Opening up a spring with a track-hoe

[pacerron]

I have several steel culverts from with diameters of 3.5' to 5'. See photo.
My plan #1 was to put the largest one in dig it out, put in next, dig it out etc....and then put gravel in the bottom.

Don,
I sure don't know anything about Texas stone. Up here we would call the aggregate in your picture... limestone. Our gravel comes from rivers of past centuries and present rivers. It is irregular in shape but somewhat round in shape.
What it is called doesn't matter. The difference is that gravel does not pack together under pressure so it allows the water to continue to come up into your round culverts from underneath. Limestone or sharp cornered crushed stone packs together and forms somewhat of a block.
That may be your intention?
Ron

 

[bindian]

Don,
I am missing something here. I don't understand why you can't cut the ground down beside the spring/culvert with your backhoe. It looks to be a shallower slope than what the Big RED Beast is on in this photo.
hugs, Brandi

 

[txdon]

Brandi, The ground is flat above the culvert, but it is 8' up and 6' over. My 9' BH will not reach inside the culvert. Next week I will try to cut a landing closer without falling in. The pond rose another 2" overnight, but the flow seems to be decreasing.

pacerron, That is white rock - 3/4 inch, it is not limestone. Around Austin there is nothing but limestone and this is not that.

 

[pacerron]

Don,
Thanks for the explanation. As long as it is not sharp triangular edged, like crushed limestone, it should not pack so tight as to block most of the seepage upward.
Won't you have to remove the 5' ring to dig deeper for the smaller rings, put the smallest in first, fill around it to a few inches from the top, set the next on that fill, fill around it and then put your 5' ring on that, then add some gravel to the bottom and in each void between the ring diameters?
How deep a hole from a one landing side position of your tractor can you get with your Boom, Dipper Stick, and Bucket? Looks like from your pipe pictures you will need about a 6 foot deep hole if you have 6" or so vertical lap on your culvert pieces.
Looks like a fun project but one that will need caution in a wet sandy location for your safety.
Keep posting pictures as you go. It will be interesting to see how your final landscape turns out.
Ron

 

[bindian]

Brandi, The ground is flat above the culvert, but it is 8' up and 6' over. My 9' BH will not reach inside the culvert. Next week I will try to cut a landing closer without falling in. The pond rose another 2" overnight, but the flow seems to be decreasing.

pacerron, That is white rock - 3/4 inch, it is not limestone. Around Austin there is nothing but limestone and this is not that.

Don,
So it is to the right of the culvert in this photo where you need to put the backhoe? Where the steep slope is?
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/...9586-opening-up-spring-track-hoe-spring10.jpg
The other side is too soft, I gather.
I wonder also if you can wait (water raising) for the dozer or need to do this ASAP and dig that slope out with your backhoe? Can you dig it loose and doze it out of the way with your loader bucket?

If my knee was not waiting for surgery.............I would bring the Big RED Beast up and unslope that slope for you.:laughing:

At the least we need more photos.:thumbsup:
hugs, Brandi

 

[txdon]

Pacerron, I was thinking the way you described it to be the easiest. I can dig down 9' so I will have to get pretty close and low to the hole. That is where the problem comes in. The sides are very steep and the lower I go the less stable the soil is. I might only get two culverts in.

Another consideration is that this spring is at the bottom of a very sandy hill. The sand is like beach sand and will erode easily and fill up the spring, so I have to watch the drainage of any angle cut ins and deflect the water around the hole with berms.

Brandi, The sides are really cut steep, and by cutting them some parts will be vertical and unstable in the rain. This will be fun and a challenge. (I may still be working on it after your surgery)

I'll post pics of the progress. Here is an overall picture from on top of the hill when the track-hoe was here. The border fence is in the tree line on the right, right up against the spring pond.

 

[bindian]

Pacerron, I was thinking the way you described it to be the easiest. I can dig down 9' so I will have to get pretty close and low to the hole. That is where the problem comes in. The sides are very steep and the lower I go the less stable the soil is. I might only get two culverts in.

