I just had a half acre pond dug and filled it with well water. In a week it is down four feet. I've done some research and some folks say to add gypsum, hay or a sealant like Soilfloc. Anyone had any experience with this?

TIA

Rob

Not enough information. What is the soil type? Gypsum is usually used to flocculate, not disperse soil as is needed in pond sealing.

The top 1.5 feet were dark soil with moderate clay content. Beyond 1.5 feet the soil turned white and had caliche mixed in with some clay... it would clump when squeezed. The state soil people said the soil was adequate. In this area (Paplote) most people have water wells to keep their tanks full.

It's a new water well and with a compressor was able to jet and fill the tank in 4 days. Currently my water well has a solar powered pump on it that can't keep up.

The top layer was held back and used to line the tank. At it's deepest it is 8 feet

Look up Acrylamide or Low Viscosity Urethane grout in Dams. There is data out there.

I used www.avantigrout.com to get data and info to use the right product. You can hire a contractor or you can do it yourself with a high pressure pumps which will push the chemicals into the soil and lock up the leak

Not what you want to hear but I ended up putting a liner in my pond to get it to hold water. I spent money on other remedies without success.

JobSecurity said:

---

---

came to post this

I tried a similar material in my pond but it did not work.

This is how you do it. Easy to make the equipment yourself

Usually when there is decent clay, but lots of caliche in there, rock salt is used to help seal one. If done right, IT WILL NOT MAKE THE WATER SALTY. The sodium in the rock salt kicks the calcium ions off the clay particles. Calcium makes clays flocculate, while sodium makes them disperse and seal. Tell those bozos in Sinton to get out there and look at it.

robbio said:

---

The top 1.5 feet were dark soil with moderate clay content. Beyond 1.5 feet the soil turned white and had caliche mixed in with some clay... it would clump when squeezed. The state soil people said the soil was adequate. In this area (Paplote) most people have water wells to keep their tanks full.

It's a new water well and with a compressor was able to jet and fill the tank in 4 days. Currently my water well has a solar powered pump on it that can't keep up.

---

You might want to give these guys http://www.ess13.com/ a call. I have not personally used their product, but I do know of a couple of people that have and it worked as advertised for them.

Undertow Horn said:

---

Bentonite?

---

Bingo! Bentonite

Let it go dry add oilfield mud and feed round bales at bottom of tank. Cattle trample in the mud.

It is possible the soft limestone marl will eventually settle and seal so I'd give it a few weeks. Then I'd start with the low cost options, starting with a bentonite clay slurry.

I had a similar issue in a 2-3 acre research pond and was able to seal it using about 10 , 5-gal buckets of a thick bentonite slurry dumped in various parts of pond. If that doesn't work then look at some of the higher cost options shown above.

I had a similar issue on a pond we dug. About the same size as yours. Soil had too much sand content in areas. Tried bentonite.....may have helped, but didn't totally solve it and was expensive.

So, over the course of several weeks, I dug out a good amount of clay dirt from a site on another farm we have and hauled it over to the pond site and piled it up. Got my old 4020 tractor with a bucket on the front and carry-all on the back and spread it around the lighter looking soil areas of the pond the best I could. It happened to rain heavily literally the day I finished and filled the pond up in a hurry. It held!

That being said, it only holds at a certain level. When we fill it up now with well water it drops 3 or 4 feet and then holds pretty well at that level. My guess is the bottom is sealed pretty well, but the sidewalls leak.

https://shalex.com.au/damit-dam-sealer/

This is the product I ordered. It's cheaper than Soilfloc and is supposed to work as well. I recently read that if you add hay to the tank it will form slime and seal the whole thing.

The neighbor has a tank that he said self-sealed. His theory is that when you have enough organic material that it will seal itself... we'll see. Thanks for all the input.