Thread: What is your pond experience?

^ and ^^: am i the only one who is now NOT seeing the pics?

Sorry for not getting the pictures posted sooner. Here are a few shots of Rice berm washouts, between terraced rice fields. These pipes were supposed regulate the water level in each field, letting the water drain to the next field below. Heavy rain and the large paddie sizes - caused these pipes to flow at near full capacity, with resulting erosion washing out the berms in the area of these pipes. Of course the water ravaged even more out of control - once it started passing through the berm and not just through the pipe.

This same problem will take place with pond overflow pipe - if the pond has a higher side earth berm, and insufficient drain volume - allowing the pond riseing height to overwhelm the drain pipes.


Here is an 16 inch drain pipe set through a berm. It typically takes a few pipe sections in series to pass through these berm. Looks good here - but this was before massive rains. These were use on all corner areas of all terraced rice paddies.



You will have to look close, because the picture is not that good. To see a blow out through the upper most berm - with 16 inch concrete pipes left standing on end. The middle berm also has an almost complete blow out through the berm as well



Pretty big hole left after a 7 hour hard rain deluge that just overwhelmed 16 inch drain pipes ability to pass water - with the berm failing. I had to repair the both berms on this side of the terraced paddies, after blow outs from heavy rain - before finally taking them out in favor of dumping water off the paddies under the road, instead of going from field to field That solution was temporary as well - Killing the road over the balance of 2009 s wet season.


Here is a close up of another berm failure from excessive rain and water flow through the drain pipes an high water against the berms. In this picture the pipe on the LH side - extends under the road - dumping water off property. The pipe in the center of the photo went through the berm were erosion was taking its toll



Here is a photo looking down towards the failed berms from high flow erosion and high water levels. You can see a serpentine channel where water was cutting out the paddie as well - when the berm failed.

This was the solution created to pass water from one higher rice field to the one below it, without erosion from pipes, and with much higher water handling capacity. Pan at bottom passes water spill over a very large area, with almost no drop involved - hence low flow flow per unit area, and low energy spill water.



Water column is poured rebar reinforced concrete in the background, foreground are blocks built up as forms the will have rebar and concreted poured to make the weir channel leading into the water column.

Another view towards the water drop column, showing rebar in place for the weir channel (in foreground) and rebar connections made with the water column

Oblique view of same water control structure under construction. Drop column will have a 40 inch x 40 inch clear opening when finished.

Starting the first pour on the weir channel. It is hard to tell in this picture, but the paddie on the LH side is about 2.5 meters higher than the paddie on the RH side.


Finished water control structure looking from uphill side. Note this kind of structure would work equally as well - as an overflow structure for a pond with man made earth berms - to discharge overflow water without erosion.

Photo standing on top looking down to the low side and the pan structure that makes it all work well.

Shot taking standing in the weir channel, looking down the drop column. You cant see it, but in the base of the column, there are (3) 8 inch high water discharge openings, that have an area equal to the inlet opening of the weir channel. I was originally going to fill these drop channels with course stone to dissipate the energy of the falling water, but decided against it - and to see how they worked without the stone. It turns out the stone wasnt needed, as the structure will reduce the energy of the falling water by itself.

One of FOUR water controls structures - in service, draining down the top paddie, a few week before harvesting.

Another photo of one in service. Here the water flow is slow, but one can see the churning that happens in the bottom of the drop column. Looking Right and down, one an see the pan spilling water. Note the rice is undisturbed right next to the pan. This spill structure handles a lot of water very well - without impacting the down stream side.

Here is an profile view - of one spill structure - looking down towards the lower field.

Each of the four water control structures took about 10 days of construction time with an 8 man crew. The first one was the hardest to get everyone tuned up to how make forms that could be re-used and adapted to each location. Earth excavation before construction was done with an excavatore -to save labor and time, but these structures were all hand build with a lot of heavy labor to mix the concrete and make all the rebar embeds and wire them all up.

The design was purposefully made heavy and well reinforced - to handle all the water flows - and be solid enough not to be moved by the water forces - which would tend to push the stucture in high flow conditions. I havent done much with the exterior astetics, not even painting them. They handled all of the 2010 wet season easily. A few sandbags in the inlet side let us custom tune the height of the water on the uphill field.. Kind of set it and forget it until it was time to drain off the paddie water.

Thailazer - Posting protocols. Get two web pages open... One with your gallery, one with your post open. Pick your gallery image. Click on it to make it the center image displayed in the gallery. Then click on it again - to make it full size and taking up your gallery page. Right click on the image, and select
"copy image location". Then go to your "post"web page, and put your cursor where you want the top of the picture to be. Click the Picture icon. Up will come the dialogue box. Paste the location in there and click OK. That will embed you gallery image into your post.

Good luck with your overflow design for your pond. You can see from my post - how badly drain pipes can cause erosion downstream, and how they can cause a berm to fail. Since most ponds have earth berms - The same thing can happen to a pond berm if the overflow isnt of sufficient capacity, or develops joint leakage due to high flow rates.

