A ongoing update on our tryst with Creating a Pond in our new project
Requirement: Water storage for Agri purposes. The Pond will also host fishes.
Dimension- 14M X 12M X 4M
Slope : 2 feet Slope on Three sides and 3 Feet on one side.
We embarked on digging a water pond for irrigation purposes and have finished the excavation. This week we embarked on identifying the right Pond liner for the pond. Here is the details of the Market visit-
Most of the farmers in and around Bangalore use HDPE sheets and a smaller number use Silpaulin.
Cost
HDPE 400 GSM: Average rate INR 8 per square Feet.
Lowest quote: INR 7.91
time for delivery - 4 Days from Oder
Silpaulin: 250 GSM
Lowest Quote : INR 8.69
Time for delivery : 2 Days (vendor has stock)
WE are planning to go with HDPE liner with 90% Shadenet as cover.
Just to add few finer details for everyone benefits (as I am also in similar state with my pond)
Dimensions - 14M x 12 M x 4 M = 672 Cubic Mts (ignoring the slope aspect)
Water Capacity - 6,72,000 Lts (water capacity 1000 lts per cubic meter)
Dimensions in Fts - 46 x 40 x 13 (roughly)
Pond liner requirement (assuming 2 feet slope all sides)
4 sides and bottom
2 long sides - 48 x 13 x 2 = 1248 sq feet
2 short sides - 42 x 13 x 2= 1092 sq feet
bottom - 46 x 40 x 1 = 1840 sq feet
Total - 4180 sq feet
Roughly pond liner cost would be 40K.
No need for pond liner. Let the water collect and slowly sink under the ground. You will also save money by not buying the liner. Over the years after the water table has risen the pond will stay full round the year.
If you dig the pond a little more at one end to get 6feet depth sloping upwards to 3 or 4 feet at the shallow end would be good for fishes that lay eggs. Pearl Spot is a good fresh water fish and better than that Genetically Improved Fish Tilapia (GIFT).
You could use shade net to keep the birds away from the fish.
The Water pond is now ready to recieve the pond liner. The liner sheet will be laid after the borewell is ready which should be by Tuesday (1st week of July).
THanks Chandra, Looks like GST brought a galore of Orders for the Factories weilding the HDPE sheets. Our order is not yet ready and the chances of it being ready this week seem to be bleak… So will update as soon as there is movement on ground.
Been a long time since we had movement on our farm pond and now here are the updates. First the bad news-
Initially after the delay in getting the pond liner and due to other priorities we kind of put the pond on the back burner. Since there was no rain we thought it would be ok… and then it rained which is good but since we had not yet put the sheet on … we got this …
Update for today… we started off slow as our Bahubali showed up very very late and after waiting for some time for him we decided to set up the motor ourself. It went really well and by the time our help arrived we were almost done. here is our end state picture for today.
Three side walls gradient should have been more like 45 degrees angle. And one side with a 15 degree angle where one can walk into the pond. Right now the sidewalls looks somewhat like a 75 degree angle.
Even in this pond you can let it be as-it-is and let nature take its own course. Only concern is one edge is very close to the fence which might cave in if the soil got too moist.
Putting liner will not harvest rainwater it will just act as a holding tank. Thus the well-water table will keep going lower. The usefulness of the pond is to send rainwater into the ground as it just did (in the pics). The soil erosion will reduce with time as vegetation grow on the sloping sides.
There was another question I received in email:
Question: “Dug a pond -21 ft by 15 ft by 9 ft depth a year Plus Back. I have a borewell 400 Ft deep almost 1.5 m from one end of the pond and a 5KW/5HP Solar Pump. The land which this system covers is only 1.75 Acres and no plan to buy anymore. Is it a good idea to not use pond liners and allow it to be filled with Rain water–During summer it is very Dry–Our Pump output is reasonable but not high. I want to exploit the monsoon so that we can build a water table. Will this also help in recharging the Borewell” ?
Answer: Surely using pond without a liner will help to recharge the borewell. You could have connected the roof top rainwater directly into the borewell too using a cloth filter to remove bird-dropings, leaves and twigs.
The closeness of the pond to the borewell should not deteriorate the quality or quantity of bore-water. In fact putting rainwater into the bore directly or via nearby pond will improve the quality of the bore-well-water.
A final update on the Water pond. we now have the pond liner installed and the over the top cover along with a mesh made of GI wire completed. The tank holds close to 250000 Lts of water.
I think open farm pond (without plastic cover) is not applicable for all area, if you observe the above picture of farm ponds you will observe that the red soil erosion rate is very high and the farm pond getting silted very early. The rainy water erode the soil and the soil getting deposited in farm pond, which reduce its water containing capacity of farm pond.
In some open farm ponds the water percolation rate is very high, farm pond can’t hold water for long time because of soil texture. So before digging the farm pond we have to see what is texture of our soil, whether the farm pond is applicable for the geographical area or not.
Regards
S. Pant
I had the following experience.
Beware, if some of your neighbours are using PORATE mixed with plenty of UREA, as pesticide, the porate sinks into the soil and pollutes your pond.
In my case all the fishes died after my neighbour had applied the same in his field.
Regards
Antony Raj
Pallava Integrated Farm
