Vacuum Excavation for Special Projects

Our Special Projects Division has worked in petrol forecourts, boiler rooms and quarries. It has emptied freight train hoppers and ships’ holds. The division has also ‘cleaned out’ around industrial plants, quarry conveyors and recycling facilities.

We now have clients in the Biomass, Geotechnical and Chemical industries. Our Special Projects Division is pioneering the use of vacuum excavation across a variety of industrial and commercial sectors around the UK and overseas.

Examples of the work undertaken by our Special Projects teams include:

Nuclear power

In nuclear power generation, a sand-break pit may be used to temporarily store and ‘cool’ cooling water as it leaves the reactor building. LMD uses suction excavation to remove any build-up of solids in the pit, therefore maintaining its effectiveness.

Landfill

Landfill sites develop and grow over many years until their storage capacity is exhausted. The terrain on older landfill sites is often uneven and understandably, soft and unstable. LMD has used one of its small, tracked units to locate leachate and landfill gas manifolds that have been partially buried due to material build up over time. Enhancing the effectiveness of the vacuum excavators.

Water network

Water treatment works, and particularly wastewater treatment works, are often located in remote areas. There may be vehicular access to the works themselves, but the surrounding area could be open country, scrub, or agricultural land. LMD has used its ‘master and slave’ combination of a triple fan unit working in tandem with a tracked unit to excavate trenches for a drain that extended 200m from the treatment works.