As the main contractor for Kiwirail, the Groundfix team were extremely busy in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023. Focused on recovery earthworks, they worked long days and nights fixing and clearing culverts that were blocked or filled with silt as a direct result of the Cyclone.
Mathieu Albert is a Site Supervisor at Groundflix and we talked with him about his experiences with the Master Machinery AquaMaster 2000. Specifically, we were interested in how it helped (or didn’t) in a high pressure environment (pun unintended) where speed was of the essence.
“We had many culverts to clean, there were concrete culverts and PEHD culverts. Different sizes from 300mm up to 600mm. In length between 10m and 6/7m. Fully blocked with silt or a mix with ballast and top soil and rocks as well – all clogged up together.”
The AquaMaster 2000 is fitted with a high pressure water pump and is pictured cleaning out culverts under a railway line with a drain cleaning nozzle.
In many instances, the combination of silt and other materials formed a solid block inside the culverts, making them impossible to clear by hand – the material was too hard and the culverts were too long. Mathieu’s team knew they would need to soften the material then blast/jet/or wash it out of the culverts.
“The solution was to get to it, to clean it with a water blaster or water jet. Because basically we just couldn’t reach by hand because the length [of the culvert] was too long…we had to soften all the ground, says Mathieu.
However, while the solution was obvious to Mathieu, physically getting to the culverts to apply the solution would have proved difficult with typical machinery. This is precisely why we made the AquaMaster 2000 easy to transport. It can be towed by ute or digger, or as in this instance, via rail…
“The only access we have to get to the site was through rail, which is very limited for us to drive a ute or to access with a big digger or with any other plant. So we were limited by that. But by using 5t diggers (provided by our sister company Always Hire) with a tow ball mounted on the blade, we had, like, a [Water] Trailer on that tow bar so that we can actually tow the trailer with the digger and able to reach the site that way” explains Mathieu. “Then we could clean up the culvert. Once the main tank was empty, we basically just lifted the trailer up, rotated it 180 degrees, and tracked it out all the way with the arm of the digger.”
A 5T digger with tow ball mounted to the blade carting the AquaMaster 2000 up and down the rail way line to clean out culverts.
“Once you’re out of the site, you collect more water, come back to the site. Tow the trailer back in, get back to site, and finish cleaning up the culverts. Things turned out working very well. You saved my day many times.”
It was genuinely pleasing to note how the AquaMaster 2000 was deployed following Cyclone Gabrielle, and how the versatility we engineered into the design met a very real and urgent need. For us, it sits at the heart of machinery design – making a machine that solves problems by adopting a user-centric approach. It certainly gets the thumbs up from Mathieu.
“100% I’d recommend the AquaMaster 2000. It works well and it’s very reliable. You can access your work site with it easily, you can tow it with a ute or whatever you want. And the way it’s been set up, it’s just nice – you’ve got a long reach with the hoses as well which is clearly good. That’s the tools – that’s the gear that you want to have on site.”
If this sounds like gear you need on your site too, then Jonty is ready to help. You can email Jonty at jonty@mastermachinery.co.nz or call him on 021 537 460.
