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The port in Charleston that had a weird suction problem last month
I was running a small cutterhead dredge on a slip near the Charleston container terminal last month. We kept losing vacuum pressure every time the tide dropped below 4 feet, and nobody could figure out why. Turns out there was a buried timber crib from the 1800s sucking air through a rotted seam. Has anyone else run into old harbor infrastructure causing issues like that?
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elizabethmason6d ago
Read a report from the Army Corps a few years back about how old timber cribs and even sunken ships can create weird suction pockets in harbors. They found one in Baltimore that was basically a ghost from the 1800s too, acting like a giant vacuum cleaner on the bottom every time the current shifted. Your problem sounds just like that, the wood rots in a spot that seals at high tide but opens up when the water drops, letting air in and killing your vacuum. Never seen it myself on the job but that report really stuck with me.
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wesley_jones6d agoMost Upvoted
Totally agree, that Army Corps report is wild. I remember reading about something similar happening in a harbor up in Maine where an old shipwreck was doing the same thing, messing with the bottom every time the tide changed.
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