Silt Pusher

European search for innovative technology

ADC (East Anglia) Ltd, specialist drainage contractors, have purchased another unique piece of drainage equipment, the Silt Pusher. ADC has this time looked to Holland in their never-ending search for innovative technology to improve the service that they offer to their customers.

The Silt-Pusher Boat

Their search via Mastenbroek, the UK distributor, took them to Conver, who are supplying speciality boats for drainage works. What brought Conver onto the ADC radar was a silt-pusher boat. Their boats are used extensively in Holland and silt pushers are on approximately 80% of the internal water courses and main drains. The silt slurry is pushed along the watercourse to point where it can be extracted.

Cutting customers costs

Mr Reeve (Operations Director): ‘In the past we have had several contracts to clean silt from drains where our customers could not access either side. We used our hoovering/suction method to complete this, but there has been a considerable amount of manual labour to access these areas. With the introduction of the silt pusher, we can now cut this cost and effort out of the works’. The silt is pushed to 250m to the suction tankers where it is removed prior to de-watering.

2 days of demonstrations

Mike Reeve said: ‘As soon as we saw this machine working on a publicity DVD we made arrangements to go to Holland to see several contractors who were using the Conver silt pusher boat in the dykes of Holland. Over the course of 2 days we saw the boat applied to several watercourses, from small internal dykes to main drains and large ponds.’

the ‘silt pusher’ would be invaluable

Here in the UK on the east side of England we have huge areas that are the same as in Holland, lying several metres below sea level, that depend on a well maintained drainage system to keep the Fenland and the low lying areas drained. ADC felt that the ‘silt pusher’ would be invaluable, not only to use but to most of our customers on the basis of a ‘shared’ machine.

Most of our Drainage Boards have a a use for this new method, but would not be able to to find enough work to have one of their own. It has already created a great deal of interest and we have provisional orders placed. We have several large watercourses to clean for the environment agency and the boat will be used as soon as it is available, when customers will be invited to come and see it working.

We have invested in 1 Silt Pusher boat to primarily work with the de-watering equipment. We expect to be going back to Holland to order further machines as we have had to do with the de-watering equipment from Denmark.

Mike Reeve: ‘We are now in a position where we have four de-watering units and they are already at work for the foreseeable future. We believe the ‘silt pusher’ will be the same: a huge success’.