What are your thoughts on this. I am thinking of buying a large land maybe 100 acre property and building a large 25 acre lake on it in the future. Plan is to use the excavated dirt to elevate the 25 acre land around the lake. I am pretty handy and considering buying/renting an excavator and knocking this out in my leisure over a year or 2. Is this doable or am I crazy to think it is. Would like to do 20 to 30 ft deep. What would this cost if I contracted this out?
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SO some rough math just to put this in perspective...... At 10ft Depth.... 25 Acres X 43,560SF/Acre=1,089,000SF 1,089,000SF X 10FT=10,890,000CF 10,890,000CF / 27CF/CY=403,333.33 CY I don't know what your budget is but a project of this size is almost assuredly going to get into dealing with multiple government agencies and a design firm willing to submit the calculations to verify the dam is safe, that the environmental impacts are mitigated and no down stream issues are going to be created. There will also need to be an H&H analysis ran to verify the dam can withstand a design storm as well as the spillway being designed to discharge the required overflow. Just as a SWAG, this is a multi-million dollar project.
You gonna need a lot more than a excavator to do this there are limits on how high you can build a earthen dam too
FWIW. I just got done building a 1 acre groundwater pond that will be about 12 ft deep when it gets full ( much smaller than you are wanting to build) for about $30,000. Just for sh!ts and giggles...... 25 acres x 30,000= 750,000. Then go twice as deep 750,000 x 2= 1.5 million. Not to mention all the other BS that one would have to do on something that big. I'm sure you would end up well north of 2 million.
All of that above plus, how do you plan on filling and maintaining it? It has to be on a pretty good drainage to get that kind of water, and summer evaporation will take it down if you don't have a continuous groundwater/runoff flow. Lots to ponder. If you think you can divert or build in the valley of a year round creek without a lot of headaches, you will soon find out. If there is the possibility of fish, you get fish and game. Feds will chime in with corps of engineers. State will want a whole lot of environmental impact study. Picture a thick document that you will pay an engineer or two to write.
Anything is "doable" but Im leaning towards the crazy part.
I am currently dredging out 70 years of sludge in our family 20-acre pond. I am re-locating 6 inches to 24 inches of sand/mud as I work my way thru the pond with my CAT 320CL. There ain't anything quick about it...of course, I am having to use mud mats a good bit which is tedious. The admonition about making a "safe dam"...that is a for-sure aspect. Our piddling dams here (an 11-acre pond and a 20-acre pond) are on the federal and state gov. radar. They inspect them every few years to be sure downstream is not in danger in case our dam fails. You will get some attention as you build your pond. Cool idea but it will take more than just an idea, land, and an excavator. Keep us posted.
Let’s assume you have a perfect site, IE valley with a narrow opening, lays properly, and good clay for the dam. If that is the case I’d say it is ‘doable’ by one man, an excavator, dozer, and either a scraper or dump truck, given enough time. If you are talking excavating it out of a flat field, I’d say no that is not doable for any reasonable amount of time and money. First example your talking about moving tens of thousands of yards, second example hundreds of thousands of yards. We haven’t even gotten to the permiting part. Again, an ideal scenario is you keep the dam under 26’ tall, there are no wetlands involved, no stream impoundment, watershed area is sufficient but under 1000ac, and you live in a state that views pond construction favorably you might get off somewhat easy. The Army Corps of Engineers is undoubtedly going to be interested in what you are doing. Change any of the aforementioned conditions and you’re also going to be dealing with a slew of state and federal three letter agencies. Figure on at least a year to get all the legal stuff taken care of.
I didn’t see in the opening post anything about a dam.
I didn’t either. I was just hoping maybe the scenario was better than we were all envisioning and he wasn’t thinking of moving half a million yards of dirt by himself, lol
Not to mention the size of the berm it would create unless it is spread over the entire 75 acres around the finished pond.