Another buggy whip industry gone!
interesting thread. Geraldo was just on FNC with the army corps guy - they are fabricating portable pumps at a foundary someplace near NO. but of the main city pumps, the Corps claims all but one work.
Begin rant...
Massive pumps of that sort never have been an off-the-shelf item, except in industries that recognized their critical vulnerabilities.
This is only a rude awakening to those who have come to power by believing all things are available off-the-shelf.
Hmmmm, solutions to once in a lifetime catastrophes aren't just off the shelf commodities? Go figure. Next approach is with the professionals who know how to engineer the solution backed by financial resources and heavy industry to build the solution,....but then again that's resorting to a capitalistic model that just isn't politically correct in a socialist world.
end rant
Dang! Same thing happened in New Jersey after Hurricane Floyd 1999. I discovered my surface water pump (I wanted to help out my sump pump in the sump pit) wouldn't work. So I went to the Home Depot and wouldn't you know it, they were all out of water pumps!
Fortunately I had a wet/dry vac as a backup.
I did eventually get a replacement pump. The mayor can borrow it and the vac if he wants.
Why, pray tell, should the American People be forced to subsidize a "garmongous civil water pump" industry? Oh... I forgot: "From each according to his abilities. To each according to his needs."
Never mind.
I truly don't believe it's the pumps ie: the water handling piece of equipment, but the electric motors that power the pumps. I saw pre-Katrina pics of the complex of pumps and motors that move the water. I said to myself: That stuff is really old. I contacted a friend who's family goes back quite a long time in NOLA. He told me that his grandfather in 1900 went to Holland to view their system. He came back and designed the current system.
I was the engineer at a major facility when one of our 1937 pumps wore out. We had the drawing numbers. We called the foundry that cast pump housing and built the pump. They said "No Problem" 26 days later we had our new pump.
We also had a problem with water flooding a water pump house. We pulled the very large elec motor sent it off to be baked, etc. 8 days back on line.
The electic motors are more probably the problem. Big goode olde open winding motors like that in the NOLA system are history. OK, if major happens but if it does---
I've seen very old motors properly maintained last quite a while.
You just don't move in diesel engines and hook them up.
Must be set and mated to the pumps.
We're talking PUMPS here, Boy! Really big PUMPS, Boy!
I hope this info helps a little on understanding the pump problems.
I could add more about clogged intakes, sand wear in the pump housing and on the turbine propellers. That was Civil
328 as I remember.
The story of A-C is fascinating. The company at one time employed thousands making everything from farm tractors to the turbines at Hoover Dam. At the end everything went wrong from clueless management to an antagonistic union. Finally the company bet the farm on a process to get oil from coal that never panned out.
Halliburton must have bought the company and ordered them to stop, to ensure the Democrats would be flooded eventually.
I suspect that they always have been custom made. My husband used to order pumps like that 25-30 years ago, and he always had to have them custom made. I doubt that pumps qualify for your buggy whip remark.
Quick! Get some crack Indian H1-B design engineers on it, and bring in some illegals from Mexico to do the manufacturing Americans refuse to do.
Well, I know where they can go to get brand new, state of the art pumps. They didn't have to keep using these old ones, especially if they were wearing out and replacement parts and/or pumps were going to be difficult/impossible to get. Jeepers creepers, where the heck is these peoples' common sense?!
Check out this web site. I think you may be too reactionary to see the forest for the trees. Although the US may not make the exact pump that was installed years ago in NO there are other companies that make pumps that are highly value added products like this one. http://www.lawrencepumps.com/ .
This doesn't surprise me. Time to deport the outsourcing crowd. Maybe we can con China into taking them....
Put out the call in Texas and Oklahoma for mud pumps (used to pump drilling "mud" when drilling deep holes intended to be oil wells). Of course, with the price of oil what it is, most of them are probably back in use. A big 'ol mud pump will suck and push water just fine, for as long as you want it to, and in very large volume. Of course, they take a lot of diesel to run, and a seriously big truck to move, but they'd be a huge help.
Massive pumps... for decades are no longer made
HEY TRY CHINA !!