New pond

[Becky]

Welcome! What a gorgeous big pond!

 

[j.w]

Great piece of equipment. Imagine where you would be right now w/o it, lol! Are you going to put any kind of plant cover over the pond surface? That would really help w/ keeping the new fish you are getting even more safe from predators. I'm sure that grass and plants around the edge will help also. Neat how the ducks loved your nesting house for them. You will have to post pix of them when they are around next Spring.

 

[deerbars]

Thanks Becky. We have the room for a big pond. We have 5 acres with lots of native Florida slash pines and saw palmettos. There was a spot that just cried out for a pond and after owning the property for 10 years I went ahead and dug a BIG hole.Glad I did, it came out great. Pond is shaped like a dogbone because that's what the spot allowed. Was lmited by the slash pines which are protected here in s Florida. If you can get a permit to remove them you have to pay a mitigation fee for each tree based on it's diameter at breast hight.A 14" tree at DBH cost about $1000.00 in fees to remove.

 

[baeya]

This might sound like a dumb question, but here goes..........Is your pond spring fed? If so, is it in danger of going dry at any time? Just curious...

 

[deerbars]

Baeya your question is not dumb, we had our own doubts about water levels.The pond is not springfed. Here in S Florida the water table is only about 2-3 feet below the surface. We were in a 80 year drought last winter when we dug the pond but the ground water quickly filled the pond to about a depth of 10 feet.Summer rains have added about 6-7 feet. The pond will drop this winter in our dry season but we should always have 8-10 feet of water.I ran a 2" schedule 80 PVC pipe from my irrigation system to the pond so I can also add water that way from my well pump. We have two wells, one for the house and one for irrigation.Some of the ponds in our neighborhood dropped 10-12 feet last winter and one guy's small shallow pond dried up completely.

 

[deerbars]

Some more pictures. 1, The area we chose for the pond.If you look closely you can see the red landscape flags that delineate the ponds perimeter.
2 Day two with the excavator with a 5 cubic yard bucket.
3 Day 3 ground water filling the hole.
4 The pond a few days ago.
The pictures in no way show how complicated the project was.Surveys,engineers, permitting,landscape architects,excavator rental,2 Bobcats to move and spread the resulting dirt in low areas around the property,installing irrigation, running electrical to the pond,1 horsepower aereation pump,sodding the banks to prevent erosion etc. Final numbers around $20,000. Project took 4 months from start to finish.Actual digging 4 days, one week to move and spread the resulting dirt. A major undertaking but in the end well worth it.

 

[addy1]

Well it is beautiful and well worth the $$'s spent, well thought out well planned.

 

[baeya]

Very cool

 

[taherrmann4]

Very nice, you sure did have to move a lot of dirt. Have you gone swimming in your new water hole yet???

 

[j.w]

Amazing before and after pix! Looks really nice and I sure would have jumped in for a swim as tmann asked.