Need advice on Springtime project (long)

[SPIKER]

Andy:

usually the pond is where the water will drain too, it will lower some durring the dry days and refill durring the wet ones. with it being lower than all the rest of the property it really does not have anyplace to go... making a pond will help dry it out. the water that sets in the pond will be able to get to the road by one of two ways.

1. pumping costly and not recogmended.
2. by putting ina a drain tile and draining it to the ditch is there any culverts crossing the road near you're place>?

the other way would be to use the dirt that is removed and raise the surrounding land enough so that it flows to the road ditch and away... a gravel ditch can help flow the water out too. it may durring a heavy rain flow water to the pond but after it lets up the water will go back as the run off subsides...


have you checked in to WHERE the wires and the septic and such are? You need to know for sure that nothing cross where you want the pond hole first before you think of doing it.

mark M /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[AndyM]

Well, it's been raining the past two days, and now the water is across my driveway AND the neighbor's driveway. I would take a new picture of it, but it's dark out right now.

As Johnny Cash once said, "How high is the water mama?"

During the first two years I owned the property, the water was NEVER more than a 15 foot radius going around the willow tree. Since this past summer, it keeps getting bigger and bigger. It's over 160 feet across right now! At this point last year, I was driving the tractor across there!

5030 Daryl said a couple of hours ago that the snow is headed my way. That's the only thing to my advantage right now-- until it melts, that is... /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Hopefully, I don't get flooded out before I start working on it this spring!

 

[RebelYell]

Brother, I have to agree with you; the weather is way out of whack. I have been told we are 25 inches over normal this past year. You can see from some of my posts that water is my biggest trouble with my property. I have done a great deal to remedy some problems and have many more projects to help with other water problems. I know that as soon as I get all this work completed; then we will have a 10 year drought. I still think a pond will help you. As you have stated this is the lowest spot, so you have no where to put the water. Building a pond will give you a deeper place to manage the water and it will look good most of the time. Yes, you may have it come out of the banks after the monsoon rains we have been having; however, it will get soaked up and evaporate back into the banks of the pond. As of now you have an eyesore; with a pond it will look pretty and somewhat natural, at least a majority of the year. With that being the lowest spot in the area then you really have no choices other than buying a big tanker truck, pumping the water in the tank and hauling it off every time it rains. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[RebelYell]

The former picture is the way I like to see the creek. This is the creek's evil twin.

 

[AndyM]

25 inches-- that sounds about right, judging by the depth of the hole!

I've pretty much decided to dig it out a little and use the dirt to build up the sides to help hold things back when it overflows. Maybe I'll have a better idea by then though! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[weedsportpete]

Can you dig a trench from the pond to the road ditch? Is the road ditch bottom lower than the pond? Someone said the county does not want residents pumping water into a road ditch.. is there a difference between running a trench to it vs. pumping water into it?

 

[bebster]

Theoretically, if the water is 160 feet across and about 3" deep, then you could fit it all in a pond about 15 feet across and 3 feet deep. The point is by taking measurements as you have you can determine the volume of the pond you need to contain the water so that overflow is not an issue except every 10 years or so. Even then if you design the pond with sloping sides, it will just get bigger in the worst years and not be a problem.

 

[AndyM]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Can you dig a trench from the pond to the road ditch? Is the road ditch bottom lower than the pond? )</font>

Weed--
Nope, the lowest point in my road ditch is still higher than the water level. Running a trench to the road was my first idea. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

As Junkman pointed out, the road in front of my property is at the top of a slight crest. It goes slightly downhill in front of each of my neighbors' properties. To keep the water flowing in the ditch, the county has made the ditch in front of my house only about a foot deep. It starts getting deeper the further you go down the road.

To make things more interesting, the ditch on the OTHER side of the road is about 30 inches deep. Too bad I just can't run a pipe under the road! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[AndyM]

That's good advice about figuring in the volume of the water that's currently there.

Hopefully, it will never be this wet again. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif Some of my neighbors have said they have never seen it look like that ever before! As an interesting point, the water is probably over two feet deep right now in the center by the tree. That's a lot of water!

 

[Renze]

Andy M, why cant you put a pipe udner the road ?

I have crossed asphalt roads with pipes...
First, dig a trench that is as long as the road is wide.. than take a metal pipe with the same length and attach a water pump to it.

The pressurised water will wash away the sand in front of it, and if it doesn't, you can push some more with the steel pipe itself. This will cause erosion holes that are bigger than the pipe, and might cause sinkholes in the road.

You can also do it dry, first take a pipe with a reasonable wall thickness, hammer it through the road and then take a hose to spray all the dirt out of the steel pipe.

Both methods were common for the cable guys, 15 years ago, before the underground pneumatic rockets came in use.

 

[Dave___in___CT]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( ...
For my solution, the theory was that the surface soils were less permeable than one of the lower soil levels so I dug a 14 ft. deep hole at the lowest spot and filled that hole with large rocks from the basement excavation.

If you have a porous layer under there somewhere, connecting it to the surface would speed the drainage.

John )</font>

This seems a decent possibility....

At my previous place... had shallow standing water similar to yours...
some topsoil... then clay under it...
It wasn't an issue for me... in the back yard woods...

OK... so I asked the excavator dig a small pond...
About 4' down up came clear sand ! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

So much for the pond ! It all drains now !

Only way is to explore what's underneath the surface...
If it dosen't work out... just fill the hole with the excavated material...

Or... make a huge drywell...


Dave...

 

[dummy]

IMO, if I wanted to keep it dry, I would either install a culvert pipe under the neighbors drive (assuming it slopes to the left)or a "french drain" system composed of perforated pipe, socks, gravel and backfill. Either way, I would ask the neighbor for an easement agreement and would definitely have it filed (at the county) with both deeds. It would be a good idea to get a civil engineer/land planner to do a proposal for any of the options.

 

[AndyM]

I've got one more problem that I forgot to mention. The road ditch stops at the neighbor's driveway. The red arrows show the direction and general pitch of the road and the ditch. Since most of the water runs to the right, I'm probably better off running a pipe under my driveway instead, toward the other direction (the green arrow). It sounds like a good idea, but I'm going to have to research some more information on it.

By the way, after the four additional inches of rain we got Sunday and Monday, the water is out to the blue outline. It was 7 degrees last night, so now it's frozen. The high temperature has dropped 50 degrees in a matter of days. The weather this year is sure strange! /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif