Controlling the water in your supply ditch

63. When you have built your ditches, you will need a way to control the flow of water from the stream into your supply ditch and from your supply ditch into the inlet ditches of each of your ponds.

From the stream into your supply ditch

64. To control the flow of water into your supply ditch, you can build a sluice somewhat like the one you learned to build for an inlet (see pages 14 and 15 in this booklet).

65. However, instead of one slot in each wall, this sluice will have three slots in each wall. Two sets of slots are for wooden boards and the third set is for a screen to keep out wild fish.

66. Build this sluice at the top of the supply ditch just behind the 1- metre strip of soil that you left at the edge of the water when you began digging the ditch.

Digging the ditch

67. The drawing at the top of the next page shows you how to build a wooden sluice for the supply ditch at the stream.

Building a wooden sluice for the supply ditch

68. Pack the space between the boards with good clay soil to keep the water from leaking through. However, do not put in the screen until you are ready to use the sluice. Put it aside so that it will not be broken.

Put the screen

69. Now, remove the 1- metre strip of soil you left at the edge of the stream. The water will flow into the ditch up to the wooden planks in the sluice.

Remove the strip

From the supply ditch into your ponds

70. You can build a smaller sluice to control the flow of water into your ponds. With this sluice you need only one set of boards. The drawing below shows you how.

Building a wooden sluice for a pond inlet

71. You will need one sluice for each of your ponds. Build them at the lower corners of each inlet ditch. The drawing below shows you where to put this kind of sluice.

Put the boards in place

72. Slide wooden boards into the slots of this sluice to send all the water into a pond, or take them out to let all the water flow farther down the supply ditch into another pond.

73. You can also adjust the boards in each sluice so that part of the water will go into one pond and the rest will flow down 10 feed the other ponds.