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Crazy idea to clear a lake

673moto

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Has anybody ever build a pontoon/barge setup to float a mini excavator?
Got a lake that has a serious reed problem and can’t get a long reach out.
Water has been lowered and is only 2-4’ deep. ive cleared about 15’ from shore but now have islands of reeds that need to go... was thinking about rigging some pontoons to a platform and floating out.
is that just too crazy of an idea?
Too unstable?
Would have to anchor to dig I guess
 

Delmer

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Cobble up a drag line bucket, even if you pull it with a little ford tractor it will be easier than a floating excavator. Where's Scrub Puller when you need him?

You need a barge with ballast to work with an excavator, a pontoon has the physics all wrong.
 

673moto

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Cobble up a drag line bucket, even if you pull it with a little ford tractor it will be easier than a floating excavator. Where's Scrub Puller when you need him?

You need a barge with ballast to work with an excavator, a pontoon has the physics all wrong.
Ahh... good call !
 

Delmer

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Search "tank cleaning heavy equipmentforums.com" for some discussion from those who've done it. Very interesting stories.
 

DMiller

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We unloaded really heavy materials at the nuke from barges, the barge company was set up to semi sink the barge at the offload ramp so as NOT to do as noted above. Boats floats pontoons all are Unstable empty. Best bet break the lake levee at the spillway or convenient location and leave it to dry out, as in NO Water level for a year or more then can use most any machine to clean it up.
 

treemuncher

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There is a company down in LA that manufactures all terrain buggies that have cutter systems on them just for vegetation control. I think that this might be the same one I looked at for a specialty job a few years back: https://lakeweedharvester.com/wp-content/uploads/Mobitrac USA.pdf

Hiring or renting one of these would be much better than trying to make and design your own barge system if all you have is a vegetation problem.
 

Tinkerer

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A mini-ex on a barge ?
Anchoring the barge/pontoon won't work.
You need spuds on it.
What is your plan for for getting the crap onto dry land ?
Unloading the slop would be another challenge.
That would be a mess.
How big is the pond ?
 

DMiller

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Better choice, dragline service or bust the levee and shove it out. Floating will do you no good.
 

kshansen

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Guess one thing that I did not see mentioned was how big a lake is this? I'm just saying one person's lake is another person's farm pond! I recall back in the 1970's visiting relatives in Minnesota and harassing them a bit when I saw signs on more than one "lake" that I would say covered less than five acres and I think I'm being generous at that. But to my way of thinking if reeds are growing in the middle I would call that more of a swampy patch than a real lake!

I suppose draining and cleaning might not be an option during a drought where you hate to loose any water you do have.
 

DMiller

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Hard not to kill fish clearing reeds, either poisons or mud stirred up and they croak. Livestock watering may be a bit difficult but if stir it up to rid reeds will be awful muddy for livestock.
 

highwayghost

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Back in the 70’s, people I worked for had a pond, maybe 100 feet across. They decided to clean it. When they built it, they were thinking ahead and had a pipe through the breast works with a glass plate attached on the far end. Shoot a gun up the pipe, break the glass, pond drained! After a year or more of drying time, they still stuck every piece of machinery they put in there in the silt. Luckily they owned a towing company and it didn’t cost a fortune to pull the stuff out. I’m thinking build a new one below it, use that one as a silt catcher. But that might not be possible with the environmental regs. of today.
 
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DMiller

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Silt is silt no matter how you play it lakes silt out. Where used to work had four out ponds from construction days, they silted up, had 6' concrete pipe standpipe overflow outflows with steel plate Weir Gates, on 3' pipe at the bottom. Used those to drain the majority of the quickmud out thru three standpipes but still took a contractor with a dragline and a long reach nearly a month to regain bottom point. The plant machine shop also had to re-stem the weir gates as they had corrupted so heavily over thirty years.
 

673moto

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I guess I have been generous with the “ lake”... it’s a 2 acre pond and homeowners don’t want to drain as they don’t want to totally kill all the fish and crawdads... and it’s in commie-fornia so water is an issue
 

DMiller

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A long reach excavator is about your only choice with a skeleton bucket.

Do have ONE local outside of here that drags a old horse drawn style hay rake by chains thru the reeds and cattails to rip them out, uses a old 4230 deere
 

673moto

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A long reach excavator is about your only choice with a skeleton bucket.

Do have ONE local outside of here that drags a old horse drawn style hay rake by chains thru the reeds and cattails to rip them out, uses a old 4230 deere

yep, plan was to rent a long reach but haven’t been able to find one...
Anyone know where I could find one near Nevada county, Cali?
 
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