Another consideration is that this spring is at the bottom of a very sandy hill. The sand is like beach sand and will erode easily and fill up the spring, so I have to watch the drainage of any angle cut ins and deflect the water around the hole with berms.

Brandi, The sides are really cut steep, and by cutting them some parts will be vertical and unstable in the rain. This will be fun and a challenge. (I may still be working on it after your surgery)

I'll post pics of the progress. Here is an overall picture from on top of the hill when the track-hoe was here. The border fence is in the tree line on the right, right up against the spring pond.

Rain? What Rain?:confused3:
hugs, Brandi

 

[jinman]

Don, you mentioned that your pond filling seemed to slow a bit after the first couple of feet. I think that's normal because of the angled sides and increased surface area as the pond fills. Were you able to look at the water inside the culvert. Is it clearing any? With the flow you are getting, I'd expect that water to become crystal clear within a couple of days depending on the amount of clay in your soil. We put a whiskey barrel in a spring when I was a kid and the water turned clear in the barrel in two days. There's something magical about watching clear water bubble up out of the ground.

 

[pacerron]

Pacerron, I was thinking the way you described it to be the easiest. I can dig down 9' so I will have to get pretty close and low to the hole. That is where the problem comes in. The sides are very steep and the lower I go the less stable the soil is. I might only get two culverts in.

Another consideration is that this spring is at the bottom of a very sandy hill. The sand is like beach sand and will erode easily and fill up the spring, so I have to watch the drainage of any angle cut ins and deflect the water around the hole with berms. .

Don,
If you have tested the actual depth capability of your hoe I imagine you found the 9' depth to only be a spot about the size of the bucket, or a small arc that size without moving the tractor around and there usually has to be a slit back toward the tractor for the boom as you are digging; then the tractor has to be moved almost over the hole to get the final depth. I have had a hoe attachment similar to yours since 1990 and have done some things with it that I wouldn't even attemp today, as a result of the scary situations I got myself into in the past.
Slippery mud slopes and soft sand enbankments as shown in your pictures
would probably convince me to wait for a dryer conditions, if possible, or use a different method such as driving a pipe into the sand seep.
Is the arrow in my attached copy of your photo the sand hill where the water is seeping out? Are the slopes to the right or left that look like clay grease where you intend to make your flat spot to dig the hole deeper?
If you do proceed now you might need some plates or timbers under your stands to spread the support base..
If you have lots of backhoe experience I apologize for my butting in. Just be careful in any case.
Ron

 

[txdon]

Pacerron, Keep the comments coming. I'm looking for anything to make this job productive and safe. There will be other people maybe years from now who will learn from these post so even if I know something but haven't specifically wrote about it your contributions will help them.

I have some timbers and 12"X6" reinforced concrete curbing for the stabilizers and/or tires if needed. I'll check the upper spoils later to see If I can start without getting stuck (like friday). I also have a pallet of flat stones to place by the culverts and surrounding embankment to make it look nice and natural as the finishing touch (in the fall).

The drier weather is here with the next 7 days sunny and over 100 degrees. No rain last night only lightning in the east and west horizons.

Jim, the water flowing is now clear just like you predicted. I'm not letting it accumulate in the culvert just yet, it's running under the lower edge so sand will not accumulate inside the culvert (less to dig out).

It looks like I will have at least a week (or more) before the pond level rises to the culvert and the project will have to come to a stop or I'll have to start pumping. Any small gas water pump recommendations?

 

[txdon]

After a few days of box blading I have a back hole access. I set a 12' concrete curbing for the BH outriggers. As you can tell the water is constantly rising and I have about 2 weeks to finish this project.

The muck is still wet after a week and final grading is still on hold.

Time to take the box blade off and put on the BH to set the culverts on edge.

Temp - 104
Maybe tomorrow morning.......

 

[Mousefield]

Just think, all that work so the dog in the middle picture can go for a swim. :laughing:
Nice pics and thanks for the update.

 

[txdon]

The dog is in the first picture also, but the water is deeper in the middle so he has to actually swim. All the cows were drinking out of it yesterday, so it now has officially two uses.

 

[pacerron]

The dog is in the first picture also, but the water is deeper in the middle so he has to actually swim. All the cows were drinking out of it yesterday, so it now has officially two uses.

