Sepp Holzer Pond with No Excavator - Advice

I constructed one very small pond on our property and managed to have it seal through a mixture of luck, high clay content and trial and error. (When I say small I mean very, very small - basically the size of a very large bathtub or a touch bigger.) I note this because I'm familiar with the difficulties of getting a pond to seal. I'm now trying to make a larger pond but where I'm building it probably rules out getting an excavator to it. I have a decent understanding at least on paper of Sepp Holzer's method, particularly using the excavator to vibrate the soil with a foot or so of standing water. But I'm trying to think if there's any realistic way for me to duplicate that process without the excavator.

I've though of trying to use a concrete vibrator. I don't think a surface one is feasible since I don't think you can put those in water - though I've never used one before so I can't say I know. The probe kind makes more sense to me. But I'm not sure that really works in already partially compacted soil. In any case, as you can see I'm really grasping at straws for how I can duplicate or even partially duplicate this vibration part of the process. I assume someone has confronted this set of circumstances before. So I thought I would ask if anyone has any suggestions.

I'll add that the soil where I am is pretty clay-ey. So I go in with that advantage. It's also filled with a lot of rocks verging on boulders, which my experience with the other pond tells me can be a serious liability.

In any case, this is my first post at Permies. So let me also say that I hope this post is welcome and I'm excited to learn as much as I can. I'm just starting out in permaculture, very modest ambitions but eager to learn and contribute.

Welcome to Permies!

I have a book of Sepp's on my bedside, but haven't gotten to it yet, but I think I remember discussion here about using hogs to seal ponds before earth-movers were a thing. Can you do that?

Unfortunately no. I live in a ruralish area. But I’m not really a farmer, at least not yet. And I don’t have access to pigs or way to keep them properly if I were to buy some. So the pig method is out. But yes, that’s apparently one of the good methods and apparently Holzer actually got the vibrating idea from how pigs create little sealed areas on their own,

I’d concur with Christopher about pigs. Another option is ducks, who will also agitate and manure the water in such a way as to gley (a combination of physical and biological activity to effectively seal) the pond. These organisms, like beaver and elephants, have evolved to have beneficial adaptive behaviors that provide them food, water and shelter with water retention features resulting from their presence. Another way everything gardens!.

You can use Bentonite to seal a pond. Ducks will work well too.