mucking my pond

case245 · Jun 2, 2013

I want to or try to muck my pond with my 7040 the muck is 4 feet deep or maybe more I took a truck load out in an hour an a half in the swallow part bout 2 feet deep the big part is 400 feet long and 150 ft wide I cant afford to rent a large dozer or shovel

daugen · Jun 2, 2013

how deep is the water in the deep end over the thicker muck?

wonder if there would be a way to pull a drag bucket of some sort from one side to the other. Or an old broken snow plow
bent into a scoop and then dragged... Just drive a long line around the end of the pond and pull from the other side.
likely a dumb idea

pjbci · Jun 2, 2013

I hope somebody has a good solution here for this. I did the math on it and came up with 635, 14yd truckloads. Thats an almost impossible task with the time it took for one load. I have a pond roughly half this size that has muck about the same depth as yours. I plan to pull it out with my tractor and dirtpan when it dries enough to work. Like i said, i hope somebody has a good idea here because maybe it will save me some time also. Good luck with your project.

case245 · Jun 2, 2013

12 feet deep how would you keep it straight and drag with what a 8500ib tractor wont do it

case245 · Jun 2, 2013

it might be more then 4 ft of muck the ponds been there 29 years it was 16 feet deep now its 8 12 ft deep max the Kubota wont hold up to that kind of abuse its red sand and clay

BleedingOrange · Jun 2, 2013

Would dynomite work ? LOL It would make for some great video.

dave1949 · Jun 2, 2013

Can you pump it down with a trash pump or open up the outlet/overflow to drain the pond? Hard to make suggestions without pics.

DKCDKC · Jun 2, 2013

I'm facing digging out a silted up, three-quarter acrea pond on a healthy stream. Those around here who have done it advise just draining the pond and letting it dry, then hiring a contractor for a day to dig it out. My CUT just isn't up to that kind of work. Fortunately my pond has a drain - if I can find it in the mud. Some neighbors just rented a trash pump for a while and drained theirs that way. I'm going to pile the material in a large pile next to the pond - as I did when I built the pond. I then nibble away at the pile for fill for various projects - I always need fill. Only negative is that draining the pond will kill the last of the fish there - but the herons have got most of them in the shallow water anyway.

muddstopper · Jun 2, 2013

The easiest way is going to be to drain the pond first. If you have access to a drag line, then greatl, but the mud you stirup with the dragline will kill the fish anyways. Once the pond is drained, let it dry out for a few days before starting work. Start at the shallow end and scoop the mud down to hard earth. My pond is on bedrock so once dug back down to bedrock, I can put a truck in the pond area to load and hual if I have to. I suspect somewhere the bottom of your pond should be pretty firm as well. I would open one single trench from shallow end to the drain, thru the middle of the pond before working toward each side. This will facilitate water drainage out of the rest of the muck. Expect water to build up as you dig, at least until you get your trench dug from one end to the other where the drain is. Might want to keep a check on grease in the wheel bearings if you get water levels that high.

jinman · Jun 3, 2013

Here is a small dry pond.

Here is my tractor searching for the bottom of this "dry" pond.

Here is the track loader I hired and the true depth of the muck.

Don't ever think that mucking a pond is a trivial matter. If you can't afford the right equipment, can you afford to have your tractor stuck in the bottom of the pond with a big rainstorm on the way? Just a thought. . . Good luck and be careful.

case245 · Jun 3, 2013

jinman may I ask how much did that run to get a dozer in there to clean it out and how big is your pond

Depmandog · Jun 3, 2013

Jinman, how long had your pond been dry? I suspect a guy could drain his pond in the early spring (even cutting open the dam), and still find muck / mud under a dry crust in late fall.

OP, you have a huge project in front of you. Please bring in the right equipment, such as a wide tracked excavator sitting on swamp mats as a suggestion.

pjbci · Jun 3, 2013

When i clean out an old pond for a customer i usually drain one year then go to work the next summer and its almost always still difficult to work in spots with a wide track dozer.

jinman · Jun 4, 2013

case245: My pond is about 125' x 200' because it has a little peninsula sticking into it on one side. It was built in 1941 as a fish breeding pond for the soil conservation lake we have. It had silted in for 65 years before starting. The dozer I hired was essentially $1000 per day. He was here for 2-1/2 days and my bill was $2425. I wasn't really happy with the work because the young operator had never done a pond before and I had to tell him how to get started. His boss didn't show up until about noon on the first day and never returned after that. With track loader, you can dig fine, but the muck wants to stick in the bucket. He spent probably 1/4 of his time cleaning out the bucket. I also had a place for spoils immediately outside of the pond. I think a dozer would have been better because you could start at the edge and work across with straight pushes. That's what another dozer operator with lots of pond experience had suggested. Anyhow, after 2-1/2 days, the job was still rough and unfinished, but the operator had to go to a contract job building pads in the oil/gas fields where they were contracted. I did a tremendous amount of work by myself on the banks and dam (my avatar is from that). My tractor did a lot of work, but the muck was out of the pond and there was no danger of being stuck; just long hours of hauling load after load up and out. In the end, I am very satisfied with the result.

Dean: That pond had been bone dry for six months. It was so dry on top that I could easily drive my nearly 6000 lb tractor across the surface. However, down 18" and the "pie crust" turned to filling. The more muck there is in a pond, the worse this situation is because the crusting surface will prevent evaporation and all that water will be sitting in the muck. I don't think it would have completely dried up in two years. That's about how long it took for all the spoils to dry after they were piled about 10' high.

pjbci: That's exactly why they used to use draglines for ponds. However, draglines are now rare. These days an excavator with a long reach arm is preferred. If I ever redo my job, I'll get it done with an excavator, but I'll have to build a better access road because big equipment requires lots of room to maneuver.

case245 · Jun 4, 2013

i wouldn't let a youg guy start to dig if he showed up I grow up on a cat 943b if I could get my hands on one I could do it myself just got to to watch you don't start to sink if you do you need to put trees under the tracks

case245 · Jun 4, 2013

my ponds 400ft by 160 wide that 943b dig it took 2 years when my paps was not working

pjbci · Jun 4, 2013

Heres a couple of pics of muck in a pond that was allowed over a year to dry. Notice the left side of tractor is on good firm soil and the right is out of sight. It was just a small damp spot that we had run back and forth over all day pulling out a layer at a time. Then this happened. Two bulldozers, a backhoe, numerous broken chains and half a day later we got back to work.