Finally finished that dam project!

One of the neat features of the place my father got in Riverview was a creek running through the tail end of the property edge by the river and flowing under the boathouse. It had a flowing spring with a small cavern (I checked and could only squeeze in about 6 feet) right on the property line and just downstream of a dam the neighbor put up early last year. The creek and river are tidally influenced and would fill up and drain a few times a day. The irrigation pump had the intake in the creek and dad already once forgot to turn the pump off and sucked in air so the impeller had to be replaced. He decided to put in his own dam so to better increase the aesthetic value by having not only a constant bit of standing water, but also a waterfall effect as well.

We spent a while getting supplies and designing the dam and worked on it over several weeks. It was a tough, tough project where we had to dig into the banks a few feet and through the creek mud into the hard bottom so to build the foundation. After pouring the foundation and having it set, we came back in to put in the block to build up the rest of it. We had to wait until the early part of the year when there are the longest periods of time between the tides and were still always working against the clock. Finally after the blocks were poured, empty cells filled in with concrete and everything had cured, I had to go in to put in the limestone and slate pieces to create a more natural look. I already designed the dam so there was a 4 inch drain pipe, but I also put in a small 1/2 inch pipe, further reduced to just a small hole drilled into a cap pointing up, so that there would be a fountain effect whenever the tide was low, and a boiling look whenever it was high. Overall I am very pleased with how the project turned out. Whenever the rains return, I suspect there will be a fairly decent water flow through the spillway at times. I got it measured so that our spillway was just 2-3 inches below the spill way of the neighbor's dam so that there would be two flowing waterfalls during periods of high flow.