Erosion Control

[ditcherman]

That's a LOT of water! We got a ton of rain last night, as I'm sure did many others on INGO.

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Thinking my best bet will just be putting rocks / branches in the discharge valley to slow the waters flow after it exits the discharge.

In two years, can't say I've ever seen the overflow covered by 2" of water and it starting to make its way up the spillway...

View attachment 344126

A screen on an intake pipe like that can easily plug. There are no great solutions if you insist on no residue going into your pipe, like what may be out in a farm field or yard connected to corrugated tile. The good news is your probably have a very short run of smooth pipe to the outlet and it will stay cleaned out, if the screen ever does become a problem and you want to remove it.

As far as slowing that flow, branches are somewhat temporary, rocks are foreverish.
Have you by chance examined the bottom of the eroded channel? It wouldn't take very many flow events like that to erode it down to bedrock or some type of solid base, and I'm wondering if you're there already and really don't have anything to worry about, except maybe the sides of the channel?

An afterthought...if you do place rocks or something else in that channel and don't also reinforce the side banks, the water is just going to divert from the existing channel and make a new gully in the side banks. Path of least resistance, that is the most downhill.

 

[firecadet613]

A screen on an intake pipe like that can easily plug. There are no great solutions if you insist on no residue going into your pipe, like what may be out in a farm field or yard connected to corrugated tile. The good news is your probably have a very short run of smooth pipe to the outlet and it will stay cleaned out, if the screen ever does become a problem and you want to remove it.

As far as slowing that flow, branches are somewhat temporary, rocks are foreverish.
Have you by chance examined the bottom of the eroded channel? It wouldn't take very many flow events like that to erode it down to bedrock or some type of solid base, and I'm wondering if you're there already and really don't have anything to worry about, except maybe the sides of the channel?

An afterthought...if you do place rocks or something else in that channel and don't also reinforce the side banks, the water is just going to divert from the existing channel and make a new gully in the side banks. Path of least resistance, that is the most downhill.

Thankfully the screen has not impeded water flow to the overflow pipe, even when it was the old screen from the previous owner (much smaller holes and clogged with algae and gunk). I'd wager to bet the screen has always been around it. I looked and I don't have a good picture of just the pipe inside the screen without it being covered by water or the old screen with gunk on it. Without the mad rush of water, there isn't typically debris around it.

It's a 15'-20' vertical drop, to a 80' or so horizontal pipe, which is the outlet pictured above.

This may be a big to do about nothing, I'll take a walk back there when the water recedes a bit more and compare my pictures from last week to what it looks like after this big rain event. It's more of a clay than a soil where it exits.

There's a much deeper spot down low in the gully, but if it's looks unchanged after this, I can likely leave it be. To your point, putting anything where it exits would likely make the water splash and widen the channel.



It's pretty deep into the woods and if it's taken 25 years for it to do this, I'll be gone before it would get remotely close to impacting the lake itself.