Culvert cleaning

[Oldbinder]

I have one culvert under my driveway. I've never - in 43 years being out here - had water come down the valley. Much less go thru the culvert.

So....last year I decided to check it. Bent down and came face to face with a racoon. It was clean enough for me.

This culvert at one time had a family of skunks living in it. Threw a handful on mothballs in the culvert to make them leave. Attack stinky with a stinky works all the time.

 

[bigtiller]

I would try it and if it didn't work satisfactory I would call in a hydro jetting service.

The culvert would be as clean as a whistle, quick as a wink.

 

[JRG1223]

Due to some extreme rain with flooding I have some 16” culverts that need to be cleaned out. They are full of debris and a lot of fine sand a gravel. I tried the trick of pulling a tire through the culvert with limited success. The tire cleared the debris put little of the sand and gravel. From my days of being a electrician I remember using conduit plugs “mice” to fish pulling ropes and cleaning out electrical conduit. So I made a plug out of two 14” dia. disk brake rotors I haven’t tried it yet and was wondering if anybody thinks it’s going to work and maybe some suggestions to make better. View attachment 1189270View attachment 1189271

The drums will most likely do the trick I would pull the tire with the drums tied on the end and pull both a the same time.

 

[can do]

Due to some extreme rain with flooding I have some 16” culverts that need to be cleaned out. They are full of debris and a lot of fine sand a gravel. I tried the trick of pulling a tire through the culvert with limited success. The tire cleared the debris put little of the sand and gravel. From my days of being a electrician I remember using conduit plugs “mice” to fish pulling ropes and cleaning out electrical conduit. So I made a plug out of two 14” dia. disk brake rotors I haven’t tried it yet and was wondering if anybody thinks it’s going to work and maybe some suggestions to make better. View attachment 1189270View attachment 1189271

Did You ever find a solution for cleaning out those culverts? If you did could you post what you used to clean them out; I have a few neighbors who need to do this, & we live on a private road that I usually maintain grading it; Most of the road is down hill, & this is one culvert is at the top of the hill, & washes out the the center of the road when it rains quite heavy from it backing up. I don't think the fire dept. will do this because it is a private rd. & rural with not even a dry well too pump water. Any suggestions would be helpful; Thank you in advance.

 

[jkmfarmer]

I use an old 8"(?) wheel. Probably from a yard cart. Eye bolt on one side and a U bolt on the other. One side rope hooks to tractor and the other side rope hooks to atv. Pull it back and forth. Works good. My culvert pipe is smooth wall.

 

[MapleLeafFarmer]

we have lots of farmers in our area that use augers.
auger flighting needs replacement on the farms and in wood chip plants etc.... when worn.

so what we do is find a piece of old auger flighting and pull it through a couple of times and this makes a great tool for the job. Used flighting is a scarap around these parts.

heres a pic of a professional doing it

and us McGivers / Red Green types weld a chain on a piece of free scrap thats seems all over these parts and pull it back a forth a few times.

 

[JimRB]

I was going to make a culvert hoe. On my to do list for the past 6 months. Cut a piece of 3/16 plate half moon shape about 12 inches diameter. A bit of angle like a regular garden hoe. With a 10 foot handle. Some ideas to reduce the getting stuck on ribs of the 12-16" culvert pipe. I got a few 5 year old projects done so maybe I will come back to this hoe building project.

The tire and chain worked on the culvert on the other side of the trail. 3 or more passes with the mini-excavator. I do not have that equipment and have not been able to get a 16 foot stick through it to pull a chain. It does flow a bit of water so it is mere 95% clogged.

 

[Oldbinder]

I welded two disk brake rotors on a piece of pipe and then pulled through the culvert a couple times to clean the culvert out

 

[Oldbinder]

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.

 

[Panik]

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.