Nielson Ponds

Here is one of my projects. Its a 200 acre foot p0nd.. when I say pond I mean small lake. Easily big enough for multiple boats and water skiers. Its been a fun one for me. (It is empty in these pictures.) It has 2 embankments that combined are a little under 1200 feet long.

I always wonder what people really do for work. I design dams and pipelines, and any water structures, review canal systems to make sure they work, design culverts and such. I do studies on stream and river capacities. I design Fish ladders, spillways, diversions, weirs, flumes.. and things like that. This happens to be the same thing my dad does.. but add more soils and mining...


Stats for Dad:

• 27 feet of head
• 3:1 upstream
• 2:1 downstream
• Filtered toe drain w/ 8 inch slotted ADS separated in to left and right
• its a homogeneous clay compacted at 95% Standard proctor
• the clays optimum moisture is around 18% It was hard to keep it that wet
• riprap D50 = 6 inch (I submitted a memo to Dam safety with wave analysis to get it that small and saved $40,000)
• 10' bottom width spillway 3 to 1 side slopes 3 feet deep with a 3 foot concrete cutoff ripraped for 50'. Max Q = about 264 cfs
• 15 inch outlet conduit - which fills and empties the reservoir from another control reservoir that I'm redoing. with a sand collar and a 4 inch drain pipe seperate from the 2 toe drains
• its off stream and has essentailly no water shed.
• around 23,000 CY to build. (it was an enlargement of a smaller dam not meeting any dam saftey requirments.