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Pump size debate: big cutterhead vs. extra suction, which do you trust on a tight deadline?
We had a 3 day window on a silted channel near Galveston, and I chose the bigger pump over a new cutterhead, thinking suction would clear it faster, but the clay just laughed at me. Now I'm back to swapping between both on the same job, so what do you run when the clock is short and the bottom is mixed?
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reese_anderson26d ago
My buddy ran a 3 day job down in Corpus last spring with almost the same mix, silt on top and hard clay underneath, and he went with the big pump first too. He burned a full day and a half before he admitted the suction was just polishing the clay instead of biting it. What saved him was running the cutterhead at a lower RPM with lighter passes, then letting the pump do the lift once the clay was broken up. He said the trick was not picking one, it was matching the head to the layer you're in at that moment. On a short clock you don't have time to swap back and forth all day, so read the bottom first and commit. If it's mostly silt with clay pockets, big pump wins, but if that clay is thick and stacked, the cutterhead has to go on first or you're just wasting hours.
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