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.