I called a local excavator that digs ponds and does land clearing. He refused to give me a set fee. By the hour? By the yard? by the square foot? He basically said he could do a pond from $2500 to $250,000. I said I have $5,000. Still wasn't specific on what that money would get me as an end result size/depth.
So I did get a few answers. First and most important was do I need a permit? No! Then will it fill with water and hold it or do I need a liner? Answer, we should hit a vein and it should retain water because there is a clay content present. Good!
Now. I'm not willing to give him some money and end up arguing about whether or not I got $5k worth of pond out of him. I have no scale to judge the value of the work done.
Now I figured I'd just test the soil a little on my own. dig a sample pond and see if it fills up and holds water. Yeah, I got a little carried away. I ended up with a hole 2 tractor widths wide and two lengths long about 5' deep. No water. I got all of it done in two hours. The 1050 does the work without much grunting. This leads me to the conclusion that I can dig my own pond as I want it in about 30 hours and about 60 gallons of diesel.
It will be kind of heart shaped with an island near the grotto and shallow for swimming and deep on the opposite end to hopefully support a fish stock. I can go as long and deep as I have time and money for. I even have a large trash pump so I can pump it out to do more later if needed. I am willing to install a liner if I have to. This is the driest time of the year here and I usually have a very high water table. I'm very surprised it isn't filling yet. 4 more feet down I'm sure it will. You can see some moisture in the soil in the center in this picture.

Now I have another issue. What should I be doing with the dirt that comes out? It's worthless as a bank to retain water as it's mostly sand. I hate to have to move it twice. As it stand I'll need a dump truck/or trailer to haul it or it'll take forever one bucket at a time. I think I'll be building some ramps for the hillbillly hotrod, and filling in a bunch of holes in the yard from the electric and water lines settling. It's a lot of dirt!!
I just realized these pictures are from before I was done digging. I should get a recent picture!!
