NOTE THAT YOU CAN CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE IT.
One of the challenges we faced was soil deposited into our dams with every flood event. This soil comes from some serious soil erosion upstream of our Village. Some of that upstream soil erosion has been dealt with by our neighbours who have done some river bank maintenance. So it was time to do something about getting rid of the soil already in our dams.
We tackled Dam 1 first. This work was done in the winter of 2016 when the river flow was minimal.
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- Sand build up as it enters the Village property.
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- Grasses growing well above the normal water level.
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- Sand in the main dam area 1.
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- Sand in the main dam area 2.
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- We had to build a temporary coffer dam so that the equipment could work in the dam.
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- As fast as we excavated sand, water filled the hole.
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- We had to bring in a backactor.
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- Getting stuck was not difficult.
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- When it got too muddy we had to use a tracked smaller bobcat.
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- Shows how deep we had to excavate.
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- There was more sand than we knew what to do with. We sifted much of it and used it as lawn top dressing.
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- A huge amount of sand was excavated.
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- The start of the rock sand trap to catch the sand before it enters the main dam.
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- And eventually the dam started filling and the ducks returned.
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- We added a fountain.
Then it was time to tackle Dam 2 North. This is the dam immediately in front of the Lifestyle Centre deck. Over the years it had become very shallow due to sand deposits. This dam presented a challenge as the mud was very sticky and the Backactor we tried to use, became stuck in the mud. So the next step was to try a giant vacuum cleaner. This was not quite as successful as we would like it to have been due to the extremely sticky nature of the mud. However a significant amount of mud was removed and the dam is now dramatically improved.
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- Dam 2 North was an overgrown puddle..
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- In winter it was sometimes no more than mud.
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- The Backactor could only reach the Northern edges of the dam.
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- So we brought in the “vacuum cleaner”
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- Which required quite a lot of manual assistance to suck up the mud.
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- The end result!
Dam 2 South had ceased to exist some years before the Village was developed. This was largely due to the overflow weir having collapsed and the dam no longer able to contain any water. This left a dry bed which became overgrown with grasses as can be seen in the first picture below. The solution was to demolish what was left of the weir and to reconstruct a new one. The new weir was further designed to act as a roadway to the far side of the dam in order to facilitate future maintenance by providing access to any required equipment. Once the weir was complete, a major exercise to remove soil and restore the dam took place. This was done using a long reach tracked excavator. The end result was 2 dams separated by a section of land now known as “The Sanctuary”. Professional assistance was provided by a specialist advisor in terms of grasses and other vegetation that would attract birds and other wildlife. All in all this has been a most worthwhile exercise and has become one of the significant focal points of the Village.
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- Dam 2 South was created in the grass section at the back of this photo.
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- This is where there used to be a spillway. The grass path led down to where it was meant to be.
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- In the dry season we cleared away the debris of the old spillway.
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- We had to work in a lot of mud to try and get down to bedrock.
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- We brought in a tracked excavator that could work in the mud.
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- Which was also used to excavate the dam and create the Wildlife Sanctuary on the right separating the 2 dams..
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- We built a gabion spillway.
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- And topped it with concrete
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- To form a solid capping that could be driven on if necessary.
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- The new spillway was built wide enough to provide vehicular access to the far side of the dam for maintenance purposes.. Stepping stones were included to allow crossing when the water flow is low.
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- The path carries on around the Southern section of the dam completing a full loop around all our dams. Nobody could walk here before.
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- The dam filled up for the first time in many years. This was the end result.
