Hi Guys

Anybody has an idea for excavator hourly rates. I know depends on how big excavator is .... I need to clean my pond,maybe deepen little and clear the unwanted vegitation around..at Mukdahan area. Many thanx

Look at 1500/hour plus truck if you need removed but take into account if wet truck won't like as it makes it dangerous to tip.

On 2/3/2017 at 9:13 PM, farmerjo said:

Look at 1500/hour plus truck if you need removed but take into account if wet truck won't like as it makes it dangerous to tip.

Thank you my friend. very helpfull

memooz

That's a close price. Keep in mind that a larger excavator, a little more expensive per hour will end up costing less for the job. We have used both and a large Cat at 1,800 baht per hour was actually cheaper for total cost. The first one we hired to dig a pond was 1,200 baht per hour but it took about twice as long and it couldn't go deep enough to suit me. Another pond was somewhere in between for the excavator hourly cost.

how deep do you guys dig these ponds? 

What are the ponds for?  Fish?  Plants?

Are mosquitoes an issue?

How often to clean?   Do you supply water to them or just dig below the water table?

Some gal I am talking to online has this dream of a small house and farm on her little rice farm.. and a pond is including in her dreams. 

The depth depends on how you will use the pond. Fish ponds are normally no deeper than a meter and a half with one deeper spot for pumping out the pond to harvest the fish. Most ponds, at least in our area of Loei are for irrigation. That depth is as deep as the excavator can reach, usually not deeper than about four meters.

 

Our ponds mostly depend on rain to fill the pond. The water table is normally too far down to keep the pond full enough. Ponds will normally have fish whether you put them in or mother nature provides them. I don't know how mother nature puts fish in the ponds but it does happen. Where there are fish there will be no mosquitoes. Larger ponds are never cleaned.

 

We have four ponds and I am disappointed because the water seems to never clear up. The water is too muddy to raise fish commercially except for catfish. Catfish seem to do pretty well in muddy water. One of the ponds was there when we bought that farm. The water was pretty clear. During a really dry year I had the pond about doubled in size. The new half didn't hold water very well and the water has been muddy for about five years now. My wife had one total failure. She had a small pond dug and it simply wouldn't hold water. We eventually filled it back in. Pond liners or concrete are simply too expensive. 

 

Keep in mind that isolated ponds with fish are not a good idea. Fish thieves will steal the fish faster than they can grow. One pond had a lot of big fish. The thieves found it and cleaned it out. My wife threw a lot of brush in the pond to prevent netting the fish. That didn't help, the thieves then electrocuted them and cleaned out the pond anyways. They must have gotten scared off because they left the wires in the pond. My wife was devastated because she fed those fish every day.