BR

Pat

Originally Posted by thailazer

bought 100 3-4 inch red skin tubtim fish and released th

Piranha do well too

It looks really nice, so build a place quick

Thailazer, Nice snapshot. Pond looks inviting.... 19 C, Thats equivalent to spring break surf temperature in Daytona Beach at this time of year..... Got to be a little frosty, against the local air temp's.... Enjoy.... Its a great boost for circulation and metabilism to jump in and get accumulazed to the cool water.

Now is the time to consider house & garden designs, eventually to all be integrated together as part of your potential home building project....

Be careful you fish do not swim away with your spring fed overflow. It may eventually be possible to make that year round overflow work well for you, by building a serpentine channel that winds through your garden space to carry off your excess water, and serve your ponds overflow needs all at the same time. You get a free water feature, that has no pumping or filter costs. Something to consider thinkng about adding into your house / garden design. Enjoy the creative process involved with all the choices that connect to eventually building !!!! Good luck !!!!

Pond has been a lot of fun. It got infested with a swimming black bug so the wife and I planted a 100 red fin Tilapia. Three days later the bugs were gone. Now a month after putting in the fish, they have doubled in size. Overflow system got tested by a deluge rainstorm two days ago but it handled it just fine. We put in a cylindrical half-inch SS mesh fish trap on the outlet so there were no fish escapees. Lots of insect life for the fish to eat but we do feed them pellets occasionally. Great place to go and relax and we are getting anxious to live there under a roof!

coorr!!! great shot, you have use of a plane?

Originally Posted by sunsetter

coorr!!! great shot, you have use of a plane?

Well, it's cheaper than tasking one of my satellites!

nice, more pics from the sky please

Here's another one I like as it has an elongated reflection of the pond on the wing. The car is smack dap in the middle of the house pad.

Great Overview photos,

I like the 2nd one with the elongated reflection. It looks like the pilot is pulling a real hard bank to get such a down view. I see a man standing in the driveway as well, He looks to be signaling the pilot. Is that you signaling your airborne photographer ???

Nice view of your lot and POND. Awesome job with the picture and getting your overflow well set up !!!!
Take care

Yes....Actually I was flying in partial knife-edge on that pass, so not many G's......

Originally Posted by MakingALife

Great Overview photos,
.......... I see a man standing in the driveway as well, He looks to be signaling the pilot. Is that you signaling your airborne photographer ???

.....
Take care

Okay, time to confess as to how I got those photos! Did that flight to help finalize the plans before we start building. We want to make the driveway wide enough to fly from so this was the test.

MakingALife... to answer your question, yes that was me, and he was signalling the pilot, which was also me!

Don't know what YouTube has done but their encoding and compressing now degrades the quality of the raw files. This ended up looking quite poor compared to the file I uploaded.

Originally Posted by thailazer

Originally Posted by MakingALife

Great Overview photos,
.......... I see a man standing in the driveway as well, He looks to be signaling the pilot. Is that you signaling your airborne photographer ???

.....
Take care

Okay, time to confess as to how I got those photos! Did that flight to help finalize the plans before we start building. We want to make the driveway wide enough to fly from so this was the test.

MakingALife... to answer your question, yes that was me, and he was signalling the pilot, which was also me!

Don't know what YouTube has done but their encoding and compressing now degrades the quality of the raw files. This ended up looking quite poor compared to the file I uploaded.

brilliant mate, cant wait to see the lanscape and builing go in, oh and runway

stuff like this is what makes teakdoor so much better than the rest

I am jealous

I want airborne pics

must get myself a balloon and a remote control camera!

OUTRAGEOUS

What a great hobby and a super video of working out the airborne flight footage. Awesome Job - Even the laugh of you significant other has a sparkle associated with it !!!! ROCK ON...

Super footage of your lot, pond, and overflow arrangement as well. Looks like your neighbors are making good use of that water as well... Cant get a better win - win than that.

Thanks for the time involved to create this video and get it posted !!!! Hats OFF !!!!

Originally Posted by DrAndy

I am jealous

I want airborne pics

must get myself a balloon and a remote control camera!

Dr. Andy - Consider putting the balloon on a teather, so you can reel it in back in, and launch in low wind conditions and you'll have a good airborne platform.

yes, I wasn't going to let it fly free with my camera!

Originally Posted by Kurgen

That's it, I'm selling up and leaving the shitty city so I can have a pond, just don't tell my future ex wife.

I thought you lived on Mabprachan Lake and that's a big enough pond for any fooker.

Originally Posted by Loy Toy

Originally Posted by Kurgen

That's it, I'm selling up and leaving the shitty city so I can have a pond, just don't tell my future ex wife.

I thought you lived on Mabprachan Lake and that's a big enough pond for any fooker.

I don't think the locals would appreciate me putting a fence around it.