Thread: Jetty timber for farm dam

You cannot go wrong with some old telegraph poles, especially if they happen to be Ironbark or similar.

I tried to cut through an old one recently with the chainsaw and a sharp chain. Nothing but smoke and sparks!

Contrary to the opinions of others here, it may be prudent to gain permission, especially on a small acreage.

We too have a 5 acre lot but in the Southern Highlands NSW. Have to have a permit for everything including a shipping container for storage.
The thing is here, that should you have to sell for whatever reason ,then it gets real complicated and hard to gain permission retrospectively.

One person in particular near here carved out a large dam and had the whole deal including boathouse,slipway and jetty.
Trouble was neighbouring properties bore water supply were drying up or diminished and so they ended up having to import fill and restore back to natural. The cost-astronomical!

Shame you're so far away. We're in the middle of cutting a block with decent to good Turpentine piles right now.

wharf piles.jpg

At 16m this load might be a little long for a farm dam though.

Originally Posted by John.G

Shame you're so far away. We're in the middle of cutting a block with decent to good Turpentine piles right now.

wharf piles.jpg

At 16m this load might be a little long for a farm dam though.

That would have been nice. I might be going around in circles again though. The dam man is very hard to get hold of. I'll chase him up one more time next week and then I don't know what I'll do. Forget about getting a couple of quotes. Getting one is hard enough.

Originally Posted by rustynail

Why not float it? Much easier in the long run.

+1

Unless your dam is going to stay full all year round (I wish I had one of those), I would go for a floating setup.

Originally Posted by Vernonv

+1

Unless your dam is going to stay full all year round (I wish I had one of those), I would go for a floating setup.

I started seriously considering this yesterday. Making a floating pontoon looks very straight forward and I expect if I do it right it should be relatively stable. I could have a standard jetty going down to a floating pontoon or a jetty anchored at one end to the top of the dam and floating at the other end, possibly articulated. I'm now open to all options.

Originally Posted by Arch Stanton

I started seriously considering this yesterday. Making a floating pontoon looks very straight forward and I expect if I do it right it should be relatively stable. I could have a standard jetty going down to a floating pontoon or a jetty anchored at one end to the top of the dam and floating at the other end, possibly articulated. I'm now open to all options.

We built a floating pontoon for a (permanant) mooring in a river a few years ago. Used one of those 1000l IBC cube tanks and filled it with a closed cell expanding foam - got to be closed cell or it takes on moisture - then put that into an alloy "cage" with an alloy ramp articulated between that and the bank (tidal river - it needed to go up and down a couple of times a day). Worked well though it was pretty rough and ready but it had potential if refined a bit better.

By the sound of it you need to get a dam dug first though, because the size/ depth/ bank contour/ how much it dries up aspects of the dam will determine what sort of system works for you. I can't believe you've been this long and are yet to find a contractor... up here there is gear parked up everywhere and you'd be knocked down in the rush of guys looking to give you a quote.

Definately don't need a permit. Just did this exercise. Our dam was already in place though.
Look up 'harvestable right' dam capacity.
All farmers are able to harvest rainfall on their properties.
It is calculated on the land area x annual rainfall.

I sharpened the small end of 2 turp poles (bark on ) and had a 28T excavator drive them about 10 feet into the mud.

Originally Posted by Barterbuilt

Definately don't need a permit. Just did this exercise. Our dam was already in place though.
Look up 'harvestable right' dam capacity.
All farmers are able to harvest rainfall on their properties.
It is calculated on the land area x annual rainfall.

I don't know about that. I did a quick look up of harvestable rights in Vicoria and didn't come up with much, a lot for NSW but not Vic. I also looked at the council website and it says "If you are planning to construct a dam on your property, you must apply for a planning permit." Anyway I finally got someone out to take a look today. He seems to know what he's talking about and he's going to start on Friday.

Update. I got the dam man out last week and he suggested doing some test holes as there could be rocks etc beneath the ground. He dug 3 x 4m deep holes with his excavator and pulled out nothing but granetic sand. This wasn't surprising since many older people in my area tell me there used to be a granetic sand quarry on my block. If I construct the dam in granetic sand it wont hold water very well. So the latest is, it will cost another $6K - $7k to treat it with a sealing polymer.

If there is no local clay available to bring in for a liner, it might be time to consider putting down a bore.

Another timber that does well under water is vic or tas blue gum. It does well in salt or fresh water.