Brand New Marsh Excavator (Swamp Excavator, Amphibious Excavator)

General Information:

Marsh Equipment is designed specially to meet the challenges of wetlands and soft-terrain by combining buoyancy with the maneuverability of a tracked vehicle. The most popular product is Marsh Excavator, which is also named as Amphibious Excavator, Swamp Excavator, Dredging Excavator, Floating Excavator, Wetland Excavator, Dredging Backhoe, Marsh Backhoe, Swamp Backhoe, Floating Backhoe, Swamp Buggy Excavator, Marsh Buggy, Mud Buggy or Amphibians etc.

On a conventional tracked vehicle, the tracks run on wheels and exert a high ground pressure. Without buoyancy, the machines will not operate in conditions that are unable to support the weight of the machine, as open water, marshes, swamps, or other soft terrains.

Different from the conventional undercarriage of the construction machinery, the undercarriage of a marsh excavator is built on two large steel pontoons with the tracks mounted around them. The pontoons create buoyancy, giving the machine capabilities between those of a barge and a regular excavator. The pontoons are custom fabricated to provide the correct displacement and balance to allow the machine to safely float and be self-propelled on open water or soft terrains.

SUNTON SE series of marsh excavator range from 8 metric tons to 36 metric tons of normal excavator class, 3600 pounds to 16300 pounds, in either a standard or extended long-reach boom configuration. They have the most floatation and the safest working record in the industry.

SUNTON marsh excavator or amphibious excavator could easily get more versatile functions by changing with different upper or front parts, or kinds of attachments as cutter pumps, rock bucket, tilt bucket, skeleton buckets, clamshell buckets, fork grapple, grapple, high reach boom, demolition booms, materials handling attachments, orange peel grab and crusher etc.

Applications

Marsh equipment working conditions are mainly wetlands and soft terrains. Wetlands are areas where water covers the soil, or is present either at or near the surface of the soil all year or for varying periods of time during the year, including during the growing season. They can be saltwater, freshwater, or brackish. The most common categories of wetland are marsh, swamp, and peat bog. Soft-terrain is any ground condition that will not support traditional heavy equipment, even a person can't stand in that ground.

Wetlands and soft terrain are inaccessible to the conventional equipment designed to work either in deep water in the case of boats, or barges, or on firm ground as excavators, cranes or drill rigs etc, because water is too shallow or obstructed for water-based machines, and too soft for conventional heavy equipment. This unique challenge requires a different machine that both demonstrating the low ground pressure and performing heavy work in soft ground, wetlands, marsh and swamp. That is just what amphibious equipment or marsh equipment could do. They are specially designed and the pontoon undercarriage creates buoyancy, giving the machine capabilities between those of a barge and a regular excavator.

Marsh Excavator or Amphibious Excavator mainly perform the heavy works as below:

√  Dredging projects as cleaning and maintenance of waterways as rivers, lakes, shorelines and river delta etc

√  Swamp marsh or wet terrain construction, Coastal restoration and landscaping.

√  Soil Boring and Levee & wet lands reclamation and development

√  Improving drainages in civil works

√  Environmental remediation and disaster recovery as flood protection and maintenance works or hurricane debris removal

√  Forestry transportation (including right of way clearing and marsh fire fighting)

√  Oil spill and contaminated sediment cleanup,

√  Storage pit maintenance

√  Highway construction clearing

√  Oil and gas exploration & survey equipment transportation

√  Phone & cable and pipe line works

Technical Parameters

Common Standard Specifications

√  Suspension Seat with high back

√  Auxiliary Hydraulics

√  Servo Valve

√  Cup Holder

√  Horn, Work Lights on boom and left front

√  Retractable Seat Belt

√  Heater and A/C

Optional Functions and Attachments

√  TOPS/ROPS Canopy with lights

√  Control Console Locks

√  Standard and long reach boom, 9-19m.

√  Spark Arrestor Muffler

√  Attachments: Trenching Bucket, cutter pumps, rock bucket, tilt bucket, skeleton buckets, clamshell buckets, fork grapple, grapple, high reach boom, peel grab and  crusher etc

Transportation:

Marsh Excavator (Swamp Excavator, Amphibious Excavator) could be shipped by container linners, RO-RO ship or bulk ship.

When it’s to be shipped by container linners, the machine is usually disassembled into 3 main parts in advance and loaded to the containers for ocean or long-distance shipment. In usual, one set medium size amphibious excavator usually uses 2x40’GPs plus 1x40’FR for shipment. When customer receives it, he will need one or two hours to reassemble it with help of one set 20-25tons crane and 2-3 persons at site.

If customer wants to receive a complete machine without being dismantled, just consider to ship it by bulk carrier or RO/RO ship. But we would like to remind the customer to pay attention to his local legal limit on the in-land transportation size firstly and then to determine which kind of ship to be selected. The transportation size of a complete set of amphibious excavator without disassembly is usual beyond the in-land transportation limit. If customer insists on shipping the machine without disassembly, he could disassemble it on the port after he receives it on the destination port.

In view of our experiences, the most cost-effective way to ship the machine is to disassemble it and ship the parts by bulk ship, but the shortcoming is that most bulk ships usually have only one shift in a month, much less than the container ships, which means the shipping time usually cost much more than container ships. Container ship and RO-RO ship shall be more or less same expensive but less shipping-time cost.