Amphibious excavator’s dredging options
Surrey UK based Land & Water Plant is well known for developing innovative new plant that operates in sensitive environments.
The company’s latest addition of an amphibious excavator exemplifies this innovative approach and has recently completed a number of hires that could not have been practically done without significantly greater expense, risk and environmental impact.
Land & Water has operated a larger Hitachi MA 125 amphibious excavator for five years and during that time discovered it offered solutions to otherwise very awkward or nearly impossible jobs. The drawback of the original machine was that it was so large it had to be assembled by a crane on each site, which made it expensive to mobilise.
Land & Water sourced a supplier to build a retractable amphibious undercarriage to its specifications to suit a 10m long reach Hitachi ZX 70 excavator. This machine’s bucket is only 30% smaller than the first MA125 and it has 2m less reach but, being retractable, it can fit through a 12’ gate and is relatively straightforward to move as it is just 3.5m wide retracted (4.5m when working). The retractable undercarriage allows the machine to be shipped all over the UK for the same cost as a standard 30 ton excavator.
With the ability to wade in 1.2m of water before it begins to float, this machine (as are all of Land & Water’s fleet) is filled with biodegradable hydraulic oil. The excavator is fitted with low and high flow additional circuits so can be used with an array of attachments from dredging pumps to tree shears, mulching flails, reed harvesters, and others.
Fiona Moore, contracts manager for Land & Water Services said, ‘We undertake a great deal of specialist dredging and vegetation management contracts for the Environment Agency. This machine is so efficient, versatile and competitively priced that it is changing the way we approach these specialist works and is allowing us to pass savings on to our customers. It costs around 20% more to rent than a 20m long reach excavator but can travel virtually anywhere. It removes the slow and risky process associated with working on soft ground conditions with timber mats and can cross rivers and marshy terrain with ease.’
With the ability to work effortlessly on soft terrain, this machine is developing its own variety of new applications, such as the dredging of silt and settlement lagoons in water treatment works and quarries; support and excavation duties for sea outfalls and pipelines on mud flats and the dredging of shallow or small berths at low tide; site investigation roles such as towing a site investigation rig and digging trial holes in very soft terrain; inland dredging of lakes and rivers; and managing vegetation, clearing ditches, and dredging in wetland habitats.
