![\"spillway-graphic\"](\"https:\/\/pondenviro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/spillway-graphic.png\" "\\"spillway-graphic\\"")
\n\tThe first Pond Doctor was Owen A. Biller, Sr. He fought in France during World War II. Owen’s ambition was to be a wildlife biologist before he joined the United States Army. Before enlistment he was admitted to the University of Chicago and had an internship lined up with TV personality, Marlin Perkins, at the famous Brookfield Zoo. Like so many men during that time, he put his personal plans on hold. Owen would go on to serve with distinction, fighting on the first day at Normandy (D-Day) and would be awarded the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Good Conduct Medal, Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Before his discharge at the end of WWII, he would be specially assigned to duties in the OSS, which became the CIA after the war. He returned from the war and went to work for United States Steel Corporation of Gary, Indiana. In the evenings he studied electrical engineering, and before he retired he worked his way to Head Utilities Analyst for USS Corporation of Indiana. It was during his years at US Steel that he and his brother bought farms adjacent to one another. They immediately began building earthen water containment structures – PONDS. As a young boy, I recall that they had a small Ford tractor and a two-handled scoop that was pulled behind the tractor. This scoop had to be lifted manually to dump the dirt where it was needed. That was too heavy a job for me, so all I could do was bring them water and stay out of the way. The first pond I remember actually helping to build was on my uncle Swede’s farm. We called it the Woods Pond because it was built in his oak thicket. That pond was built using a farm plow, disc and a two-handled walk behind scoop. The water in that pond went over a spillway that was made of concrete. At this very pond we discovered that “over the top” spillways left a lot to be desired. The water could go around the ends of the concrete, or even under it, and erode the dam and that was “dam bad”. That’s another thing us kids liked; we could say the word “dam” and not get our mouth washed out with soap!<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t
Dad researched the best means of allowing excess water to leave the pond without doing erosion damage. What he discovered is a device called a “drop inlet spillway”. This type of spillway places a large “down-comer tube” in the pond, near the dam, and inserts a smaller “outlet tube” in the bottom of the “down comer”. The outlet tube goes all the way through the earthen dam at a slight angle. See the diagram above. Additionally, we discovered that it is necessary to dig down to “clean dirt”, dirt without vegetation, in order to have a good seal on the dam. Dad learned that a “core trench” was a necessary part of a successful dam. He dug it with a backhoe and then filled the deep trench with good packing clay. The “outlet tube” went through the bottom of the earthen dam and that solved the problem of runoff water and erosion. It was also discovered that outlet tubes had to have muskrat and crawdad collars to stop those pesky critters from burrowing parallel to the outlet tube and causing seepage or even rapid leaks. These things were all learned through trial and error. We had to rebuild the dam in the Woods Pond several times in order to account for each of these problems. Needless to say, learning by correcting your mistakes is costly. However, because a beautiful pond became a family passion, we continued to learn and made fewer of them. That passion lives on here at Pond Enviro. As you may have gathered we have enjoyed what we do over the years. The largest of these projects was a 15-acre lake on my father’s farm. The drop inlet spillway was about 10 feet in diameter for the “down comer” and dropped some 20 feet. The “outlet tube” was 36 inches in diameter and after a good rain I have seen it flowing like a garden hose at full pressure. I was old enough to work on that project. We have a proprietary device, the BUBBLE\u00a0GUN\u2122<\/a>\u00a0aerator. Dad and I came up with the original idea. I took up development of it in the early 1960’s. The first BUBBLE\u00a0GUN\u2122 was a large electric motor driven air compressor that forced air through a hose and into the water through a crude diffuser. Our current BUBBLE\u00a0GUN\u2122 is much more energy efficient and quieter, retaining its “no-electricity-in-the-water” safety factor. Dad was here to see the development of the BUBBLE\u00a0GUN\u2122 to its current form. He loved making ponds and caring for them. We carry on that tradition. When a person uses our products and is pleased with the esthetic changes in their pond we are gratified to have been a part of the transformation. The only thing that could make each new project more exciting would be for dad, the first Pond Doctor, to be with us.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About Us Our History The first Pond Doctor was Owen A. Biller, Sr. He fought in France during World War II. Owen’s ambition was to be a wildlife biologist before he joined the United States Army. Before enlistment he was admitted to the University of Chicago and had an internship lined up with TV personality,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pondenviro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pondenviro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pondenviro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pondenviro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pondenviro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pondenviro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pondenviro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}