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That time the main pump seized up on the Ohio River job
We were pulling gravel near Cincinnati when the pump just stopped dead. No warning, just a loud grind and then nothing. I checked the suction screen first, but it was clear. Turned out a piece of steel rebar from some old construction had gotten past the cutterhead and jammed the impeller. We had to winch the ladder up and spent about four hours pulling the pump apart on the barge. Got it cleared, but we lost half a shift. Anyone ever have a similar issue with hidden debris in a river channel?
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the_ben1mo ago
Bad luck? Come on, that's a design problem waiting to happen. If a cutterhead lets a chunk of rebar through to the pump, the protection system failed. It's like blaming a flat tire on the nail in the road, not on the fact your tires are too thin. Good design plans for the junk you actually find in a river, not just the easy stuff. That pump should have had a better way to handle or stop that debris before it got jammed.
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jake_mason302d ago
No kidding, I totally agree with you. That's not bad luck at all, that's a cracked design. I remember on a job up in the Allegheny we had this old bridge debris just slice right through the cutterhead teeth and straight into the pump. We lost a whole day pulling it apart, and here's the thing, the engineers just shrugged it off as a freak thing. But @riley595 it's not a freak thing if you're dredging a riverbed that's been filled with junk for 50 years. A proper setup should have a grate or a secondary trap that catches that stuff before it hits the impeller. We ended up having to weld our own guard onto the suction line after that, which is basically admitting the original plan was half-baked.
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