I love my excavator [Music] foreign we've made pretty good progress we are ready for rain at this point still problems with the Dozer and I'm going to tackle those tomorrow I think it just needs a new filter and I got one today but I wanted to get this pipe in so that we're ready in case it does rain so tomorrow we will get the Dozer running and we will start adding some height to this and make this look like a dam MIT all right I am going to change out this fuel filter here and uh the dozer's got ten and a half hours on it since uh since I put that filter on there I'm gonna go with Napa this time these were 10 bucks that was like 20. actually 11 and probably like 18 or 19 something like that but really it's the convenience napas are all around and I can drive to one in 10 minutes whereas the the Cat dealer is much further and I I really hope it's the filter man this thing is something else this fuel tank is empty so I'm going to dump the filter into there because I have nothing else to dump it into but I want to see how nasty it is let's see how we look actually it doesn't look that bad all right and I don't have a marker to write but uh I do have a video it's uh 10 and a half hours on the machine when I last change the fuel filter oh except I forgot to pre-fill it and that is not going to work so we'll be doing that again okay all right I just discovered something two things actually one good one kind of heartbreaking so um I went to bleed it and this and this both were loose now it's possible that I just forgot to tighten them last time but I don't think so it wouldn't have run right and it ran for quite a while since I last bled it I think I just didn't tighten them enough these things are kind of they're a little wobbly and I'm trying not to crank them down any tighter than I have to because I keep having to bleed this thing but obviously I I went a little too easy on it and they loosened up that's probably why it wasn't running right um the heartbreaking thing is right there it's cylinders leaking this is the one that I didn't replace the rod the rod had a couple Nicks on it that really I smoothed them out it really seemed like it was nothing and it's leaking and it's the gland seals that are leaking so it's the seal that rubs against the rod it wouldn't have had anything to do with the difficulty in getting it out that's the Piston seal uh it's not weak you know it if the Piston seal was bypassing it would probably be weak yeah you know it doesn't happen often but this is this is going to happen when you work on stuff you're gonna fix something and you're gonna have to turn around and fix it again and sometimes it's something like this where you're just like what the heck did I just get a bad seal I don't know tell you what though sometimes I hate seals yeah I mean a new Rod is 65 bucks I've done one sounds like I got another one in my future oh and then one more thing to look at here let me point out the oil pan right there is nice and dry but on the other side see above it there's a little bit of oil not too bad but below it there's a lot and I think I think I'm leaking and it might be coming from above yeah because that's that's a billy too where is that coming from well you know what they say she doesn't leak oil she bleeds power see you tomorrow all right moment of truth is this thing going to start it's got a new fuel filter on it the screen is clear and I've bled all the lines hopefully this thing's going to run for me today without any issues I have a big pile of good clay here and I'm going to push it over the pipe there I want clay right around the pipe you don't want water to be able to seep along it and then after I get the pipe covered I'm going to take all that lesser quality stuff and kind of spread it out on the back side of the dam kind of start to pitch the dam like that and um then we're going to start building it up [Music] here it just started getting smoke after bleeding it I think a lot of times it's it needs a little bit of cranking just to get the fuel there and I think there's also there must be some air in the pump or something that I'm not able to get out very well bleeding because usually it'll kind of sputter and spit for a little while and then take off so come on baby start up warming see what I mean I gotta get this fuel tank issue fixed because bleeding these lines is of royal pain I'm gonna give it a little help just to get it going many people suggested that I rig up a temporary fuel tank until I get this job done that's a fantastic idea but I don't have anything that I can do that with and obviously I need to have something on hand when issues like this arise so I'll I'll look around and see what I can get but regardless I'm gonna have to wait at this point so I have to deal with this [Music] [Applause] foreign foreign [Applause] foreign I just ran it for about two and a half hours without a hitch so there you go it really helps when you can get fuel to the cylinders so what did I do in two and a half hours actually not bad I got all that spread out I've left the piles that are near the the keyway that I that's what I need to do next is get the keyway the rest