27
Found a weird trick for clearing a silted-out intake valve in Lake Erie
Last month on a job near Cleveland, a cooling intake at 85 feet was totally clogged with zebra mussels and muck. Instead of the usual chisel and hammer fight, I tried a small trash pump from the surface with a hose I rigged to a venturi nozzle. It sucked the gunk right out in about 20 minutes, way faster. Anyone else used a surface pump for underwater cleaning like that?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
milessmith1mo ago
That venturi trick is pretty clever... you could probably scale it up for bigger intakes. A 2-inch trash pump with a custom nozzle might clear a foot of silt in no time. Just gotta watch the discharge so you're not just moving the problem downstream.
9
richard_anderson1mo ago
@shane_fisher37 knows a thing or two about losing suction. Learned that the hard way myself.
2
shane_fisher371mo ago
Scaling up a venturi setup like that sounds good in theory, but moving that much water from the surface gets real tricky. The head pressure on a 2 inch pump at 85 feet is no joke, you'd lose most of your suction power. You're better off with a proper eductor system or even a small airlift for that depth.
4