Have you ever tried to dig in a muddy field or wet building site? As soon as you start to create a hole, it soon fills with water, and the deeper you make the hole, the worse the situation gets. Any trench that you can make soon bears more resemblance to a lake than anything else. Trying to build in such conditions is impossible. You need deep foundations to create a stable structure, but what can you do if you have an excess of surface water on the site?
Clearing away the water
Needing to remove water from a building site before work can begin is a common problem. If you find yourself with too much water, then you could simply keep a couple of your team members on hand to empty the water away with buckets, but when you have a lot of water, this is normally impractical. A second approach could be to bring a portable pump to your site and keep your trenches dry by pumping the water away. This would work better, but it wouldn't work for long.
Why not use a standard pump?
The difficulty with using conventional pumps is that they aren't equipped to deal with dirty water. Pumps are fine when you want to empty a pool or dry out a flooded house, but if you are dealing with all of the sludge and mud that you will find on a building site, then they will soon become clogged and stop working.
How dewatering pumps can help
While standard water pumps will become clogged with mud, there is another option. Using specialist dewatering pumps can get the job done. Dewatering pumps are designed to separate the earth from the water without damaging or clogging up the pump. The earth is left behind, and all of the water can be safely pumped away to a nearby drain or perhaps a local lake that has sufficient capacity. When you want to install a dewatering system, there are several options available, and you will have to discuss the options with your engineering team so that they can determine which would work best in your situation. They might suggest adopting the wellpoint dewatering system or some alternative.
Whatever dewatering solution works best for your worksite, your engineering team will be able to guide you through the available choice and ensure that the final choice can offer you a dry working site where you can lay your footings and other earthworks with confidence.
