Working on the plugged culvert problem again. Boy did I eat an extra big bowel of stupid “O”s for breakfast today. Got the tractor stuck trying to clear the problem culvert. Just cannot win sometimes.
Ooof! Sorry to hear/see about getting the tractor stuck - have you been able to get unstuck yet?
Your thread perked my interest as I have a similar issue going on with the dry drainage culverts that run under my shop road. - The tire+chain trick pretty easily clears leaves and debris, but does absolutely nothing to clear the sand/clay that settles in the corrugated drainage running under the road.
Were you able to get a sense of whether the rotator plug you made had any impact on the silt in your drains?
I tried something similar after watching videos of how test plugs and various cleaning balls are pulled/blown through piping in various industries. Where you used a metal rotor I bolted together several 1.5" thick plywood discs that were smaller than the diameter of the pipe and then attached two 1/4" angle iron "blades" running perpendicular to each other that were ever so slightly smaller than the pipe diameter. The hope being that the angle iron would dig/scarify/loosen the sediment build-up and that the plywood pucks would catch & pull that loose material through the pipe.
At least in my application there's apparently more finesse to designing a drain cleaning system than I am aware of. I spent about two days after a decent rain event fiddling with this experiment and ended up bending a lot of 1/4" angle and breaking a good number of 1.5" discs. I finally stopped messing with it because I couldn't find the sweet spot in terms of configuration for the heavy clay/sand sediment in my drain pipes:
It felt like either my cleaning plug was too small OR if it was big enough to pull some material out I was running the very high risk of getting the plug permanently wedged in the pipe or damaging the pipe.
On my last attempt the eyebolt on the plug came open and I spent a good 2 hours using a rock bar, hoe and trench shovel to clear the debris that built up in front of the plug so that I could pull the plug out of the pipe. I am aware I could try again using a forged eyebolt, but without better design ideas, it felt like I was working at the very limits of my little
bx2360....although that was before I loaded the tires on the tractor.