help newbie here wanting to build pond on a hill

[robert west]

hi all im brand new to this orum and i have built mutiple ponds at mutiple houses ..but i will be trying my first pond on the side of a pretty steep hill and was wondering how does one stop it from having runoff and mudslides into or under the pond ?
i have included 2 pictures of what it did look like before the rain destroyed it and filled the pond with mud and also went under the liner and caved in the walls! also most of the soil is clay so it takes forever to seep into ground!
please help!

 

[Mmathis]

Hello and welcome! Wow, you’ve come with a lot of baggage, LOL! Your pond and the setting look nice, though!

I don’t even want to speculate, but I know I’ve read where other people have had “hill” issues. One thing you can do is a search of this site — see if you can pull up posts from others. @addy1 may have some advice, as well.

Just curious — where do you live? My landscape is flat, but we do have clay soil and a high water table, so I know what you mean about water under the liner and collapsing the walls! I had to do a total re-build when the pond was 2 years old because of this.

 

[j.w]

@robert west

 

[warren]

I built frame out of landscaping timber including my shelves inside of the hole I dug for my pond than back filled with dirt it keeps the sides from caving in and keeps the shelves flat. The lumber last about 20 years before they needed to be replaced. By that time it was basically time for a new liner. I don’t have much of a hill but do have a ground water issues it seems to solve that. I used the same lumber to build my water fall because it had to be down hill from the pond so we could see it from the house

 

[Telion]

Hello and welcome. I too may have similar issues so we might become good forum friends here in the near future. Based on what you are sharing I thought what about using landscaping fabric to hold the hillside in placeand then putting more clay based dirt over the top of it so it maintains that natural look. A couple other options would be to border the pond with larger rocks to keep the mud out of the pond. A third would be some good ground cover that would create more stable ground for you derision prevention plants so to say

 

[warren]

Hello and welcome. I too may have similar issues so we might become good forum friends here in the near future. Based on what you are sharing I thought what about using landscaping fabric to hold the hillside in placeand then putting more clay based dirt over the top of it so it maintains that natural look. A couple other options would be to border the pond with larger rocks to keep the mud out of the pond. A third would be some good ground cover that would create more stable ground for you derision prevention plants so to say

I dug my pond about 2 feet larger than I wanted it then basically built a big box with wooden shelf all made out of pressure treated lumber. I don' have any photos but I am currently redoing my rocks on water fall will post photo of box I built to make water fall

 

[Mmathis]

Just an FYI, but I recall reading somewhere that installing a French drain “above” the pond can be helpful for redirecting the water flow.

 

[GBBUDD]

hi all im brand new to this orum and i have built mutiple ponds at mutiple houses ..but i will be trying my first pond on the side of a pretty steep hill and was wondering how does one stop it from having runoff and mudslides into or under the pond ?
i have included 2 pictures of what it did look like before the rain destroyed it and filled the pond with mud and also went under the liner and caved in the walls! also most of the soil is clay so it takes forever to seep into ground!
please help!

1. If you are going to do the work for your pond in clay then I would definitely install a drain under the liner but this drain is a pressure drain it's a pipe that will fill with the ground water and will actually lift inside the pipe toward the surface and you can help b using a pump when needed.
2. clay is a great product to hold water in a depression . However it's a terrible product structurally when water is added it falls apart. a simple solution would be to dig a shovels width and dig down say
12" to 18" and dig along the down hill edge and pour some concrete into the excavation when you get to the top of grade partially bury cinder block into the fresh concrete to get some height above grade. once it's sets up add soil to the outside down hill edge.