First go with a digger!

[spandit]

Had a pond that I'd dug by hand but it wasn't lined and was leaking (didn't actually have a proper outlet and it was spring fed) so finally got a local contractor in to rebuild it.

 

He was happy for me to use the brand new Kubota U27-4 digger and gave me some pointers on how to use it effectively. After two days I was getting reasonably proficient with it - it went home yesterday and I'm gutted as have so much more I want to do!

 

Made a hell of a mess, mind, but once the gloop we pulled out of the pond dries up & the vegetation grows again, it should make for a much more pleasant environment - can see the improvements already downhill - one of the new trees that was in standing water now isn't

[Steve Bullman]

pics?

[spandit]

After I'd dug it by hand. The foam is DOC

 

 

Since then, I'd put some plants in, from another pond that we've now filled in. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any pictures but here is what it was like just after I drained the water out (I'd installed a drain point and it's up on a hill)

 

 

Set to work with the digger

 

 

The contractor puddled the dam

 

 

As of this morning, it was about 10" deep, as my furry depth gauges illustrate:

 

 

The spring outlet is now above the water line so it won't back up like before. The plastic pipe in the picture above leads to a ditch 60m away. I intersected another spring and it's already flowing

 

Wide angle shot:

 

 

 

The old, hand dug, pond had banks around it where I'd piled the spoil up. The rebuilt one is flush to the landscape as the spoil has been spread around. It was so wet that difficult to do much with but once it dries out we'll probably be able to get a machine up there to smooth it a bit. Need to scatter some grass seed, I think, to get things going but will probably plant some more trees. Had to destroy a willow that was growing there but it will probably resprout from what's left of the roots and I'm sure many more will naturally reseed there. Will be interesting to see how the trees that were downhill of it will adapt to lower water levels. Hopefully they've been in long enough to have reasonable root systems and I'm sure it will still be pretty damp up there

[spandit]

The spring outlet is putting out about 100litres an hour. I reckon the other spring I bisected has a similar output so should be getting 200l an hour into the ditch once the pond fills up and overflows into the pipe. The ditch will then be dammed (or be damned!) and the overflow will go into two larger ponds/lakes that will be dug in the future where it's very wet already (more springs). These should contain a lot of the water that is making the field below boggy and be a nice feature

[Mick Dempsey]

I couldn't imagine being diggerless.

[Steve Bullman]

That'll look nice when everything grows up. Diggers are great fun. I once had one on hire for about a month and felt pretty proficient by the end of it. Would love to have a go on one of the big crawlers

[spandit]

Paid the landscaper today. He said that he wouldn't have left me alone with the digger if I hadn't been proficient in using it and says that for digging my big lakes I'll be fine with a big digger - saves me quite a bit of dosh! He can be around for the fiddly bits if I need him but definitely going to hire a digger to finish digging the ditches and possibly deepen the pond a bit...