Portable self-contained vacuum exca-vat Ion equipment is becoming highly visible on more and more utility con-structlon and maintenance projects all across the country. Mounted on trailers or truckVoday''s vacuum excavators combine two basic functions in lane machine: • a portable vacuum system, and • a powerful "soft" excavation machine that displaces soil with either blasts of high-pressure water or air. Some vacuum excavator owners regularly use both functions, while others employ their equipment strictly as a vacuum or only for excavation. Most vacuum excavators on job sites today are operated by utility contractors who use them for potholing (excavating around buried pipe and cable) and to clean up drilling fluid displaced during horizontal directional drilling operations. But they are not limited to these applications, and their versatility has attracted the attention of public works managers who recognize that vacuum excavators can perform various public works tasks.
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