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Ever since I had moved into my house, my pond had a pretty bad leak. It would always seem to loose water at a pretty fast rate. Well last spring, I discovered water bubbling up in my Drainage ditch. Luckily the water contained my pond dye color. Therefore I knew my pond water was running into the drainage ditch.
After doing a fair amount of looking, I had figured the general area of where I thought the water path was from the pond to the drainage ditch.
I had talked to a Pond guy who had suggested that we bring a backhoe out and dig a trench across the area that I suspected the leak in. This trench would disrupt the waterway and likely stop the leak.
I thought this sounded great, until he gave me the $1600 estimate to do the work. I thought I was getting ripped off. Therefore I figured I would see what the good ole John Deere Could do.
My tractor is a JD4300, 32HP compact 4x4 tractor. It is a nice tractor, but not real big.
The Ground contained alot of Clay, but suprisingly enough, I was able to slowly start digging a trench slightly wider than the tractor width about 50 feet long and 6ft deep a the deepest point.
It took about 3 hours of digging, but I did find an old underwater clay farm tile running from my pond to the drainage ditch. As soon as I broke the tile, the leak stopped.
However, once I broke the tile, I had a heck of an inrush of water which turned the trench into a clay mudpit. needless to say I buried my tractor and had to get resuced by my neighbors Big John Deere (good thing mine was a JD too...he said if it was a Kubota he would have filled the hole with my tractor :shock: ).
All and all, it was successful. I just needed to replace two axle seals on the JD that were destroyed by the clay. But defnitely cheaper than paying the pond guy. Plus playing on the JD is kind of like playing on the Ranger
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After doing a fair amount of looking, I had figured the general area of where I thought the water path was from the pond to the drainage ditch.
I had talked to a Pond guy who had suggested that we bring a backhoe out and dig a trench across the area that I suspected the leak in. This trench would disrupt the waterway and likely stop the leak.
I thought this sounded great, until he gave me the $1600 estimate to do the work. I thought I was getting ripped off. Therefore I figured I would see what the good ole John Deere Could do.
My tractor is a JD4300, 32HP compact 4x4 tractor. It is a nice tractor, but not real big.
The Ground contained alot of Clay, but suprisingly enough, I was able to slowly start digging a trench slightly wider than the tractor width about 50 feet long and 6ft deep a the deepest point.
It took about 3 hours of digging, but I did find an old underwater clay farm tile running from my pond to the drainage ditch. As soon as I broke the tile, the leak stopped.
However, once I broke the tile, I had a heck of an inrush of water which turned the trench into a clay mudpit. needless to say I buried my tractor and had to get resuced by my neighbors Big John Deere (good thing mine was a JD too...he said if it was a Kubota he would have filled the hole with my tractor :shock: ).
All and all, it was successful. I just needed to replace two axle seals on the JD that were destroyed by the clay. But defnitely cheaper than paying the pond guy. Plus playing on the JD is kind of like playing on the Ranger
