Our new pond (part 3)

I continued the excavation of the pond’s shallow end the next day. It takes time to move dirt. I hauled a few loads of top soil up the hill and dumped it in front of Dad’s house so he could move it onto a hillside he wanted to get some grass growing on. Most of the dirt I continued to dump in front of our new house in order to make the slope in front more gradual. The process involved digging out five or six full shovels of dirt, get out the backhoe and into the truck, drive the truck over and dump the dirt, park the truck near the backhoe, get out of the truck and into the backhoe, and then start again. This process was interrupted occasionally by the need to move the backhoe to another spot for digging. Still, it was a lot of up and down.

I was able to get a fair bit excavated in a couple of days. Then, because of a comment on an online forum where I shared information about our pond construction, I realized I needed to check the height of the dam. I used a level to try to sight the lines, and this worked fairly well. This method indicated that there were some low spots which needed raised.

So, I decided to rent a transit and check everything with a little more accuracy. With it I discovered that the dam was lower than I wanted it to be. In fact, on one section its height was the same as the emergency spillway’s height. I decided that while I had the backhoe to use, it would be a good time to raise the height of the dam. I called and talked with the guy who did the excavation. He assured me that I would be able to do the job.

 

Raising the height of the dam was the next task to tackle. . .