Warning: My suction line was vibrating like crazy and I was about to replace the whole pump

I was working on a small channel job near Mobile last week, and the main suction line started shaking so bad I thought the pump bearings were shot. I was ready to call for a new impeller assembly, which would have been a $2,500 mistake. My helper, a kid who used to work on shrimp boats, just pointed at the water and said, 'Boss, your cutterhead is buried in mud.' I'd been so focused on the pump pressure I didn't realize I'd let the ladder dig in too deep, starving the line of water and causing cavitation. Pulled it up a foot and the vibration stopped instantly. How often do you guys check your ladder depth versus just watching the gauges?

2 comments

2 Comments

lisak263d ago

My old foreman used to call it "gauge hypnosis." You get so locked on the numbers you forget the machine is sitting in real water and mud. He'd make us shut our eyes for a minute and just listen to the pump and feel the ladder. That shrimp boat kid probably learned the same way, watching the water more than a dial. It's a good reminder that the gauges just tell part of the story.

margaret_taylor423d ago

Damn, that's a close call. So you're basically saying the gauges were lying to you? How do you even trust your readouts after something like that?