Vacuum excavator

[GazCro]

The pick and bars ban is on most of the utilites lads round here. Clearly there are safety issues with hitting services but round here losing your job is a major possibility as each different utility co is desperate to shaft the other on costs. To be fair the jobs may take an age but it's rare the utility lads round here hit owt its the private jobs and big sites as a rule

 

[JD450A]

Top game utility driver's dont dig round utility's they sit and let the groundworker dig round the utility. Machines only dig for utility companies when the location of all services are known.
And The bottom of the game driver's definitely hit utility's in the highway. There have been some really bad strikes of late and currently they are all in a panic due to the lack of ability to locate gas and water. Especially as its been approved to start adding hydrogen to the domestic gas supply which has the potential to cause some serious problems.

The Utilities drivers you know are very different to the ones I know...... Quietly peel away down, locate the services, undermine them, no bother.

 

[Brendan]

Utility boys I've spoken to in the last couple of years, all have strikes, majority of the companies seem to be a two and out situation, or for some of the new fibre gangs with the narrow trenching they are expected to catch the odd electric

 

[Smiffy]

The Utilities drivers you know are very different to the ones I know...... Quietly peel away down, locate the services, undermine them, no bother.

Utility driver's should always peel the ground down yes regardless but any utility driver round here wouldn't have a job if they where digging close to known service location
There is no mechanical digging within 300mm of a known service location
So you dig down 300 to the side of the service then leave the bucket in the bottom of the hole and ground worker digs into it

 

[Rob65]

I’ve only seen one vac excavator being used. They had an air lance that they used to break up the ground so the vac could suck up the spoil.

Is that the standard way of doing things?

 

[Regy53]

The big ones were circa 400k plus in 2016……. So probably 500k today

 

[V8Druid]

used to have two vac-ex,s into my yard daily for Amec doing service replacements in the town ..... they DRANK the cherry ... two tanks a day - 200l a go ... upside was they drove around on cherry too big 8 wheelers -- could pick up half bricks, no sweat .. full bricks'd get jammed in the 8" hose -- or was it a 10" ??

 

[Left hooker]

used to have two vac-ex,s into my yard daily for Amec doing service replacements in the town ..... they DRANK the cherry ... two tanks a day - 200l a go ... upside was they drove around on cherry too big 8 wheelers -- could pick up half bricks, no sweat .. full bricks'd get jammed in the 8" hose -- or was it a 10" ??

They also can't carry the dirt away as that's needing white and moves them from plant to hgv and a whole different set of rules