Don,
It looks like you should have plenty of time to do your backhoe work unless something goes haywire. You were asking about a pump the other day. I can't tell from your pictures if the area that has trees next to the pond has any dips or holes close by that are lower than your water level. If so you might be able to rig a siphon real cheap to keep the water level down so you can finish.
Here is a link to a number of videos. I only looked at the first one, as I imagine the others are similar, but that is how I would lower or drain my pond if need be. Siphon to drain the pond - YouTube
Looks like your doing great so far; have you got stuck yet? If you or a neighbor have another tractor and some chain it might be a good precaution to run a chain from your FEL bucket to another tractor before you dig too deep with the hoe in case of a cave in or slippage. Your stabilizer feet could slip off the concrete, bury it, or roll it if you get into some hard pan on the way down to 6-7 feet.
Good luck and keep posting the photos. Your dog is like ours; a great supervisor but not much of a worker!
Ron

 

[beppington]

That is really cool Don! Hope I can do something like that one day.

 

[bindian]

The dog is in the first picture also, but the water is deeper in the middle so he has to actually swim. All the cows were drinking out of it yesterday, so it now has officially two uses.

Don,
I keep hearing about "the dog". What is his name?
Keep sending photos.:thumbsup: I am getting excited to see you digging.:licking:
hugs, Brandi

 

[Boeing]

I was interested in this post as I have a spring fed stream at the top of a nearby ridge. I seperates two ridges and has made a nice creek bed. The stream is fairly strong year round for about 100 yards. Then is slows, narrows, and literally disappears. The stream bed goes down the entire property, full of round rocks worn from running water but the water is now UNDERGROUND; somewhere
Any suggestions about HOW to coax this stream to stay on top of the ground and continue it's old path? It's a beautiful stream up top, about 8' wide, 12" deep and gurgleing over bolders making small water falls etc.
If I could get it to stay above ground I might try a "Brandi" pond :laughing:

 

[txdon]

The dog is a stray that wondered on our place last year and has not left. The DNA test show she is part:
Cocker Spaniel
German Shorthaired Pointer
Greyhound
Poodle
Bichon Frise
Great Dane
She like to bark at snakes and has an awesome coyote howl, (bilingual).
We thought she was a Whippet and name her Whipper (Whip for short).

There is no place lower than the spring pond. I think I will have enough time now that I have watched the water's slow rise for a week.

Stuck??? How do you define stuck? If I can push myself out with the FEL I don't think of it as being stuck.....So I haven't gotten stuck yet. I will try to find an anchor to chain the tractor to in case there is a major cave in. Thanks for the suggestion! The soil under the curbing is saturated. I picked that side of the culvert because it was the lowest and had the least amount of cave ins from springs.


The curbing was a mistake I made on the paver driveway. I angled it too much and the circle was too tight so I had to cut out 12' and re-pour it. I'm glad I found a use for it. I'll start a thread on the circular paver driveway when it gets cooler.

Boeing, your stream sound really nice, but I would not know how to keep it from percolating back into the ground. ??

 

[bindian]

I was interested in this post as I have a spring fed stream at the top of a nearby ridge. I seperates two ridges and has made a nice creek bed. The stream is fairly strong year round for about 100 yards. Then is slows, narrows, and literally disappears. The stream bed goes down the entire property, full of round rocks worn from running water but the water is now UNDERGROUND; somewhere
Any suggestions about HOW to coax this stream to stay on top of the ground and continue it's old path? It's a beautiful stream up top, about 8' wide, 12" deep and gurgleing over bolders making small water falls etc.
If I could get it to stay above ground I might try a "Brandi" pond :laughing:

Boeing,
Check out this link. It shows you how to get water from the ground.

hugs, Brandi

 

[jinman]

Don, that project is really coming out nicely. What you said about silt drying reminded me of what the fellow who cleaned out my pond said to me about my huge silt pile. He said that in two or three years it might actually dry out. He was right, it took about two years, but my pile is over 10' high. Your's will dry much quicker, but it shows you just how long clay can hold water.