Offered another unusual project

[Hay Dude]

Good stuff !
I like the idea of finding the spring and seeing if it’s obstructed with a lot of debris or vegetation. That could be a simple reason, but theres not many other places for the spring to run to other than the pond.

 

[Hay Dude]

Has the spring silted up?
Would a long reach type digger clean the pond out and unblock the spring?

Re draining roof water, where does existing roof water go?
How much piping is there currently, and is it practical to plug into existing pipe and drain to pond instead? (minimise new pipe)

I like this idea first. Eliminate the easy stuff. Maybe the spring is just silted up and not running freely towards the pond. It may be sitting there evaporating.

 

[sandman2234]

I like this idea first. Eliminate the easy stuff. Maybe the spring is just silted up and not running freely towards the pond. It may be sitting there evaporating.

Or it may be backing up underground and taking an alternate course to one of the other springs in the area, thereby feeding someone else's pond. Water takes the course of least resistance.
David from jax

 

[Streetcar]

Have a long time customer. It's a large acreage HOA with several fields to be hayed and large grass areas to be mowed.
They also have 3 small ponds.
1 pond is spring fed. The spring has unexpectedly dried up. I dont know a lot about the life cycle of springs, so I don't know if they can also come back to life, but it's been on the decline for about a year.
The pond is down to 10-20% (best guess). Water is evaporating, so diminishing with each passing day. There is no other natural water source to replace it nearby. The property owners would like to keep the pond, but are not of unlimited wealth.

Here is the only 2 ways I can think of to replenish the pond:
1. Drill a well. But how much the well gives in GPH is anyone's guess. Very rough estimated cost is about $10,000.

2. The current building the owners live in is uphill from the pond, about 300-500' away in a PUD building of 6 condominium units. Only a small part of the building currently has gutters and downspouts. I was contemplating installing hundreds of feet of 5" gutter, with 3x4 down spouts on the building and running all the down spouts into a continuous rain water retention system. Rather than running the underground pipe into a typical large stone pit, instead run the water directly into the pond.
Realize there's no guarantee it'll rain enough to keep the pond full, but other than that, that's the only reasonable sources of water I can come up with. The roofs areas are pretty large. I suppose there's a roof water runoff calculator that can help calculate.
Another noteworthy point is the other ponds, about 1/4 mile away each, are also spring fed, but not low on water. So that tells me it's probably not a drought issue?

This is all in the "talking/ideas" phase. I have installed several rainwater retention systems, so this is nothing new for me from an installation perspective.
I just don't know if it's enough water?
Pond is triangular about 150' on each leg and averages about 4-5' deep.

Don't want to install something that won't work or lessen my reputation with customer. Another thing definitely worth mentioning is the customer also has some desire to have gutters and downspouts installed to get roof runoff away from the building, so there could be a 2-fer type of benefit in helping to keep water from damaging building foundations
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Haydude
If I remember correctly you are in Pennsylvania, you get more rainfall than evaporation.
What is the overflow setup for pond can it handle the roof run off without causing damage.
Adding gutters helps the building without adding much cost if you run water to pond.
If you add gutters helps the put settlement basin in prior to pond

 

[Hay Dude]

Haydude
If I remember correctly you are in Pennsylvania, you get more rainfall than evaporation.
What is the overflow setup for pond can it handle the roof run off without causing damage.
Adding gutters helps the building without adding much cost if you run water to pond.
If you add gutters helps the put settlement basin in prior to pond

The pond has 2 working drain tubes. One it a typical “T” type spillway tube. Then there’s another 6” PVC emergency tube

 

[EddieWalker]

A spring is just the underground water table that is full and flowing sideways out of the ground. The more wells that are drilled in the area for houses could mean that the water table is no longer able to fill up, and the water that used to flow out of the spring is now being pumped into a house.

Opening up the spring might help it flow better. It's the only option available. The opening for the spring might also be lowered by digging down from the spring to where the current water table is. This is a gamble because it's possible to seal off a spring this way.

I don't see how gutters will increase the water shed any more than what is already falling off of the building and flowing to the pond across the grass.

Short grass allows more water to flow across it. Is there any way to increase how much rainwater flows into the pond with a ditch that catches water from farther away? All my roads on my place are also ditches that catch water and direct it to my pond's kind of like a giant Y carved into the ground.

 

[Hay Dude]

A spring is just the underground water table that is full and flowing sideways out of the ground. The more wells that are drilled in the area for houses could mean that the water table is no longer able to fill up, and the water that used to flow out of the spring is now being pumped into a house.

Opening up the spring might help it flow better. It's the only option available. The opening for the spring might also be lowered by digging down from the spring to where the current water table is. This is a gamble because it's possible to seal off a spring this way.

I don't see how gutters will increase the water shed any more than what is already falling off of the building and flowing to the pond across the grass.

The distance of lawn between the buildings and the pond is about 500 feet. A great deal of that roof run off would be absorbed by the thick lawns.
I have never seen water make it to the pond from the building’s roof run off.
If you see the way the building is laid out, it sits on a good sized plateau. The rain water just sits there. It even puddles a bit.

Of course some rain runs-off from the hillside down to the pond, but little if any from the building’s roof.

Short grass allows more water to flow across it. Is there any way to increase how much rainwater flows into the pond with a ditch that catches water from farther away? All my roads on my place are also ditches that catch water and direct it to my pond's kind of like a giant Y carved into the ground.

I can confidently tell you that if I were to gather all available roof runoff into a pipe, all of it will make it to the pond. And the buildings generate a lot of water run off.

Here’s approximately where the spring originates

 

[2manyrocks]

What does the ground around the spring leading into the pond look like? The pond looks like its about 4' down from what it used to be. I still suspect those two trees having roots inside the pond as possibly having to something to do with it.

 

[Hay Dude]

What does the ground around the spring leading into the pond look like?

I’m going to look at it this week, but the culvert between the spring and the pond is down to about nothing. It used to flow like a small stream. The pond was never an issue to keep full from it.

The pond looks like its about 4' down from what it used to be. I still suspect those two trees having roots inside the pond as possibly having to something to do with it.

That’s what I was thinking. The tree on the island was planted when the pond was built. Its some kind of cypress tree. The other one is a sycamore growing out of the bank. It’s not in the standing water, but very close to it.

As you can probably tell, the trees are in the shallow end of the pond. Where the photo is taken from is the deep end.

 

[2manyrocks]

People around here call Sycamores water trees because they like to be near water and have an extensive root system. Now wondering if tree roots found their way into what feeds the spring?