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Question about a sudden suction line blockage in the Missouri River

We were running a 12 inch cutterhead near Jefferson City last spring when the whole dredge shuddered and the pump pressure spiked. The intake screen had gotten a whole tangle of willow roots and a plastic tarp wrapped around it in about 30 seconds. I had to shut down, reverse the pump to clear the line, and then two of us spent an hour with knives cutting the mess off the screen. Has anyone else had to deal with a weird mix of natural and man-made junk clogging things up that fast?

3 comments

3 Comments

emery1991mo ago

That mix is the worst kind of trouble. We started keeping a pressure washer on the barge just for melting that plastic and muck off the bars. Makes the cleanup a bit less of a knife fight.

davis.adam1mo ago

@emery199 what pressure washer model works best for that?

the_emma1mo ago

My uncle's old Honda engine washer ran for twenty years before the pump finally gave out.