Pond repair, ctnd.

I went away for three days and came back to find the empty pond essentially refilled. Amazing spouse did the whole repair himself in two day! Here's his summary of the situation.

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At this time the pond is ½ full depth wise, just a bit over a foot below the lowest point of last year.
I have two leaks on the very lower sides where I had tried to bed in the rubber sheet but then removed it and by the time of removal was far enough below water I was not willing the reach down to reflow the tar. If I had a scuba mask I could have fixed it. Carolyn just got back from RI and guided me as I used a tool to reach 5' below water and plug the leaks with plastic bags.
I would like to get the scuba gear and go down and do it right.

I would say the pond is ready for fish and at the current rate of filling should be all the way up on Tuesday.

So, yesterday at 11AM Friday there are 13 boards on the lower section at a touch under 6" wide each.

And again at 4pm Friday, water was well over my waist at this time.

And at noon on Saturday

The pond when I started on Friday,

And midday Saturday. The sticks in the canoe are what I cut off the submerged tree.
I am tired.

Down the drain

Followers of this blog may remember an entry last summer about fixing the leak in our pond ("Our Pond," 8/12/12).

Today I must report an unhappy follow-up to that episode. Around midday, I stepped out on the deck to look across our little world as the weather cleared after three days of rain -- and saw that the pond had disappeared.

OMG!

Apparently our hard-won repair to the outflow gave way against water pressure and split sometime overnight, emptying the entire half-acre basin in one big swoosh.


We knew this was a possibility but had fingers crossed all winter and spring, hoping the patch would hold and we could effect a proper repair under controlled conditions at our convenience this summer.

Alas, not to be.

Now it's an emergency repair, for there's just a small pool left in the deepest part where a few fishes managed to survive. The rest, presumably, went down the drain with the water and, hopefully, made it all the way through the runoff channel through the woods to the river (which itself had been stripped of aquatic life two years ago during the flooding from Hurricane Irene).

Hubby rigged a rope to hang on to as he slid down the mucky slope to inspect the damages. Along the way, he found a dozen or so freshwater clams still alive, stuck on the exposed bank, and tossed them into the pool. So maybe there will be enough creatures left over to repopulate when all is done and the pond refills. Too soon to tell.

Not only is this a distressing hit to a micro ecosystem, but also an unwelcome disruption to our already too-long list of delayed and complicated projects. *sigh* The joys of homeownership and land stewardship.

Here's how it looks. I hope, in the not too distant future, to post a photo of the normal water level back up against the bottom of the dock.

Our pond

Just about a year ago, Tropical Storm Irene gave us way too much water. Irene’s floods were followed by a dry winter, then an abnormally dry spring and summer. Previous posts have reported on our misadventures with flooding and starting a well replacement. The latest episode in this water feast/famine story is our pond springing a leak.

At first, we thought the drought was drawing the water down. The level drops most every summer, and this dry year we weren’t surprised to see a creeping exposure of shore. But when the drought broke and we got seven inches of rain inside a week -- the water level kept dropping. And dropping, to the point of threatening the fish, frogs, clams and everything that lives there. How the heck do you deal with that?

This pond is no ornamental lily pond. It’s an acre-size ecosystem, built 50 years ago by previous owners. They put a concrete “chimney” in the deep end as an outgate that controls the water level. Our wellspring feeds the pond, and when it’s full the water spills into an opening at the top of the chimney, to flow out into a woody marsh via a pipe from the bottom of the chimney. The water height can be adjusted by adding or removing wooden boards embedded in the chimney’s front face, which originally were sealed with tar. Those boards have been rotting over the years, now causing the leaks.

The whole chimney stands 12-15 feet from its base in the muck to a dock supported on top. Even with the pond half empty, the base was still 6+ feet below the surface. The worst leaks through the boards were way down below the water level.

So hubby put on his engineer hat and fabricated a replacement insert from a plywood-type material called Advantech and encased it in rubber. By devising a way to block the outflow through the pipe at the bottom, he was able to remove the old wood as far down as possible and slide in the new insert without draining the pond.

This worked well but didn’t finish the job: As expected, the new “gate” leaked in spots along the sides, with a larger leak at the bottom. Plugging those required underwater work.

At first he and a friend free-dived with just a mask and sealed most of the edges. But the main leak, down in the muck and rubble, persisted.

Thank goodness for friends who have friends with diving gear! It took three multi-hour sessions involving two men in wetsuits taking turns with scuba tanks and weights, using a ladder, multiple ropes, a can of tar, lots of disposable gloves, various scrapers, a garden trowel, and long rubber strips to fully seal the edges and that bottom section. Yours truly manned the “barge” (a 16-foot Grumman aluminum canoe) used as a support platform for the tools and supplies.

The men worked blind in silt that stirred the minute they entered the water. The fish watched, not sure if we were friend or foe, but unknowingly grateful we were saving their home.

We finished the job and the air in the scuba tanks at the same time. A trickle leak remains, which is disappointing but way better than the torrent we started with. Within a few hours it was clear that the water level had stopped dropping -- indeed, is starting back up! Now it’s a waiting game, to see if the trickle will hold or get worse as the rains return. Hubby knows he will be back down there to fully seal that trickle, but when is the question