Not all that exciting, but I was intrigued! Toward the end of July when I was at Corky's house in LBeach , I noticed these three people (two guys and one gal) with this strange contraption down at the water line. The far side of Marine Stadium is mostly sand, but the near side is rip-rap. I had earlier wondered why the stadium was closed to boating this day and finally I figured it out.
This is sort of a vacuum to pick up the debris that collects in the rip-rap. It would be almost impossible to collect it by hand because nobody could stand up or kneel on the rocks to feel around for trash. Boats can not be allowed on "vacuum" day because the wakes would wash up on the rip-rap and the water get sucked into the vacuum.
The three workers changed jobs periodically - one did the vacuuming, one tended the power on the machine and one cleaned the debris out into the blue plastic bags.
The flexible grey hose comes out of the machine and attaches to the fat, rigid 'nozzle' which has two handles on the top side - about two feet apart. The vacuumer holds on to the handles and manipulates the nozzle between the rocks, sucking the junk up. You can see that (just like my garage vac) there are repairs to the flexible hose using duct tape. What would we do without it?
Not a very exciting post, eh? But I am fascinated by how anyone figures out how to make a machine to fill a very narrow specific job. Do you suppose the crew had to go to a junk sucking class for training?
3 comments:
Ha-ha! I found this interesting! If we could only get people to clean up after themselves!!!
No one cleans the rip-rap that lines the island's levee. I don't think it really gets dirty. It is too sharp and jagged for anyone to climb on and there are no roads that go near it. The weeds are sprayed to stop growth.
I am fascinated! I have never heard of the term rip-rap, nor thought there would be such an intriguing machine!
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