Sodium Bentonite to seal my pond to be...

[Neko-chan]

...

 

[Boogity]

OMG I could not imagine using bags of kitty litter! It would cost many hundreds of times more than dump truck loads. About 15 yr. ago when we owned our farm in southern Ohio we had a leak in our dam at the overflow control valve piping. I drained about 900k gallons of water to expose the piping system and trucked in about 30 tons ($600 if my memory serves me right) of Bentonite clay (which isn't really very much) and used a backhoe and a heavy roller to fix the problem. I put a 2" +/- thick coating of the clay in an area about 40 ft. X 20 ft. and about 6" thick at the piping area. I then used a diesel pump to spray pond water onto the dry clay in light dampening phases. This assured that the clay was thoroughly dampened and I rolled it again to compact. It took several weeks for the water level to return to pool stage and we never had another leak. To this day the backside of the dam is dry. One of the wonderful characteristics of Bentonite is that it is a very fine powdery clay which packs very tightly when compressed and it expands slightly when wet. Almost all berm and underground homes have a Bentonite layer on the outside of the foundation to make them moisture-proof.

 

[adoptedbyachicken]

A co-worker of mine has a horse facility where they do cross country jumping. She has a few water jumps and has had to seal them with bentonite. Buys it in a sac, like feed and mixes it with water in a bucket, bit by bit, dumps into the jump pond then leaves it. The leaky area is where the bentonite ends up basically. If the leak is really slow the bentonite might settle out so you could have to continue stirring or something. One time she had to walk horses through regularly to keep it stirred up.

To what use is your pond? I'd not put kitty litters that have many other things like odor control and such in any drinking source.

 

[patandchickens]

Yup, you almost certainly need to get it from a specialty supplier not from a general retail-type hardware store. I would suggest calling local ornamental-pond contractors, aggregate dealers (gravel pits), and well drillers.

Pat

 

[Wifezilla]

BBH, I got a plastic preformed pond liner and pump dirt cheap from a neighbor who moved. My other pond is a big stock tank, so no need for bentonite

However, being in Colorado, I know a bit about it. If you are unlucky enough to buy a house with a lot of bentonite in the soil, it only take a few years for the entire foundation to get trashed. They test for it now, but years ago nobody knew about it until some new developments went in...unfortunately on bentonite.

 

[big brown horse]

Thanks everyone for your input. There is a great local sand company down the road a few miles, I'll call them in the morn.