A Day of Unexpected Drilling

Well drilling doesn’t always, if ever, go as planned. There for I will tell you about one of my recent experiences in drilling a replacement well. The day of the initial drilling was September 25, 2010. The location was off Oakland drive in Lake Orion, MI. We loaded the well rig with, if I remember correctly, 12 bags of gravel pack, 15 bags of TD-16 (grouting material), filled the water truck, and loaded the water truck with what we figured on being the necessary casing and screens. At approximately eight thirty a.m. we set sail to the job. Upon arrival, we also brought the pump truck which is used for service and repairs, we pulled the guts out of the old deep well sub pump before beginning the drilling process. From there we began hooking the water lines up from the water truck to the pump and then to the drilling rig. Following that we lowered the catch pan, emptied it, hooked up the de-sander, set up the thimble and pushed it into the ground using the drill bit and stabilizer. Unfortunately, before we got to far, we realized that there was no oil in the transfer case which allows us to transfer power from the transmission for driving to the drill in the back. So that set us back approximately an hour after we dropped off the pump truck and looked up the oil that the machine called for. Finally we arrived back at the machine, filled it with oil, and proceeded towards our objective, drilling a replacement well. We drilled down with the bit and added a rod. Drilled down further and added another rod. Adding rods requires strength and awareness, you have to be able to no what is going on at all times and make sure you are communicating with the operator. Our first stop was at seventy feet, simply because the material we were going through was perfect, picture perfect, of what your looking for when your drilling for water. So we pulled the rods up one by one, and when you take these rods out you have to put them in a tray and shove them as hard as you can down, to were they fall into a holding bin. Note that these are twenty foot steel rods and are nearly solid so this is no easy task to most people. After pulling all the rods with pulled the bit and stabilizer up, even harder, this stabilizer is probably the equivalent of three or four rods put together weight wise, and on top of the you have to drag it back into its location. So we put everything back and started the casing process, in which you put down a screen that you choose according to material, then primer and glue the sections of casing together until your are at the bottom of the hole (well) you have just drilled. Then we took the rods back out, one by one of course, and put them down into the well in order to send air and work the well. You do this in order to make sure you are in fact in the water and you rinse the sediment back. First we put the rods down and filled the well with water from our water truck, then filled the well with our gravel pack, and proceeded to work the well. We spent approximately an hour on trying to get the well to produce water, but the same result came up every time. It was like taking a straw and putting it just above the surface of the water and blowing into it, were you just get a little water to come out of the container. So we had to pull all the casing back out, which set us off schedule, as we were expecting to have a completed hole, and we went back to drilling. Let me remind you that all this casing that was pulled out had to be cut by hand and is no longer usable, therefore money has been wasted. We drilled down and down until a hundred and fifty feet knowing that the next water zone was around a hundred and seventy. However we stopped there for the day knowing we didn’t have everything we needed to finish the job not to mention the day was literally almost over. Before leaving we had to use bentonite which turns the water into a gell as you drill down, to seal the walls preventing cave inns, and to keep the bit lubed. Anyways we mixed up a bunch of mud and ran it through the hole to keep the well from collapsing and having to start over. From there we packed it up and ended our day. This just goes to show you that in this trade you never know what to expect and have to adapt the obstacles you come across.

Methods of Creating a Water Well

Unfortunately I had a hard time finding information about the earliest known wells, were they were at, and who created them. However, I can still go into classification of different wells and how they are made along with the different types of machinery used to make these wells. First off we have the dug wells. These wells are nearly as simple as they sound. A man or several work together digging down into the ground with shovels or any excavating tools until they are into the water table. Note that these were what the earliest wells were. . Once they got into the water table the took rocks, or bricks, anything of that sort, and lined the inner walls of the well to help prevent contamination. Now days when a dug well is created, they take concrete rings for the liner, the further they go down the more rings got dropped down, slowly sinking into the aquifer. These walls or liners weren’t just built for contamination but for human safety, to prevent people from falling down the well.
The next classification is driven wells and hand driven wells, both use the same process. A hardened well point, which is like a pipe that comes to a point on the bottom and has holes along it to act as a screen, is used as a bit to be driven into the ground. You can use either a capable/pounding machine to push the well point down into the ground or you can use a slide hammer which acts as a manual jackhammer to push it through the ground. As you go down you ad sections of pipe as needed and continue pushing the well point and casing down into the ground until the aquifer is reached. Once the aquifer is reached the well is rinsed of all sediment and a sub pump, or pump system is set up and the well is complete.
Lastly you have the drilled wells. Drilled wells can either be created by manual laboring or machinery. Hand drilling involves augering, sludging, jetting, driving, or hand percussion. Using a machine requires rotary, percussion, and down the hole hammering. Either way you must drill your way down through the grown until the aquifer is reached. When you reach the aquifer you send the casing down to the bottom with the screen being the first casing sent down. Once you have put casing all the way to the bottom you blow the well out insuring that you are within the aquifer. There are several steps that you must go through in order to drill a well to code today, but this is simply the different ways of creating a well.
One of the most important facts about well drilling I want to bring forward is that you can not see what you are doing. You have to imagine in your head where you are going through the earth, what your looking for, and you half to remember everything, because mistakes are not cheap in this industry. For my next blog I will walk you through a day of drilling a well.

Getting Started: Well Drilling

Throughout my first series of blogs I will be writing about water well drilling. Over the past several years that has been my occupation, and I found it to be quite and interesting job. In this occupation you never no what your going to find at a job, and by that I mean no two jobs are ever exactly the same, with this going down to the slightest detail of a well. Therefore in the following blog I will begin by briefing the history of water well drilling. Including the earliest known water well, what people made it, and where is was located, along with the time frame. Within the history blog will be information on the earliest designs and how they created them, as to the fact they didn’t have the machinery we have today. Knowing that having water was a big part of the process in our country’s advancing into a civilization and being capable of industrializing, water well’s are a big part of not just the country but the world.
In succession I will talk about how water well drilling has evolved over the years. This will include earliest equipment used to drill the well’s up to some more recent well drilling equipment. Machinery use to be built by using just a wooden frame that was equipped with a system of pulleys and had to be towed to the location it was to be used for drilling. The early equipment is what we call a pounder and using this type of machinery is becoming a dieing art. Whereas today the more widely used machine of choice is called a rotary. On top of that will be the first well designs, compared to what they more recently, and how they have built up to this day. Well drilling has gone from taking us days and days to complete a well to being able to do one in a matter of hours. However it all depends on the depth you have to drill, the material your drilling through, and the power of the machine. Well drilling is becoming more advanced everyday.
What well drilling has becoming to this day is quite extraordinary. From near fully automated drilling machines to the complexity of materials you must use to keep them to code. Being a well driller requires as much intelligence as a doctor. I say this because being a well driller requires you to remember everything step by step. For every step or mistake made you could be costing yourself a fortune because well drilling is not a cheap trade to take up. Therefore in my final blog about well drilling I will talk about new machines, materials used at what depth, neat tools to make certain jobs easier, and experiences I have had being a well drillers assistant. Although I have only had several years of experience in this line of work I have gotten quite a wide variety of problems or jobs already and has sparked my interest of learning more. Following my well drilling series I will go into my small collection of hats (different work experiences and qualifications) that I have acquired over working most of my life and the different types of working I have done.