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I was sure bigger suction lines always meant better production, but a dredge master in Mobile proved me wrong.
For a long time, I thought if you wanted to move more material, you just slapped on the biggest suction hose you could fit. Then, while working on a channel job down in Mobile Bay, the dredge master there showed me his logs. He had a smaller line running at a way higher velocity, and his solids percentage was almost double what I was getting with my bigger, slower setup. He explained that with our specific slurry (mostly sand and shell), the higher speed kept everything moving and stopped it from settling out in the pipe. My setup was basically just pushing a lot of water with some dirt in it. It made me go back and check my pump curves and everything. Has anyone else found a sweet spot with a smaller, faster line for certain materials?
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dylan6041mo ago
Hold up, I gotta push back on this. I mean, sure, speed matters, but you can't just ignore volume. On my last big sand job, we tried a smaller line for a day because the pump could push it faster. Yeah, the velocity looked great on paper, but we spent half our time dealing with plug ups because a single big shell piece would just jam everything. With the bigger line, that stuff just sailed through. Sometimes moving a huge amount of slower slurry just works out to more yards at the end of the shift, even if the percent solids is a bit lower. It feels like chasing a high solids number can actually cost you time.
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susana661mo ago
Heard a similar thing from a buddy working a gravel pit upstate. They swapped to a smaller line to boost speed for the pea gravel, and it worked great until they hit a patch with more clay. The faster flow just sheared the clay off the rocks and built up this perfect, smooth coating on the inside of the pipe until it sealed shut. Took them hours to rod it out.
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