Building a two piece barge - Ideas?

Barge

Great posting Sean. The link I supplied offered something close but not like that. I want one too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stan If it could carry a 4WD pick-up truck with camper it would be perfect.

 

landing craft out of Wood

Could a larger (longer) but 8'-6" beam version of the boat in Sean's posting be built out of wood to carry a 4WD pickup with camper? Some 7,000 lbs. Would not want a totally flat bottom. Since I no longer weld, it would be an interesting and very usable boat but needs some medium chop abilities. All thoughts are welcome. Thanks, Stan http://www.admiraldrive.com/float_overview.html It would be glassed with a layer or two of dynel or better yet Xynole on the botton and drop gate.

Here is an aluminum hull 28' x 8'-5" http://www.aluminumlandingcraft.com/pdf/2885.pdf

 

Modular Barges

atmlogic,
there are a huge number of modular river barges made for the Mississippi that are trucked along the banks until they're launched.

These modules all have vertical pins that fit into pipe segments welded integral to the corners of the modules. There are bow sections, stern ones, and lots of other types including tankage and well deck sections. Some of these are more than a hundred feet LOA so you project is not to taxing for the concept.

As to axles either retracting or add-on, there are numerous approaches that would work by swinging them up into pockets or recesses in the sides/intersections. By all that I mean you could make the barge elements 'transportable' without too much effort. It would be another universe of costs to make these units DOT or highway legal for traffic.

So your project sounds like its already been done on many scales, but none of the modules I know about actually bothered to make the barge units into highway speed moving vehicles- it was always more cost effective to haul them on a low boy. Just the brakes and suspensions to make the wt of the barge section movable or "towable" at highway speeds would buy a fleet of low boy trailers.

A dedicated trailer, one that hauled each module of the barge would be simple to add to the package, make a few trips and deliver the sections to the landing and off load into the water. Assemble it while they're all floating by pinning the corners while relying on deck cleats and lines and then pull it to the beach for your equipment to walk on to the well deck- pull it or push it where you're going and unload.

When you return, reverse all the above, just welded steel boxes and some rods to pin the joints, doesn't sound too hard especially if you just use your equipment trailers to get the barge sections to the water first and bring them home last?

I'm probably missing something that's obvious???? but that the way is seems from my point of view.

cheers,
Kevin Morin

 

This is exactly why I love user groups... A huge pile of information here to think about and go through... Here is the direction I think I have to go now... If any of you looked at the Google earth post you would have seen the maze of lakes we have up here, each of those lakes has from dozens to thousands of camps, of those many have unapproved septic systems, and I would say none of them have a dock you could connect to. So... as much as I would have loved the built-in wheels... it still looks like its not going to work out. What has to happen is for sure some very good spuds (legs the drop down and connect with the lake bottom when at shore) I have tried a 8000lbs bobcat on a 20x40 barge and even that feels VERY tippy, the track hoe (mini excavator) I am looking at would be 8000lbs as well, it’s the best size for this work. The next trick is how to move large volumes of sand as quick as I can easy be 80 yards just for a small field. Moving that volume of sand on and off the barge is a problem. The shore in most of these sites will be rock; I doubt I will find many sites with a beach. A “interesting” twist on this plan may be if I was going to do 80% septic fields and I knew that I was going to move thousands of yards of sand. I wonder if I could somehow V a large area of the deck and install some form of an auger system to move the sand from the barge to something on shore like the mini-dump. I would have to be able to cover this area as well, and bucket the “field stone” manually but that in itself could be a huge time saver.
So its down to the foldout sides, or extendable sides. To take advantage of the spuds, I think extendable would work better.
Thanks again for all the ideas, and links… lots to think about. Keep them rolling.

 

An idea for you to consider. I have had 100s of septic systems installed in the foothill of the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern California below Lake Tahoe. Almost all of these systems used 3/4 gravel not sand to keep the walls of the ditches from collapsing. Today we use half round 18" to 24" plastic drain pipe in 10' sections with louvers on the sides. These are laid on the bottom of a level ditch, connected together, with straw over the top, then backfilled. Our county has very stringent requirements for septic systems and love this proven, engineered method. If you HAVE to use sand then divide your storage areas say into 8' x 6' x 2.5"spaces, fill them with sand and when you get to where your going, saturate the sand with a powerful water pump then use a specialized pump to pump the wet sand slurry to an area for loading with a small backhoe into the ditches. Being wet sand is no problem as it will leach out. Alternative systems are a lot easier. I will help you all I can with info. Stan Are you using sand for a sand filtration system??

