Frequently Asked Ski Lake Questions
- Where do you get the water?
- Our water comes from the ground water table, supplied by the Cache la
Poudre River, which surrounds the lakes. Click here
to see the river surrounding the property, before the lakes were built. We also built a
diversion dam to control the water level to the inch.
- How do you dig the lake with all that water in the ground?
- When digging the lakes, the first step is to dig a hole from which the groundwater can be pumped (
see photo
). The pump will run 24 hours per day. Then the dewatering hole
is expanded into a network of trenches in the lake bottom, with all water
draining back towards the pump. You can see the pump and trench setup in this picture of the Laku Founders.
A track hoe or excavator is used to dig the trench system.
- How did you dig actually dig it?
- We found a sand and gravel company that wanted the material from the lakes
to build roads. We specified the dimensions, and they did the rest. This is
not really something you would want to take on yourself, as this
photo shows.
- What are the dimensions?
-
Click here
to see the original dimensions of lake 2. We made some
changes as we went to the surface dimensions, but the cross section stayed
pretty constant. Lake 1 covers about 13 surface acres, lake 2 covers about 11 acres.
- What are some of the more difficult parts of building a lake?
- It is definitely the construction and maintenance that occurs after the
lake is dug. Check out stuff in the
photo gallery for some pics of these projects.
Questions, Comments? Contact us!
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