of the way filled in and then I can spread those too and then I also with the whole upper portion of the pond kind of from there on I pushed all the topsoil out of the way and then I made this shelf here for driving from the upper to here I don't think the most efficient thing is going to be using the Dozer yeah if it was a really big Dozer and I could you know push several yards at a time but that thing it's hard to push a yard I think it slips a lot the grousers are a little a little too worn so basically what I'm going to try is dump truck and excavator up there bring the dump truck over here dump spread it out with the Dozer and we'll see how that goes I think that's going to be the most efficient way I'm going to need just about all the clay that I can get out of this Pond to build this Dam so I'm going to start at the top get everything that I can get and then work my way back actually before I do that I want to take a little time and work on the back of the dam I wanted to find the slope and get it three to one and I also want to pack it in and help prevent it from eroding all right [Music] all right let's take the excavator over to the upper portion and uh then I'll get the dump truck over there and we're going to start hauling some dirt [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign thank you should I jinx myself sure why not running like a top today [Music] Houston we have a problem [Music] yeah I just re-tensioned these tracks a couple days ago this one's holding that was not [Music] [Music] [Music] so this actually wasn't a jinx I kind of expected this to happen when I did the track Adjusters in a previous video I thought I was putting them together correctly but several people in the audience pointed out that I put the backup ring and the O-ring in the opposite orientation of what they should be so I was kind of expecting this to happen foreign had that where you guys could see a big old glob of Grease came out of the front so definitely leaking through the seals here's all my Grease don't worry I'm not just throwing it on the ground now I'm looking up whatever endangered frog is in this area and I'm throwing it directly into their egg nest foreign lady now all that grease is from me just letting it out that is not supposed to be there okay backup rings and O-rings the whole reason for the backup ring is to prevent the O-ring from getting extruded through the opening and that's exactly what happened I need to take this back to my shop it's only a six mile drive and while I'm here I'm going to take the other side off too before it fails and get these things put back together the way they were supposed to be originally we are back at the healing bench this is the one that failed completely nice hmm yeah that's a study and what a backup ring is supposed to do and what happens when you don't have one so the white ring there is the backup ring which is on the wrong side that was an O-ring but it has extruded through and there's pieces of it so that O-ring is done the wiper is going to be fine basically I just need to take all that out and put the O-ring towards the pressure the backup ring behind it so that the backup ring the pressure is coming from this direction and the O-ring is what needs to seal it but the O-ring isn't strong enough obviously it'll extrude through the Gap so the backup ring is behind it backing it up and will prevent it from being able to extrude look at that that O-ring is just gone that's a lesson you never forget there's the new one they're the same size and I just need to get this down in that Groove all right so I want it down towards the pressure and then back up ring so now when the pressure starts pushing on that O-ring the backup ring is going to be there and prevent it from extruding extruding through that Gap so I was hoping I'd open the second one up and find a nice perfect o-ring but it was doing the same thing it just wasn't leaking yet look at that you can see that O-ring was pretty torn up okay let's get back to work feels kind of strange to kind of know what I'm doing when I start into a repair thank you that'll do it all right guys I think you know what's coming next week we need to build a damn Dam and uh hopefully we're gonna do it without any equipment issues or other things getting in the way yeah if you believe that I got some oceanfront property to sell you right on my farm um yeah there's uh there's plenty of challenges that keep uh keep coming at me on this project this is a very big project for the size of the equipment that I have and I'm having a great time with it uh good thing I like a challenge because there's plenty more on the way so thanks for watching guys we'll see you next week [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: FarmCraft101

Views: 116,489

Keywords: farm pond, pond construction, pond dam, building a dam, building a pond, farm pond, farm pond construction, building a pond, building a pond dam, excavator repair, track adjusters, excavator track adjusters, dozer repair, Cat D3, D3 dozer, yanmar excavator

Id: qR51lCbOdR8

Length: 53min 28sec (3208 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023