pto-driven sludge pump?

andrewy · Jul 31, 2007

Hello - I wanted to check with you all to see if any of you had experience with purchasing/using a pto-driven sludge pump for the purpose of cleaning out a pond that is silting up. Here's a pic -

In our location, digging out the pond with a backhoe is not feasible. We started looking at dredges, and found a good option there - http://www.piranhapump.com/mini_dredges.html

The thing is we'd like to find an option that isn't going to run us 9 grand. Using our 40hp New Holland tractor's pto would seem like a good way to go.

Any advice or words of wisdom would be very much appreciated.

-Angela and Andrew

Soundguy · Jul 31, 2007

Are you looking for something like a 3" trash pump or semi trash pump?

Is the pond truly 'sludge' / slurry consistency.. or is it water with small occasional small debri?

We de-water ponds with 3" trash pumps al the time... units with small integral gas engines.. etc.

Soundguy

charlz · Jul 31, 2007

From what I have seen pto pumps are way more expensive than engine drive pumps.

I watched the video of the dredge.... looks like it would be a lot of work.

You might be able to rent pumps and hoses. Maybe buy some cheap chinese throw away pumps. I don't see anything special accept for the head they use on the hose.

What are you going to do with the spoils? Could be a lot of (smelly) material.

andrewy · Jul 31, 2007

sounds like you're both saying that getting a cheap stand-alone trash pump would be better than getting the pto driven option. right?

spoils will go into a collection/composting area that we will build. the stuff is likely to be anaerobic and stinky at first, but we're figuring it would be a pretty good compost or soil amendment once the water is out of it. It's rich mountain soil basically, washed into the pond by the creek that feeds it.

our plan is to work at this a day or two each week - the whole job would take months to complete, but the costs would be lower and the disturbance to the pond and the surrounding land would be less. and it would give each new batch of goo time to drain off.

andrewy · Jul 31, 2007

Sound guy - our goal wouldn't be to dewater the pond completely. It has a pretty good inflow that would quickly make up for what we'd be taking out of it. What does a 3" semi-trash pump cost you, and what should we look for/avoid?

Thanks!

darkviper · Jul 31, 2007

most of the farmers around here just rent a track hoe for a couple of hours and bust the dam wide enough for a dozer blad to work the **** backup when finished. Let the pond drain and dry up in a couple of weeks then rent about a cat d4 d5 dozer and dredge out the pond. The fix the **** and whala. for the average size pond cost you between $1000-$3000 depending on the size and amount of sediment. Then you can move all the sediment below the pond dam so that it will not wash back in

andrewy · Jul 31, 2007

We've gotten quotes on the trackhoe idea from three different people and everyone we've talked to is saying 10K and up. One guy said it can't be done with a trackhoe at all. Busting a dam that's held for over 60 years sounds like a bad idea to me - is that a standard practice? Diverting it and drying it out would be easy enough, but getting that heavy machinery down our road and riding all over our soft bottom land with not a lot of maneuvering room...it just doesn't sound like something we want to do. That's why we started looking at the pump idea.

charlz · Jul 31, 2007

Well, how big is it, how deep is it? That pond looks pretty big in the pic, is that a road/driveway on the other side?

I think versus paying 9k for that dredge you could come up with similar materials much cheaper. Particularly with the cheap pumps.

Using the dredge idea keep in mind that you are going to need to move the nozzle over every inch of the bottom, probably multiple times. Seems like a huge project to me based on how big the pond appears.

Drain/dry/dig seems like the easiest way. Dunno how long it would need to dry before you could put equipment on it to dig it out.

andrewy · Jul 31, 2007

It's about an 1/8 of an acre. 2' deep now, but we had reports it was once 8' or so. The driveway is behind it, yeah, but between the road and the pond is the old creekbed that was diverted to make the pond. The old creek wraps around more than half of the pond, and most of the other side abuts the mountainside. Makes it hard to access with machinery.