 

Interesting, I don't want to go too off topic, but I have never heard of that type of a septic system, what I can tell you is what 'is approved' makes little to no sense, they say 80% here is evaporation??? Not sure how that happens with 8 or more months of below zero, and when the dew is on the ground till 1pm in the summer how much time does it get to go into the air, especially since its 1 foot below ground level??? Yes, what you said, a concrete pump would be able to pump and the bonus is then I can go about 100ft. Trouble is, if I had a concrete pump… I think I would be in the business of concrete…
I am starting to think I may be in over my head on this idea. I know the business is there, and I know it has some serious good money to be made, its more about how deep do I want to go in to get it. I will look into other septic systems that may be approved… it may be a new angle.

 

If your ground is frozen then waste cannot leach down and must evaporate
upwards. I do not know exactly where you are located to do this work so cannot further advise. I can say that many times regulations have to be challenged with new ideas and engineering. You might have found a great market for your ideas.

 

If you are worried about that tippy feeling, the best solution is outriggers. I would look toward a design of folding and extendable outriggers, all run with hydraulics (could use hydraulic pump off of PTO drive on excavator). Build it as a barge first, then design it as a trimaran for the finishing touches.

If you have plenty of sand/gravel around the islands, then perhaps a mini-dredge would be a better option? See http://www.piranhapumps.com/ for examples. A lot of guys use these to pan for gold in Alaskan rivers.

 

In my not-expert opinion, if you count the trips with a loader from the boat to the septic system site a concrete pump might save you money in the long run, both in terms of transporting the sand and in terms of wear and tear on your barge and loader. If getting the sand to dry out is a problem, maybe some sort of low-cost separator system could be made to get it reasonably dry before you put it down.

I don't know if the numbers would work, but I would think that the best approach would be to pump the slurry to a site very close to the septic field, extract what water you can and let it drain back to the lake through a separate drain pipe if necessary.

Your barge would be almost indecently clean if you used this technique.

 

A sand slurry pump is much smaller and lighter than a concrete pump. Wet sand should not be a concern in septic systems as it will dry by evaporation or leech down.

 

I dont know septic systems. I have tried to stay away from them all my life. I do however pump concrete. A concrete pump will pump concrete not sand or gravel. Also most small pumps are limited to 200' a larger hydraulic pump may be 600 feet. A dredge pump will lift sand from pump and deposit not to far from pump. Anything is a big dredge with many hundereds if not thousands of horsepowers.

 

mydauphin, just a question. You don't think your pump could pump wet sand? I am thinking something about the mix of morter... just without the cement. I don't understand why it would not work.

 

If you place an order for sand to an island in the Stockholm archipelago, the sand will be delivered through a hose. Pumping sand is the normal thing to do when moving it from a boat/barge to land. I'm sorry I've never put enough interest in this to find out what kind of pump they use. I belive the sand is dry when they pump it, but I don't know for sure.

Erik

 

Great, thanks for all the info we are drifting off a fair bit from the original question, I think I am going to see if I can find one of these sand/gravel "pumps" and start from there... it would clearly be the perfect way to solve a lot of issues, with something like that, I can start thinking about a landing craft for some very small equipment (just enough to dig a hole for the tank if they go that way, and carry a little bit of feild stone)
Once again, thanks for all the advice, really moved this along for me.

 

I do seawall for a living. We pump concrete all the time, also something call grout mix which is concrete without rocks. We use regular pumps and hydraulic pumps depending on distance. These have pistons that move back and forth. The owners and operators of these pumps all tell me that pumping sand with them doesn't work. The sand is not lubricating enough and will get stuck, same for gravel. A trash pump like used for dredging will work but those use a centrifugal pump and send a lot of water alone with sand. Personally, I could make a $250,000 a year if I could find a device to pump sand from the front of a house to back into construction area in a quick manner. I have heard of devices that us air to pump dry sand and mix but have not found them myself. If anyone knows different please let me know.