BagVAC proves itself in Barra
Jack Tighe Ltd choose industrial vacuum cleaning machine following three month trial
The BagVAC, the leading industrial vacuum cleaning machine, has been successfully trialled for three months by Jack Tighe Ltd during a major renovation of the 1,000ft long Castlebay ferry pier on the island of Barra in the Western Isles.
The trial was more than sufficient proof for Jack Tighe’s team that the BagVAC ‘does what it says on the tin’ for one of the UK’s leading blast cleaning and industrial painting companies to go ahead and purchase a new BagVAC.
Jack Tighe Ltd were undertaking the Barra project as part of a much larger undertaking that involved renovating the main ferry piers at Stornoway on Lewis, Lochboisdale on Uist, and Tarbet on Harris. Constantly lashed by Atlantic weather and salt water, the metal parts of these piers need regular blast cleaning and resurfacing, and as the previous surfacing used lead in the paint there was no possibility of recycling the shot blast during the three-month long operation.
George Dunne, contracts manager for the Western Isles project, had a particular interest in the trial of what was a new machine for his team of blast cleaning and resurfacing experts. ‘We normally use other kinds of suction and vacuum recovery equipment, but on this occasion we’d learned about the BagVAC and we wanted to see what it could do. It promised plenty of suction power and a fully enclosed system for sucking up all the waste material into a large capacity bag for offsite disposal.’
The BagVAC was taken to Barra’s 1,000ft long Castlebay ferry pier and deployed for three months. George Dunne commented: ‘The BagVAC was fine, there wasn’t a single problem throughout the whole time we were using it.
‘We used upwards of 200ft of suction pipe, removing all the shot and lead paint-filled waste material from the pier. The BagVAC really impressed with its user-friendliness, simple to operate controls, and sheer load capacity. We could focus our time blast cleaning, and removing the waste material was a simple matter of replacing the full bag with an empty one and carrying on where we’d left off. In the meanwhile, the full bag could be taken away for offsite disposal.
‘This sort of work can be pretty hazardous with the kind of surfaces and materials we’re blast cleaning. Anything that makes life easier when you’ve got to remove it all and dispose of it is always a good thing. We’d been well advised to check the BagVAC’s filters regularly, and so we didn’t experience any loss of suction power.
‘The BagVAC is light and can be moved with a fork-lift as I did on a daily basis. I also think that they are good for rail track closures as you don’t require a HGV to move them from site to site.
‘The net result was that we made a strong recommendation to purchase, and our purchasing manager Tony England has subsequently gone ahead and bought a new BagVAC. The Jack Tighe Ltd team are already using it whenever and wherever it’s needed on large-scale industrial cleaning projects, saving us time and money, making things easier and reducing any dust hazard in waste removal.’
