Airlift or Water Eductor?

[pcolaboy]

I know of a few people that had many family heirlooms washed out of their house and into one of our local bayous during the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan in 2004 . I helped locate many of these items in the shallow sandy areas but I'm certain that there were several other items pushed further out into the mucky areas.

I would love to figure out a way to either build a water pump/eductor or an airlift to carry up small items within the sediment to a 'sifting table' on the boat. Most of the items we're talking about are silverware, watches, and various other junk. Can anyone recommend a website with some general design considerations to build something like this? Average depth would be anywhere from 6 -10 feet of brackish water.

Thanks,

Pcola

[RELICDUDE07]

Pcola just a thought and it may not work,but could you pull the pin out the prop on the outboard and install this pool wet end,with a 3 inch hose and maybe a small floating sifter to float by the boat.. I think the 200 hp is more than enough The shaft that turns the wet end is on the back.You caint see it in the pic...

[pcolaboy]

That's a very cool idea! but after spending $700 to replace my lower end seals and bearing carrier last year, I ain't touching that damn prop .

Pcola

[RELICDUDE07]

Maybe a small used kicker motor ,about a 10 horse.Im going to look into the info on the wet ends and see just how much force they have

[Salvor6]

Hey PCboy, I faced the same dilema in Tampa Bay. How to carry a small dredge on your back. I built a 2" air lift dredge that I can plug right in to my power inflator. Here is a pic of it. Of course it uses more of your breathing air but you just carry more air.

[pcolaboy]

Hey PCboy, I faced the same dilema in Tampa Bay. How to carry a small dredge on your back. I built a 2" air lift dredge that I can plug right in to my power inflator. Here is a pic of it. Of course it uses more of your breathing air but you just carry more air.

Wow thanks for sharing. That's a pretty clever rig! I do have a Brownie's Pro Hookah available to borrow from another friend that I could probably rig something similar for it, especially since the water is relatively shallow and I won't have to worry about deco. One question though, you're probably using you setup just to move away overburden right? In other words, your airlift wouldn't be capable of pulling up silverware, jewelry, etc and dump into a collector such as a strainer basket would it?

Thanks again,

Pcola

[RELICDUDE07]

You want something like this pcola?

[pcolaboy]

Exactly, in fact when I watched the UWF guys on their barge that's when I started to think of a way to build something similiar myself but definitely at a smaller scale.

Pcola

[RELICDUDE07]

You could go smaller with the hose size but yor not going to get the large 8 reale size gold If you go with a 3 inch hose, its going to take around 400 gpm /gallons - per - min.to make it work...

[pcolaboy]

You could go smaller with the hose size but yor not going to get the large 8 reale size gold If you go with a 3 inch hose, its going to take around 400 gpm /gallons - per - min.to make it work...

Hell if I thought I might some reales or escudos, I'd be buying that Excalibur from Mikey :-) Very good point though.

[ScubaDude]

Can you say 4" Keene dredge.
http://www.keeneeng.com/Merchant2/me...tegory_Code=SN

I have not known too many archaeologists that build their own gear.

[aquanut]

It has been my experience that airlifts don't perform well at depths less than twelve feet.
Aquanut

[pcolaboy]

It has been my experience that airlifts don't perform well at depths less than twelve feet.
Aquanut

Thanks for the advice Aquanut. I suspect that most of the area I'd be checking out are probably 6-8 feet of water tops. Could a trash pump be used or modified for this purpose?

Thnx,

Pcola

[grumpyolman]

Maybe you are making this too difficult. Somebody above suggested a gold dredge. I had one that used a 3" hose and was powered by a 8HP Briggs. It sucked all kinds of things off the bottom including fish and rocks that were big enough to plug the intake. I definitely didn't want to get my hand in front of it. In case you haven't looked at them it's just a water pump pumping the water down to your nozzle and then back up a hose creating a venturi effect and sucking up all the stuff on the bottom. Gold miners have the exhaust running in some kind of sluice box to collect the gold. You'd just have to create some kind of sifting device to run the overburden into to collect the knives etc. Not really complicated and not really expensive. Probably do some looking and find one second hand for a good price. A lot of people setting out to mine gold find out how much work it is and are ready to sell their gear and move on to another hobby. Jim

[tinker]

What did you come up with? I've been looking for a reason to put together a dredge head identical in operation to the Keene posted above. If you have a pump, the head would cost roughly $30 and a few trips to Lowes. I don't have a pump or a reason to dredge or else I would have made one long ago.

[pcolaboy]

I haven't had a chance to move on this aside from getting a nice length of 4" trash pump hose that I suppose I'll need in any event. The main thing I know is that I'll be pulling up a bunch of oyster shells and other heavy bits of trash that has kind of made me wonder if this is even a viable venture to begin with.

Thanks for the comments. If I ever come up with a economical solution that works, I'll promptly post it.

Pcola