Back in the day, we used to fight with the suction line on every new cut.

I remember a job on the Columbia River about ten years ago, the old cutterhead dredge I was running would just lose prime constantly when we started a fresh trench. The foreman's answer was always to just run the pump faster, which mostly just stirred up more rocks and wore things out. One season, after the third time we had to stop and clear a jam, I got fed up. I started laying the suction head down flat on the bottom for a full minute before engaging the cutter, just letting it settle and fill with water. It felt wrong, like we were wasting time. But that simple wait let the line fill solid, and the pump would catch and hold every single time after that. We stopped losing half the morning to priming issues. It's a small thing, but it saved us a lot of headache and fuel. Does anyone else have a specific routine for starting a new cut to keep the prime?

2 comments

2 Comments

lucas_carr2412d agoMost Upvoted

So you just let it sit flat for a full minute? Did you ever try a shorter time, like thirty seconds, to see if that was enough or did you always stick with the full sixty?

aaronrobinson12d ago

Yeah, I read somewhere that thirty seconds doesn't let the adhesive set right.