Est hours/cost

[tld]

Live in central Florida and plan to dig a pond that measures 60 ft by 120 ft. Water table is at 4 ft and I want it to be 5 ft deep. No dam etc, just a hole that will fill with water.
What would be used to dig this? Trackhoe/excavator?
How many hours and cost per hour?
Site is easy access and would not include moving dirt around the property.

Thanks.

 

[MossRoad]

Hire out an experienced trackhoe operator with a dozer to relocated and grade the edges. If you rent the equipment, you will spend more time learning than the experienced operator will doing it. Well worth the money. If you really want to do it yourself, check out insurance to cover the machine(s) should you damage it or drive it into the pond. It would be fun to do it yourself, though. I have rented a very small trackhoe and it was a blast to operate for an afternoon.

 

[rambler]

If I understand right, you will end up with a pond with one foot of water, & 4' high sloped banks?

--->Paul

 

[cowboydoc]

If you want to do it yourself rent an excavator. This will include all the insurance for the machine. If the water table is at 4' once you get down below that you won't even be able to use anything else as the hole will be full of water and mud.

 

[tld]

No, 4 to the water table and down 5 additional feet after that to make it 5 ft deep. 7200 cf of dirt to move. Just trying to get an idea of man /machine hours needed to do this.

 

[Gary_in_Indiana]

An excavator would be one way to do it, certainly.

I think I might lean more toward using an earth mover. A friend of mine built his own to pull behind his tractor for doing ponds and he's pretty happy with it. I think it's really nice, especially for having no plans or blueprints and making it all out of scrap steel. He was pleased enough that when he was all done he even had a decal made up with his name on it for the side just like Cat and the other big boys have. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[MossRoad]

<font color="blue"> If you want to do it yourself rent an excavator. This will include all the insurance for the machine. If the water table is at 4' once you get down below that you won't even be able to use anything else as the hole will be full of water and mud. </font>

Another good thing to do is determine the soil type beneath the pond area. One of the local rental companies will help you get the largest bucket that is practical for that soil type, matched to the machine that you wish to rent. Also, they can get the machines with longer dipper sticks, so you have more reach, but less leverage. This would be advantageous in pond excavation in soft soils, as you could dump the dirt farther from the pond bank and re-located less often.

 

[Hoeman00]

Convert to cubic yards 7200/3 = 2400cu yd.
W/ 2400 cu.yd of dirt and a good size excavator has a 1 cu.yd bucket so if it takes 2 minutes to load bucket,turn, and dump that is 4800 minutes/60 =80 hours/ 8 = 10 days.
In the right conditions u might do a cycle in 1 minute.
This is just a sample so u can see that the slower u work the more time involved and positioning of the hoe for the optimum placement of the spoils is very important.
The rental price for hoes is usually linear meaning a 1 yd machine is $200/day and a 2 yd machine is $400/day so the price will end up about the same only the amount of time u spend doing it.

 

[OkeeDon]

OK, time for some math homework. 60 x 120 area = 7200 square feet, times 9 feet deep, = 64,800 cubic feet, if it had straight up and down sides. Which it won't. Recommended slope in a Florida pond is 3:1. If your pond is a perfect square (which it won't be), The only part that would be 9 feet deep would be a strip 6' wide by 66' long. The rest of it will be an average of 4.5' deep. The corners will be curved, which will reduce the actual amount of dirt to be removed, but let's stay with the swuare corners and over-estimate it just to be safe (and because it's easier).

So, let's refigure the amount of dirt. The deepest part will be 6' x 66' x 9', or 3564 cu ft. The sloped sides will be 27' x 120' x 2 (for the 2 long sides) + 27' x 6' x 2 (for the 2 ends), 0r 6804 sq ft, x 4.5' average depth, which is 30618 cu ft. Adding them together, the total cubic feet is 3564 + 30618, or 34182.

Now, to convert to cubic yards, divide by 27. The total cubic yards are 1266.

As I said, that would be for square corners - a little less for round courners, a little less for an inrregular shape. In fact, if it was a really irregular, there would be very little of it that would reach the depth of 9'.

You can cut down on the yardage a little by going with less slope (flatter) above the water line, which will also make it easier to mow. My contractor is going with 5:1 above the water line, 3:1 below it. However, the flatter the slope, the less chance you have to reach the depth.

Remember that your water table is going to vary. It may not vary as much up where you are, but down here in Okeechobee, our water level a couple of days ago varied from zero to -2" (this is on my son-in-law's improved property next door, where portions of his 2-1/2 acres were ankle deep after several repreated rain storms; I have some deeper spots, but I don't have my pond and drainage in yet). His pond was about 1'. In the dry season, that will be 6' to 8' lower. Down here, at 9' from the surface, your pond would be a mud hole part of the year. I'm planning about the same thing, maybe a little wider (80-85') in order to get to the depth, but I plan to have the water level held constant by pumping from the well in the dry season.

 

[Hoeman00]

Still 64,800/27= 2400cu yd for the main area.
The biggest factor is the time it takes to make a cycle w/ the hoe.
I just wanted to let him see a rough guess on figuring time.
W/ the extra for the slope it could take 7 1/2 days for 1 minute/cycle to 22 1/2 days for 3 minutes/cycle.
One of the best things to do is dig a couple of test holes to the 9' depth and go a couple years to see the variation.
Before I dug mine which is in the aquafier I had a test hole for 5 years and the SCS/FS said it wouldn't work too much variation.
But after the '88 drought it dropped a 6" so I went ahead and dug.