Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Damming a Stream with Concrete Blocks and Concrete in Bags

A little too much background information first. As of February, I have been working at a firm that allows 100% virtual work. On June 29, my wonderful landlord announced that he was raising my rent 10% a second year in a row on my 2,100 sq ft house in Northern Virginia. So, two days later, I signed a contract on a new home in northeast WV that is 4,900 sq ft and sits on five acres with a small stream running through it about 100 yards behind, and 70 feet below, the back of my house. My wonderful girl lives an hour away but works just a few minutes away across the Potomac in MD. So, she spends a lot of time here. The payments, including taxes and insurance, are $1,100 less per month than renting that house in Virginia.

The basement, though unfinished, is one of my favorite places.





The moose is enjoying his new confines.

I really like this place.

But I need a fishing pond!

This is an example of what the small stream looked like.

A few weeks ago, my boys and I started damming it up by hand with timber and clay.

We already created a decent fish pond and stocked it with some largemouth bass and minnows and are feeding them.







But strong rains can compromise it requiring occasional repairs, and I want to build it higher.

My son and I cut a road through the forest down to the dam and pond.



I bought about 18,000 lbs of solid concrete blocks.



This is exactly what my Gladiator Rubiicon was designed to do – hauling heavy loads up and down steep muddy hills.

I want to have two separate ponds separated by the original dam so that I can put bass, catfish, and bluegill in one, and walleye, bluegill, and catfish I the other.

This is about 50 feet downstream from the existing dam. It’s the best place to try to build a concrete dam in that it is the narrowest stretch with the highest banks.

Here’s where I need some advice!

My plan, subject to your advice, is to build a 3-1/2’ - 4’ high rectangle of blocks illustrated below that would be 4’-8” wide and 6’ deep. The left side of the bank contains a low of shale rock that is very difficult to beat down with a pick axe. So, I can’t easily form the left side of the bank to seal against the concrete.



That would not dam the stream because the water would move arounds the left side.

Then, I would start dropping 60-lb bags of Quikrete or Sakrete on the sides spanning the 6’ depth of the dam; leave them in the paper sacks; press down the top surface flat; and then start laying more blocks on top of that.

That would force the stream water into the bags of concrete.

My hope is that the concrete will cure and set in the bags and the mass of the concrete and concrete blocks will hold them in place, and then I will have a 20,000 lb concrete dam that will hold.



Am I using the correct materials in terms of the bagged concrete?

Should I try to rebar the bagged concrete together and possibly into the ground?

Is there anything wrong with my approach?

Under WV law, this all is legal. I would have to make the dam 60 ft high and retain 500 acre-feet of water for this to qualify as a regulated dam, and that’s at least 100-times more water than I’m looking at retaining.

Many thanks in advance for any helpful advice.

Nice house!
You gonna buy it?

I bought it on Aug. 11.

It's a few posts down from the top.

Fantastic! Congrats!

Thanks. I'm not materialistic, but my life just got a lot better when I moved here.

You didn't mention how the water will get out of the pond[overflow].

Nice place BTW

Thanks. My plan is to build a penultimate layer of blocks on top with something like 4" horizontal gaps every foot or so, and then lay a solid flat layer of blocks on top of that, so that the water can overflow under a layer of concrete blocks.

Really nice place.

Do you know the highest flow rate of that stream during wet years?

I wouldn't want to be you when the Army Corps of Engineers, or some other regulatory agency, discovers this. I know you're a Marine and all, but around here they don't take kindly to stuff like that. Hope it works out for you; nice place.

No, but it's not much. The stream starts only about 2,000 feet upstream of me. And, just after the post- Hurricane Ida tropical rains, it didn't raise up noticeably. I think that's because it's near the start of the stream and the stream follows a fairly-steep path--so, it can't really build up in depth--unless it's dammed.

It's legal under WV law. See above. It's not even a dam to be regulated unless I was retaining over 50 acre-feet of water--more than 100 times more than what I'm contemplating.

You are living the dream friend, minus an excavator of course!