Suction Dredging Animation
So, a lot of people come to us with questions like “what is wrong with my pond” or “you guys suck all of the muck out of lakes, right?”. Well, with a name like Pristine Waters, the obvious answer to these questions is “Yes, we clean out ponds and lakes…we suction dredge.” The initial response is “You do what?” Trying to articulate what is a complex system for removing accumulated sediment, whether it is organic fluffy “muck” or inorganic material (e.g., sand, gravel, pebbles, etc…), in a simple and easy to understand way, is sometimes lost in translation. To this end, we have created this brief suction dredging animation to make explaining the process a bit simpler.
Further complicating the process of explaining the nuances between all of the various ways a water body can be dredged (e.g., mechanical dredging using excavators, hydraulic dredging which typically utilizes an auger head to chew through harder material, or our minimally invasive precision method), is the picture people have in their minds about what dredging is or used to be.
120′ x 60′ Dewateraing bag at The Glass House in New Canaan, CT.
110′ x 30′ (linear) “de-watering bag” or geotextile tube set up close to a house.
Simply put, suction dredging is the process by which an individual passes a combination of water and sediment through a specialized pump to remove solid material from the bottom of a pond, lake, stream, or river.
With the Pristine Waters method of suction dredging, we have a diver that directs a hose into the muck. The sediment is then sucked out of the water body through the hose and into a containment device on land. Typically we use what is referred to as a “de-watering bag”. These bags are actually big tubes made out of a geo-textile material. The geo-textile has micro perforations that allow water to weep out, while leaving solids (sediment) trapped behind in the bag. The now filtered water is almost immediately returned to the pond or water body. Our method is quickly becoming the method of choice for municipal agencies that oversee and approve permits for such projects. This results in obtaining permits faster and with less headaches!
To make explaining all of this easier to understand we have created the following suction dredging animation: