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Serious question about pump cavitation on the Mississippi | Dredge Operators - Free To Speak

Serious question about pump cavitation on the Mississippi

I was running a 12 inch cutterhead on the lower Mississippi last Tuesday and heard that gravelly noise start up around 10 AM. Dropped the RPM by 200 and checked my suction screen, found a whole mess of tree roots wrapped around the intake. Cleared it and the pump ran smooth the rest of the day. Anyone else dealt with sudden cavitation from debris like that on a river job?

3 comments

3 Comments

viola_lopez303mo ago

Oh yeah, I've had that exact same thing happen on the Missouri River a few years back. We were running a 10 inch dredge and the pump started making that same nasty gravelly sound, I dropped the RPMs too and found it was a tangled mess of plastic sheeting and old fishing line wrapped around the intake screen. It's crazy how fast that stuff builds up, especially after a big rain when all the trash gets washed into the river. One thing I've learned is to check the suction screen every couple hours on river jobs, even if everything sounds fine, because debris can sneak up on you real quick. The roots you found sound nasty, did you have to shut down to get it all cleared or did you manage to dig it out while the pump was still running?

logan6583mo ago

You really gotta stay on top of that debris, it builds up fast. Me and my crew were dredging a small creek last spring and got hit with a rootball that was way bigger than we thought. I tried picking at it with a long pole while the pump was still running but it just kept snagging and finally killed the suction. Ended up having to shut everything down, pull the intake hose, and cut the roots out with a sawzall. Took a good hour but it beat tearing apart the pump later. Now I always keep a pressure washer handy on the deck, just blast the screen clean every time we slow down for a bit... saves a ton of headaches.

margaretramirez3mo ago

Dropping RPMs by 200 and hoping for the best is basically my whole strategy for most problems lol. I swear tree roots on the Mississippi have some personal vendetta against suction screens, they just love wrapping around like they are trying to choke the thing out. Last time I got hit with a mess of roots I just grabbed a pair of bolt cutters and started snipping while the pump was still half running, water spraying everywhere, looked like a total disaster but it worked. Now I keep a pressure washer wired to a spare battery so I can just blast everything off without even killing the engine. Sound advice from logan there too, that sawzall move is genius for the really stubborn stuff.