We dig, seal and finish ponds all over Maine — a koi pond off the back deck, a farm pond that waters stock and fights fire, or a multi-acre pour you can see from the air. Rubber-lined or clay-sealed, we do the excavation, the sealing, the spillway and the stonework with our own iron and our own crew.
Every pond comes down to one question first: does your ground hold water on its own, or do we bring the seal with us? We dig a test pit and find out before we quote you a shape. Here is what each build actually looks like underground.
We shape the bowl, pick the subgrade clean, bed it in sand, roll geotextile underlayment, then lay a single sheet of 45-mil EPDM and bury the edge in an anchor trench. The seal is the liner, not the dirt — so it works anywhere, even in sand and gravel.
If your ground has clay in it, the dirt is the liner. We key a trench into the hardpan at the toe of every slope, then place and compact a clay blanket in lifts up the sides. Cut an armored spillway, set the inlet, and the pond seals itself tighter every season.
We don't guess. We dig a test pit, look at what comes out of the bucket, and watch how fast a hole full of water drains. That tells us more in an afternoon than a brochure ever will.
| What we look at | Points to lined | Points to clay-sealed |
|---|---|---|
| Test-pit soil | Sand, gravel, loam, ledge or fill — water walks straight through | Clay or a good clay silt at depth, thick enough to key into |
| Perc / drain-down | Hole empties fast | Hole holds, or drains slow |
| Size you want | Under roughly a quarter acre, where liner cost still makes sense | Quarter acre and up — farm, fire and irrigation scale |
| Water level | Must stay dead level year round (koi, swimming, a formal edge) | You can live with it moving a foot with the season |
| Water source | Well, roof runoff or recirculating waterfall | Groundwater, a spring, a seasonal stream or a big catchment |
| What lives in it | Koi, ornamental fish, water lilies, people swimming | Stock watering, bass and bluegill, ducks, frogs, irrigation draw |
| Site access | Tight backyards — small machines, hand-finished | Open ground where the excavator and dozer can work |
The build changes with the scale, and so does the machine that shows up. We own the iron for all of it — John Deere excavator and skid steer, mulching heads, and two walk-behind mulchers for the ground a machine can't reach.
A lined bowl off the deck or patio with a recirculating waterfall, planting shelf and stone coping. Pump, skimmer and biofilter hidden in the rockwork.
Deeper, lined, properly filtered and aerated. Overwinter depth for koi, a gravel beach entry and a plant zone doing the polishing if you want to swim in it.
Clay-keyed, spillway cut and armored, dry hydrant set if your department wants one. Stock access ramp, 3:1 banks you can mow, and it fills off your own watershed.
Full earthwork job: clear, grub, strip and stockpile topsoil, cut and balance the bowl, build the embankment in lifts, seal, spillway, stabilize and seed.
We come out, look at your ground, your slope and where the water already wants to go. No charge for the look.
One bucket down tells us the soil profile, the depth to clay or ledge, and where the water table sits.
We check what your town and the state need before a tooth touches dirt, and we call in Dig Safe.
Trees down, stumps out, brush mulched on site. Topsoil stripped and stockpiled — it goes back on at the end.
Excavate to grade with the shelves and slopes staked. Spoil goes into the berm, the drive or wherever you want the fill.
Clay keyed and compacted in lifts, or subgrade picked clean, sand bedded, underlayment rolled and the EPDM laid in one sheet.
Overflow cut low and armored so it never chews the bank. Inlet, pump lines, skimmer, aeration and any dry hydrant set now.
Coping, boulders, beach entry, waterfall — set by hand. Troy has been laying stone since he was fifteen.
Water in, banks loamed and seeded or matted, site cleaned up. Then we walk it with you before we call it done.
The edge is what makes a pond look built or look natural, and it is where most jobs get given away. You can mix these around one pond — a stone coping where you walk, a beach where the kids get in, and a planting shelf on the far side where you want the frogs.
← Swipe the drawings sideways
Cross-sections drawn by us for this page — not stock art. Proportions are illustrative; your actual grades, depths and footings get staked on site.
We don't sub out the dirt work, and we don't wait on a rental yard. That is the whole reason we can get to sites other people turn down — on our first job we trucked equipment eight miles through the woods and built bridges to get there.
In Maine, digging a pond can pull in your town's code office, shoreland zoning, and state review if there's a stream, wetland or protected resource anywhere near it — and the rules change depending on exactly where you are and what you're digging into.
We're not going to guess at that on a web page. What we will do is find out for your specific lot before we start, tell you plainly what's required, and handle the coordination. If a permit is going to be the hard part, you'll hear it from us on the first visit, not after the excavator is already sitting there.
Talk is cheap on a website. So next year we're putting four ponds in the ground on Homestead Heroes property, at four different scales and with both seals, and running a camera from the first test pit to the day they fill. Test pits, clay lifts, liner rolled out, spillway cut, boulders set — all of it, including whatever goes wrong.
EPDM start to finish, with a waterfall and a formal stone coping. The one you can watch us pick a subgrade clean by hand.
Keyed into hardpan and compacted in lifts, no liner at all. Filmed so you can see exactly how the dirt becomes the seal.
Gravel beach entry, plant zone doing the filtering, deep end you can jump into. Built to be swum in, not just looked at.
Farm and fire scale. Clear, grub, strip, cut, balance, seal, spillway. Drone up for the whole thing.
Thinking about a pond and want to see it built before you commit? Get on the list and we'll send you the footage as it comes out of the ground.
We'll come look at the ground, dig a test pit, and give you a straight answer on which build your soil actually wants — and what it costs.