Making a pond from a gully

As you'll see from other posts damming the water may or may not be legal. In
your case it sounds like you have a little spring that pops up and then
disappears. These are very common and I doubt anyone would care. Now if it
was some spring that popped up and had heavy flow and left your property I'd
say call your local conservation office and ask them. It's easy to check
though. For Delaware you can go to
http://www.dnrec.state.de.us/dnrec2000/mail1.htm and ask them if it is
legal.

You normally need a constant source of water to maintain a large pond.
Normally it's the amount of water coming out of a typical garden hose. It
doesn't seem that your pond is going to be that big so the little spring
should be more than enough, especially if runoff from surrounding area can
make it into it.

I was told by a contractor when I was designing my pond that the vertical
level of a spring limits the height of a pond. I was then told by another
contractor that this wasn't always the case. My pond is feed by 8 or so
springs all of varying heights. I can see some springs under 2 feet of water
still pushing water up into the pond.

Sam

"DelawareDave" wrote in message
...
First, I'm new to this group. If this post is better placed somewhere
else,
please let me know.

I have a "V" shaped gully in my slightly sloped wooded backyard with an
apparent VERY SMALL spring of constant water running through the bottom of
it.

I'd like to "dam-up" this gully and make a pond - ideally with water feed
from this apparent spring. Here's my questions:

1. What do I do about a liner ? Should I put one big liner in the hole
?
Should the liner cover the water source ? Should I cut a hole in the
liner
over the small water source ? Should I try to lay several pieces in the
hole to reduce percolation to increase water level ?

2. What water level overall can I expect ? The "V" gully is about 3
vertical feet deep and has a very small water flow. Is the current
vertical level of the flow the highest I can ever expect ? If I line
portions of this gully - can I realistically expect the hole to fill (and
sustain filled) a level 3 feet higher than the current level ?

There's something here to do with the hydrostatic level of the source -
which I don't know and am interested in suggestions on how to test.

Thanks !!!!