Question regarding trash pumps

My gut feel is a digger or drag bucket thingy (like they use in open cast mines . but smaller) would be best. I think a pump unless V crefully specified would be problematic as the suction hose would need to be contantly moved.

I may have a solution or two for you but need some details...

First off, desilting a pond will generally require some sort of roving suction - you can't just drop a hose down in the muck and hope to get the job done. I've seen it done in the past by dropping a suction head off a raft and having the raft be moved back and forth across the pond - but this requires a fairly level-bottomed pond, and a way to move the raft back and forth.

We have several submersible pumps that could easily handle the silt and discharge it as far away as you want, but unless the silt is very liquid, sooner or later you'll just empty the silt away from where the pump is, and then start sucking water instead.

Your problem is the steep embankments would seem to limit the SIZE of the machine placed on the bank of the pond. Can you tell us more about the profile of this pond?Is the 35 feet the total head or just the height from the surface of the pond to the discharge? How much suction head would you need, if a non-submersible pump is used?

Air hose in the suction head (look up small gold dredges) then the trash pump.

You could separate the air from the muck at the surface before the pump.

The problem as stated is the guiding of the suction head.

You might articulate the suction head and then move the raft on a grid.

How many feet of silt? How big of pond?

A cable bucket dredge might work. The problem is getting the bucket out to winch it back. (thinking large pond)

2cents from Brad

Your local fisheries dept. will need to be informed. And trapping/salvage of the aquatic lifeforms will usually have to undertaken. Violation of waterbodies that contain fish, can lead to serious consequences,$$$$. Pay the piper, and use a large vacuum pumper truck, will save time and money, even they will have a problem with the head given. One way is to follow the existing stream elevations, may take lots of piping, but you may be able to get a siphon effect happening.

Fish hatchery manager...

I guess that's why they call it private property . . .

I just love it when government gets in everybody's knickers. It works so much better that way. I wish there were some sanity to all this. I just think of all the watershed violations I committed as a boy, damming up streams to make skating ponds in the winter, interfering with the natural flow, flooding sensitive streamside vegatation, trapping fish, catching bullfrogs, raising tadpoles in captivity and so on.

I don't support an anything goes scenario and some protections are necessary, but a small silt laden private pond? Does common sense ever prevail?

I recently saw a show (on the Discovery channel I think) where they were removing the sand that had been removed from the beach in Pensacola Fla. by hurricanes. They used a huge vacuum to suck the sand off of the bottom of the water, collect it in the bay of the ship. The water is allowed to drain off, leaving only sand.Then they float the ship near shore, and connect to a discharge pipe on shore. The method of removing the sand from the ship might be helpful to you. The ship had large pumps that sucked sea water and sprayed it into the sand to keep it fluid enough to be able to be pumped. If you use a portion of the pump's discharge to stir up the unreachable deposits, you will be able to retrieve a larger amount of the silt. The smaller discharge nozzle will be easer to maneuver around your pond, than the suction pickup. I hope this gives you some additional possibilities. Good luck. Bob C.

Sir:

I have a swimming pool "cleaner" that does a similar job.

Called a "Creepy Crawler"............water powered by the pump using the 'pond' water...highly fluidized the through put...wanders randomly over pond...even climbs pond walls and vacuums there......since it works on a concrete lined pool it could...in your situation... overload with too much solids but could be controlled on that by adding a partially inflated {part water/part air to almost neutralize/balance buoyancy of suction head...{with larger....a truck tire inner tube?... footprint }....several designs come to mind using high water volume/fluidized bed concept....a tractor tire inner tube?...sorta like a hydrofoil in reverse....

Would depend on your actual "silt" accumulation not containing waterlogged sticks/limps/rocks and like "over sized" material on pond floor....buy even that could be controlled.........

One other high vacuum possibility is utilization of the venturi/vacuum system for bulk solids transit.... [cement powder...also roof rock] ....as carried in bulk solid transit trucks.....with which we deliver 1.5" rock onto a three story building from tank like v bottomed transit trailers....no wet fluids involved...dry ambient air.... runs off the truck engine exhaust/venturi pricipal....

Look around... combine existing technologies to your problem.

Of course there is always the possibility of stirring up the whole pond [ out board motor ski skid under prop] to get the silt into temporary suspension then any class 500 [military surplus] fire trailer to pump the stirred silt....several easy bottom traveling adaptations come to mind....

MR. GUY

Recently a local city park lake, 1250 acres, was dredged deeper by a water injection dredging barge. A small pump injected low pressure water through small nozzles at the suction head to fluidize the silt under the suction intake and a larger suction pump carried away the fluidized silt from the bottom of the lake. The water/silt was pumped through pipes over 15 miles away and deposited on flat land where the silt setteled out and the water ran off.

You could build a small scale version of the injection dredge using a small water pump and a trash pump for the suction side to clean out your pond if it were small.

CG

From my experiences, I don't think a "Trash Pump" by itself would remove the silt.

I believe the slit needs to be stirred up and then fed into the trash pump, though it sounds to me as if what you want to do is dredge at the stream mouths so the pond stays a pond instead of becoming a swamp.

Downsize what a Dredge Ship does in a Ship channel, to save your pond is my suggestion from what I know.

This is just my suggestion from living in Wilmington NC and installing recently what was called a Trash Pump in a crawlspace under a house that got a lot of water from rainflow due to where it was built on a hill.