I was in the middle of a pond redo when the winter set in and it left me with a large hole in the ground . My question is , is it better to have the hole fill with rain and snow to keep sides from collapsing until spring or is it better to drain when it starts raining and keep it empty . Whats your guess ? Thanks for any reply.
Just was wondering if leaving water/ice in there with the weight of the water against sides would help keep from sides caving in or is it better to get the water out as soon as possible.
Well i have clay soil. Drained my 3800 gallon and relocating. I took my liner out and getting few collapse side walls. Not a big deal since I'm filling it in. Most likely just keeping the liner in is better. But if the soil is clay i would keep it full with water imo
Since you already have tarps/old liner covering it I’d leave it as is. If you want to drain it you can, but if the surrounding ground gets saturated it would be better to have the hole filled with water to keep the sides from caving in. At least in my area it what I would do. Our springs have had a lot of rain the past couple years and the water table has been high.
Here is my 2 cents. Sorry to say but I'm an expert at dealing with water in a unfinished pond! It took me 10 years to complete my pond. Over those years, I always had one sheet of plastic in the hole to contain the water. It was not perfectly waterproof because water seemed to always get through rips and small holes. With that said, I never drained it in the winter. Only during the spring summer and fall would I keep it drained. And yes, in the spring, the first time I drained the pond, it contained some pretty nasty, smelly crud. It's a 7000 k gallon pond.
Yes, the water will hold the sides in place. But depending on the structure of your soil, the damage to pond would happen if you drained it too quickly (assuming the sides of the pond were saturated with water). The key to draining the pond is to drain it slowly so that sides won't collapse.
You might want to consider getting a large piece of plastic and try to use it as a temporary liner. As the pond fills up, the plastic will press on the earth and keep things in place even if water is leaking through the plastic in places. I'd feel much safer with that set up than exposing the sides of pond to "open water".
This is what happens with clay soil and no tarps covering it and we got little rain this year. No big deal though filling the little pond in and going big.
Never depend on soil to hold a vertical wall. Even if the pond has water, the water will simply move out of the way when the soil wall collapses. That is why we use poured concrete, blocks, shotcrete or gunite for strong vertical walls that can take the hygroscopic pressure from inside and outside pond walls.
I concur about vertical pond walls. I actually reduced the size of my pond at one end during construction. I was going to have the pond butt up against the shed with a deck over that end of the pond. I changed my mind about that design at the last minute and back-filled that end of the pond by about 4'. I let gravity dictate the pond slope where I back-filled. I was able to compact the backfill with a hand tamp and then a vibrating tamp. In the end, I didn't want gravity changing the slope of the pond wall over time.