Had my first clogged line today.

It's really not that bad, just new stuff to learn. The downside is, in NorCal at least, that it tends to be seasonal and slows down in the winter.

 

Hauling logs was always my favorite kind of driving.

 

We’ve been hauling out of Pondosa. Two loads a day to Weaverville. Occasional load of pine to yreka

 

First of all. You dont open product valve first. You open bottom air to make sure your line is clear in case you have a product valve leaking.

 

What @REO6205 said about plants not replacing their piping is true. An old-timer taught me to carry a mini-sledge, and to always give the plant piping several good whacks with it before connecting my discharge hose.

 

It's gets worse the denser the product. I've been doing dry bulk on and off for about a year and a half now (normally a skateboarder) and am coming to really enjoy it. I've blown off something like 60-70 loads in that time and only had one clog so far.

Was a very fine calcium product, maybe a single bit coarser than flour. I've delivered it several times before but unknown to me was the hole at the front of the line storage tube that was allowing road spray into the line while I was driving out to the customer. I didn't let the blower warm up and dry the line out (no one ever told me this) before starting to push product.

In a matter of seconds I had about 300 pounds of product in a 12 foot line packed in like a sand castle. No one has shown me how to get the trailer to suck it back up yet, so I pulled it off, put a new line on, kept unloading and spent about 40 minutes dumping the product out.

My philosophy with pneumatics has always been "slow and steady wins the race". I don't care if it takes 30-40 minutes to unload than the average time, I don't want a clog.

 

Frank ? You sure that the Heil limit is 15 psi ? ...... I'm not an expert but I believe that the tank can handle much higher pressure. The popoff valves are built with several different psi levels and I think that is how the tank owners select the pressure that is the " working limit ". 10 & 15 is the lower end of the pressures that the company I did frac sand with. The popoff valves there were usually 30-32.
The customers often have valid reasons why the product needs to be blown off slow. However, sometimes it's just for reasons like the old, mainly clogged pipe that they don't want to pay to replace. Especially if the drivers time is free to them.
I specifically remember doing a yearly inspection on a tank and then the maintenance tech put a new sticker on it with 30 psi as the upper limit now that I think about it.
One of the guys I worked with there told me about the fastest unload time he ever did. At first he didn't fill in the details about how short his discharge hose was and I felt really bad because I took at least twice as long and sometimes three times longer than that. Any guesses on how much time it took him to unload 48k of sand at 30 psi with a five foot hose ? It was quick.