Pros/Cons of Digging a Pond While Building a House

"The road to success is always under construction."

-Arnold Palmer-

As our last post discussed, we decided to jump in feet first and dig a pond while building our farmhouse.  Now that the craziness is over (knock on wood), I can look back and see why this is a potentially good option for some situations and not others.  Here is our brief non-inclusive list of some of the pro and cons that we experienced:

Cost - This will appear as both a pro and a con.  If you particular home site is one that will require a lot of fill, and you are considering one day digging a pond, then you should consider the option of digging it during the home build

• Pulverized topsoil costs approximately $30-35 per cubic yard
• Fill clay is approx $25 per cubic yard

So each dump truck is approx. 5 cubic yards, so approximately $150/dump truck for the soil + delivery charges.  Recall that the excavation subcontractor for our home estimated that we would need approximately 175-200 dump trucks of fill soil hauled in for our house.  

175 dump trucks x $150/load = $26,000+

Let that sink in...we would have had a potential $26,000 change order just to level and fill around the house.  Then we would have also had the cost to dig the pond at a later date (and potential hauling off of the soil from the pond dig).  

Coordination - I had assumed the coordination factor would weigh against digging the pond and building the house at the same time.  After all, we would be trying to coordinate two different contractors, a large movement of a whole lot of soil, and all the while also following the building of a complex project (the house). 

However, our builder's excavator commented that it would have been much more difficult to coordinate the delivery of 175 dump trucks.  

Insurance - If you can get the same contractor who is performing your home excavation/site work to dig the pond, that is totally ideal.  Although after working with Rock You Pond, I realized that pond digging/construction is quite a unique skill.  The lining of the pond with clay, the clay core, the overflow and spillway construction..oh my!  So in the unique case where you can find a contractor that does both home excavation and pond digging, and that contractor is an approved sub with your builder, then you are set!  

However, it is likely that these two contractors will not be the same, and that raises some issues.  If you have your home builder hire the pond contractor, then the builder (more likely the builder's project manager) will manage the insurance considerations.  Typically, a home builder will provide Builder's Risk insurance, which is essentially a policy that covers the "project" replacement costs in case of a peril (like fire, flood, wind, etc.)  

So how would this policy be impacted by pond construction?  In our case, the hauling path for the two dump trucks circled the house continuously for about 12 hours a day, which made a lot of sense for the purposes of hauling fill and dumping it where the home builder needed it for the house.  See below:

However, consider the risk that the home builder faces when large dump trucks are continually circling the project.  That is a larger-than-normal risk that something (i.e. dump truck crash) could damage the house.  There are ways to solve this problem, like confirming that the pond contractor had enough insurance to cover the risk.

Parting Thoughts - The biggest piece of advice we could give is to try to make this decision earlier rather than later.  We were so incredibly fortunate to be able to accomplish the pond dig with two whole days of planning.  The process would have been much easier if we had started earlier!