Are you aware that in 2017, there were over 400,000 excavation incidents? Also, 22 construction workers died from excavation issues in 2017 and 2018. These mishaps prompt the hunt for safer excavating methods and are a primary factor in explaining why many construction sites now use vacuum excavation trucks.
The advantages of using vacuum excavation trucks are listed below.
What Does a Vacuum Excavation Truck Mean?
Before using a vacuum to remove trash from an excavation site, vacuum trucks or hydrovac trucks, use water to decompress and cut through the dirt. The trash is pulled into a debris tank, either used to refill the hole or evacuated. After that, the debris is pulled through.
What Are the Benefits of Vacuum Excavation Trucks?
The advantages of vacuum excavation regarding quickness, security, and strike avoidance are becoming more widely recognised. What could be better known are the benefits of vac ex regarding sustainability and the environment.
These are some of the reasons why customers are opting for vacuum ex to help them minimise their carbon footprint:
Economy and Efficiency
To assist the construction sector in cutting carbon emissions, the construction leadership council developed the construct zero carbon change programme action plan. This involves making the most efficient use of contemporary building techniques and cutting down on waste and the transportation needed to reach construction sites.
Traditional digging techniques are surpassed in performance by a vacuum excavator in all but the tiniest of cases. This allows the same results to be achieved in less time and with fewer vehicles and other pieces of heavy equipment. This is the policy that the UK Government has devised to cut carbon emissions from the building by one-half by 2025.
Size Does Matter
Compared to conventional excavation techniques, such as utilising a mini digger, employing a vacuum excavator may cut the size of excavations by up to a third. This significantly reduces the energy used and the overall site and off-site environmental effects.
According to research conducted by VAC UK, using a suction excavator rather than more conventional excavation techniques results in more compact excavations, reducing the building site’s size.
Commuters and the residences and companies located nearby will be delighted to hear that pedestrian and vehicular traffic will flow more easily.
The environmental advantages become more tangible when you include the corresponding reduction in carbon emissions caused by decreased idle vehicle traffic.
Increased Safety
Safety is the key advantage of using a hydrovac or vacuum excavation vehicle. Workers can stay away from potentially dangerous trenches thanks to these vehicles. The accuracy of the trucks also makes it possible to dig around electricity lines, gas mains, and other utilities in a safer manner, which reduces the likelihood that either employees or members of the community may suffer an injury.
Its Versatility
Hydrovac trucks may be used for a variety of tasks, including:
- Removing Debris: Using vacuum trucks makes it easy to clean difficult-to-reach areas such as drains and repair holes without disrupting the functioning of existing infrastructure.
- Tight space excavations: One of the greatest options for tiny areas is the hydrovac technique.
- Pole Setting: A hydrovac speeds up work linked to pole drilling or excavation.
- Slot trenching: Hydrovac trucks are great for digging small holes swiftly while disturbing as little soil as possible.
- Cold weather excavation: Controlled excavation techniques are the most secure approach to digging amid cold temperatures.
- Potholing: Hydrovac trucks are one of the finest and most cost-effective methods to surface underground lines while causing minimal harm.
Good for Fauna and Flora
Vacuum UK was summoned to a school to perform a service diversion and reroute the electric and gas lines while the school was expanding. They decided to hire a vac ex to remove all of the dirt surrounding the tree roots without harming the tree itself. The vacuum ex employs a unique air spade to blast all the dirt away from the roots, allowing the ground to be sucked without injuring the tree roots. It may also expose all of the roots before loading the tree onto a vehicle with a crane or HIAB so that it can be relocated and replanted in another area. Vac Ex businesses do this task for individual customers and horticulture companies with ancient, costly, and fragile trees that need moving.
Cost-Effectiveness
Hydro excavation has reduced the number of workers required for projects, which is beneficial given that most project costs are attributable to labour. Digging by hand is less exact than what can be accomplished with these vehicles, leading to increased overall cost-effectiveness. This results in less work needing to be done to restore it and lower expenses.
Faster Excavation
Digging using a hydrovac truck results in more exact work than human techniques. Because of this greater level of precision, there is a reduction in the number of materials that need to be disposed of, which results in a decreased requirement for restoration work.
In Summary
The benefit of attaching to a vacuum excavation truck is that only one piece of equipment is required on-site, saving on capital and labour expenditures. An excavator operator may use the vacuum attachment to pothole a utility and then switch to the bucket for digging.
