Water is awesome, not only does it sustain life but is used for so many things in life. From drinking water to food manufacturing, putting out fires and cooling in nuclear plants. Dams built for power generation so we can use our computers and light to irrigation for crops to feed us. Water for the animals we eat to fish swimming in the ponds, lake and streams.
But then what happens when
it goes below 32 degrees, yep turns to ice, (sometime called hard water) Ha Ha! Ice can helps us to keep things cool like drinks and items in the cooler but have other benefits like being able to go ice fishing for the folks who don’t own boats can now get out to those secret holes. I’m sure you’ve heard of the ice road truckers? There are places that can’t be accessed until the water freezes over to support the trucks even dozers to haul out lumber from various islands. Then the other extreme using steam to run locomotives.
Water can also be very dangerous, examples of falling through the ice, to being washed away in a flooding situation. Weighing in at 8.34 pounds per gallon water is fairly heavy. That’s why we see cars, trees and buildings being pushed over during flooding situations.
This post is more about water disappearing and the power it has when it leaves the pond or lake. I’m talking about sink holes or voids under the pond or lake and the water draining out link a bath tub, pulling anything on the surface down to where the water is going.
Below are a few videos showing these sink holes and lakes draining with the power to pull in barges as well, even trees simply disappearing down in the water.
I bring this up because of a situation where we have built our pond on top of the gravel field that could also be the drain for the pond some day or may not ever happen. But what if it did? Would the pond leak out slowly? Would there be an on rush of water that down the pond on the property would the water gush out of the ground due to the force.
Yes we have the same scenario between our two ponds and I often thought or using the water from the gravel field to keep the big pond full but what would or what could happen to the little pond above? I don’t think I want to try it out to see what happens so we’ll leave well enough alone, for now.
Enjoy the videos from You Tube, I sorted through them and these have the biggest impacts or they are good quality to see what is going on in the water. Plus I would not want to be as close to the action as some of these folks holding camera’s!
40′ Trees Disappear.
Lake Peigneur sinkhole disaster Watch as barges get pulled in.
Monstrous whirlpool in Latvia swallows everything in its path
Not so much a sink hole but good example if the pipe going through the dam had water eroding around the outside of the pipe, called piping. This guy did move away from the action
3 sink holes forming. I think I would back up more
CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS AWAKE TO PROPERTY POND SWALLOWED BY SINKHOLE SUNDAY (MAR 20, 2013)
After watching the train track video you’ll see why it is so important for compaction and that the pipe going through the dam is sealed well with clay to prevent the piping that can potentially happen. The other method is anti seep collars. They can do the job but a little more involved installing them.
The other option to reduce these type of leaks is only going a few feet deep into the dam, instead of a bottom drain where the water pressure is much greater than 2 or 3 feet deep.
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