Quote:
Originally Posted by fatlazyless
To keep the beach sand from washing down the gentle slope and onto the nearby lake floor with each incoming wave, you know what works good?
Line the lower edge of your sandy beach with a row of dark gray .... www.quikrete.com/productlines/riprap.asp ...... set half-way down into the old sand to create an esthetically natural looking lower border that keeps the sand from washing downward into the lake. Is very dark gray and looks like a line of dark gray granite stuck in the sand. It blends.
Price: about $4.50/60-lb bag, packaged in a biodegradable paper bag. |
Oftentimes, that paper bag has a plastic liner; even if it doesn't, the paper is like adding a stack of newspapers into the lake.
While that might benefit arthropods, it would take years to "biodegrade". (Newspapers in landfills can be read clearly after decades).
Also, concrete "outgasses" harmful VOCs.
If you must, hose down the bags repeatedly to get them "set"
inside the bag. Remove the bag. Move them
gently to their final location when fully set.
As to location, the Greater Winter Harbor has a genuine circular counter-clockwise flow. Across the way, friends see the same phenomenon. It reverses when the wind is from the East--which much less often.
My new neighbor--a MA contractor--must have known of this circulation, advising abutters to expect a change to our "beaches".
Where the "sand" originates is unknown.
My "working theory" is a huge underwater spike of fill that was the result of multiple washouts (and re-dumpings) to the wingspan-wide seaplane access roadway ("dirt") that persisted from 1949 to 1999.
Half a century of increasing "dirt" extends deeply northeastward into the harbor, making a large circle for the "Coriolis Effect" to...um...take effect. (Only to be reversed by the less-frequently-encountered
east winds).
I understand my neighbor's "sand" has already been dumped; little, if any, "sand" has appeared at my so-called "beach".
BTW, can it be termed "a beach" when it's under two feet of water, starting in May?
(When my shoreline suffers its worst (soil, leaves, needles, boulders, living trees)
erosion?