So, hopefully you may have read and found interesting my first look back to our early days when we started to undertake and offer more complex excavation works using suction excavation vehicles.

Today, when most people think of utilising these machines for works other than standard excavations, they possibly think of distance excavating i.e., using extension hosing connected to a road suction excavator to pull material back to the hopper of the truck.

What is not generally considered is the ability to pull material not only over distance but also over distance and height! One of our early projects was to do just that. We were asked if our technology could pull shot blast and concrete material from a water tower over 35mtrs high and with limited access when it came to positioning our suction vehicle.

So, here are some images of the project that we undertook back around 2014/15, another first for these machines.

Once set up, using suction excavation, or in this case material extraction, proved to be fast, effective and to a great extent removed most of the manual handling from the process. Our customer positioned and manipulated the intake nozzle within the tank as this was a confined space area.

In our early days these more complex projects were very much a learning process as no other provider of suction excavation services had attempted such works. There was not a point of reference to learn from. We had to rely on guidance from the vehicle manufacturers in respect to vehicle power and ability together with our own initiative.

Today we can look back at the many challenging projects undertaken in those early days and appreciate these allowed us to build a wealth of experience, equipment development and confidence to tackle most tasks presented to us.

It also very pleasing to see the industry growing and others are starting to offer similar services.

My next post will cover extracting material from a very deep excavation point, 60mtrs plus...