Update: I think soft bottom dredging is way better than hard bottom scraping.

I saw a real difference over six months on a channel near Savannah where we switched from scraping the hard bottom to using a softer suction method, and the sediment stayed moved longer instead of settling back in a week. The hard bottom guys told me I was wasting time, but I noticed less silt buildup and fewer callbacks from the port authority. Has anyone else seen a longer lasting result with a different approach?

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the_alex6d ago

That's interesting about the soft suction holding up longer, but I gotta ask - what's the water depth difference between where you were scraping and where you switched to the soft method? Because around here in Charleston, I've seen guys blame the technique when really it's just that the hardpan areas are in shallower spots where the current drops everything right back. We had a spot near the Wando River where scraping worked fine for about two weeks, but once we realized the real issue was a 4 foot shoal just upstream that kept feeding sediment down, changing the method didn't matter. Did you check if the bottom composition was actually different in those zones, or was it purely the tool change that made the difference?