Watching a big excavator dig a pond in my hometown made me rethink our cutterhead setup

I was back in my old neighborhood in Springfield last week, and they're putting in a new retention pond behind the school. The crew was using a 30-ton excavator with a standard bucket, not a dredge. What got me was the way the operator would dig a bit, then swing the bucket back and forth in the water to wash the fines off the material before dumping it. It was like a poor man's screening plant. It made me realize we could probably save a lot of wear on our pump impeller if we rigged a simple water spray bar right at the cutterhead intake on our 10-inch dredge. Just a low-pressure wash to help separate some of that super fine silt before it even hits the pump. Has anyone rigged something like that up on a smaller dredge before, or is it more trouble than it's worth?

3 comments

3 Comments

harper2545d ago

david_adams might be joking but I actually saw a guy rig up a pressure washer on a pontoon boat once to clean algae off his outboard. He spent more time fixing the hose connection than he did fishing. Got me thinking about that fine silt problem you mentioned, we had a similar issue on a job near the Mississippi back in '17. The local shop suggested we just run the pump slower and let the material settle out in a holding pit before it hit the impeller. Worked decent enough for us, but your spray bar idea sounds like something I'd try on a weekend just to see if it catches on fire or something.

david_adams5d ago

Yeah because what every dredge really needs is a car wash option.

reese_chen2d ago

That "catch on fire" comment has me wondering if any of y'all have tried a simple sprinkler head instead of a pressure setup.