One of the three main components to building a pond is water, water that will fill the pond and keep it full. The water we are looking for comes from the watershed, the area above the pond that when snow melts, rain and rain storms fall to the ground and moves down hill to the pond or at least where the pond will be some day.
What I’m getting at, is if you’re planning to build a pond start looking at the property and see where the water runs to. If you are new on the property start watching where the water comes from, is it headed to where you want the pond? If not can the runoff be diverted to go where you want the pond?
Then again if you’ve been on the property for years you probable have a good idea of the runoff path, even diverted the flow to run away from the house to prevent the dreaded flooded basement.
And if you haven’t been aware of the runoff flow start watching now. With this crazy weather the past couple years sometimes we can’t see the water flow all the time, drought or light rains may only get the ground wet but not runoff.
Usually when the snow melts we can see a couple of the main paths the water flows, but then again winters around here have been pretty light and the snow melt happens in a day which with busy schedules we could miss the event. This year has been a little different where we get a foot or more of snow then the following week up to 60 degrees then another lake event snow storm comes in so we have a chance of catching the run off a couple times so far this winter and a break from the bitter cold.
Over the years we worked at transforming a corn field into what we have today. A lot of the work was to divert the rain fall from where the mobile home was at first and then when we built the house, did more work to keep the rain from flooding the basement or having a soaking wet yard all the time. The strange thing was 90 percent of ground work kept moving the water to the north of the house and eventually the pond was built in that location catching the rain fall runoff from the top of the property.
Over all this post is to help you start thinking about the water source for your pond, so get out there a start watching where the water runs to and start planning a location for the pond.
More help can be found in our Definitive Guide to Ponds free or Our E Book How to Build a Farm Pond.
