Farm Dams Must Hold Their Water

Dams are the life essence for many sheep stations, but the general principle of farm dams also has excellent applications on housing estates and smallholdings. A correctly built dam will be valuable for many years, providing water for animals, irrigation or enjoyment. In contrast, an incorrect dam design quickly becomes a mere money-sucking hole as you try to fix fundamental mistakes.

Common Mistakes When Building an Agriculture Dam

The most common mistake farmers and landowners make when constructing a new dam or repairing an old one is that Big Ditch Dam Building Company is not doing the work. If we were there with our machines and knowledge, we would have prevented the following three most common mistakes:

• Location. The best location for a farm dam is not at the lowest point of a natural watercourse. Firstly, it is illegal to build any dam in a watercourse, stream or creek without the Government’s consent by way of a permit. This is to protect the availability of water for the properties lying downstream. Secondly, the lowest point is where all the run-off gunk and mud collect, which you don’t want in your new dam.

• Construction specifications. Many earthmovers – certainly those who have not studied dam construction – will simply dig a hole and use the excavated soil for the dam wall. This technique is ideally suitable if you require a dry crater-like feature on the housing estate, one that turns into a muddy mess after heavy rains. Or the dam is made way too shallow under the impression that this creates a visually impressive lake using less water. Well, less water is correct because the evaporation is so high for these shallow indentations that they often lose five or six times their volume of water in a year.
• Overflow. There is an ideal place to construct the overflow for the dam correctly. Placing it smack-bang in the centre is asking for trouble, and due to the aggressive nature of water in motion (as mathematically proven by Daniel Bernoulli), the dam wall will soon fail. It is also vital that the overflow capacity exceeds the calculated inflow rate during a heavy storm. Otherwise, the water will just ignore the overflow. If this happens, the water soon undercuts the dam wall, causing it to collapse.

Key Questions to Ask Farm Dam Builders Before Committing

All the mistakes made when constructing a dam for agriculture on the farm have one positive side: it can determine if a dam builder knows his stuff. Let’s quickly compare a general earthmover with Big Ditch Dam Building Company:

• Number of dams built. We have successfully built over 320 low-maintenance, ecologically friendly dams all over Australia during the past 20 years – that’s on average 16 dams a year and doesn’t include all the dams that we’ve repaired during that time. We build so many dams because that is all we do, and we even build dams during our vacations on our own property.
• Guarantee. We guarantee every earthen dam that we build for ten years against collapse, overwash, tunnelling and leakage. If we could, we would also offer a guarantee against water loss through evaporation. Still, currently, we can only minimise the process through sound farm dam design principles and ingenuity.
• Volume-surface-depth ratio. Everything means nothing if the dam doesn’t retain water. How many dams we’ve built, our winning smile, and our guarantee all take a step backwards when we pull out the VSD ratio calculations for your new or existing dam. If you don’t know why these figures are important, read up – or ask us to explain them. Simply put, the VSD ratio indicates how successful your dam will be in retaining water.

Why Big Ditch Dam Building Company

In addition to all the above reasons why we are the best dam builders in Australia and why our dams are lasting structures that add value to estates, smallholdings and farms, here are three more reasons:

• We always undertake extensive topographical surveys to determine the best placement of an earthen dam. We consider the natural run-offs, accessibility and, most importantly, the soil composition to build the perfect dam.
• An earthen dam must be lined using the right clay. Otherwise, the water just seeps into the ground. The best choice is clay that is rich in kaolinite. If none are available on site, we source it from our own mineral kaolin mine and never settle for an inferior substitute.
• We have a special arrangement with Caterpillar, Komatsu and Kobelco to provide the best and most appropriate machines for the job at the working site. This means that we are not limited by what we own, which is why most earthmoving companies try and fail with their small machines.

Big Ditch Dam Building Company builds earthen dams anywhere in Australia. We also undertake farm dam repair unless the assessment is so dire that we just build a new dam elsewhere on your property. So don’t be stuck with a useless hole. Contact us today for an appointment to discuss how we will build you a working farm dam at a fixed price.