Drill baby drill!

[paulsharvey]

I'm around a Lot of HDD pretty much a couple times per week. Mostly road crossings, but also a lot of generic parallel stuff, from as small as single 1.25" conduits, upto the odd occasional 24/30/36" bores. We got a triple 10" conduit coming up, 5/8 mile long, running power under the intercoastal waterway.

The small, telecom world is brutal; $7/LF, some as low as $5.50/LF; even heard of one company paying $2.50/LF by "any means"; so mixed HDD, plow, trench... problem is, not a lot of right of way where you can still plow. Fairly 'rural' area, one side of the road, we counted 12 separate utilities.... 12" WM, about 7 ATT cables/conduits, 4" GM, 1 cable/TV provider, 1 dedicated fiber provider with 3-1.25" conduits, and an 8" high pressure steel GM... all in about 30 ft of ROW from edge of pavement.

 

[paulsharvey]

I added this horizontal directional drill to my fleet. It's an older unit but has been gone through and works well. This was a 70ft shot I did with my employee and the dude I bought it from showing us how to operate it. The next day we did a 325ft bore without any guidance and it went perfect. Went about 8ft deep at one point to dodge a sewer line.

Very excited about it. I have more drilling to do but had to take the machine home to do some adjustments on the pipe loading system. It holds 40 10ft pipe segments so you can drill about 380-390ft with it. It can backream up to a 26" diameter hole which is pretty crazy. Right now I'm just pulling one or sometimes two 2" diameter pieces of conduit. View attachment 819611View attachment 819612
It pumps in high pressure water during the operation so somethings things get muddy. (I've take off my boots at this point)

Umm, when you say "with out any guidance" you mean no instruction Right? We aren't talking old no Sonde, push at 6, for 2 rods, drill for 2 rods, and push at 12 for 2 rods, are we? That's some old school sketchy stuff if that's what you meant.

 

[paulsharvey]

The first picture is this Monday, about 300 lf, 3-1.25" conduits, and all without issue, 2nd picture is the splice pit from where same crew a few weeks ago got into a duct bank, at 9ft deep. They claim locates where off, but one way or the other ATT will be sending them a bill with several Zeros on the end of it, and let them fight it out.

 

[paulsharvey]

Don't know your area, soils, or regulations; but do they let you use a pneumatic missile under the minor roadways in your area?

 

[Fixastuff]

Umm, when you say "with out any guidance" you mean no instruction Right? We aren't talking old no Sonde, push at 6, for 2 rods, drill for 2 rods, and push at 12 for 2 rods, are we? That's some old school sketchy stuff if that's what you meant.

No I'm using a sonde and locator! Just meant drilling without someone experience helping.

 

[Fixastuff]

Don't know your area, soils, or regulations; but do they let you use a pneumatic missile under the minor roadways in your area?

Yeah I have a missle and lots of experience with that but I had to work on the Eastern shore near the water recently and the ground was too wet and soft for it.

Then I also run into creeks and other longer shots that I had to pay other people to do for me. Now that I have the drill I can do it all in house.

 

[paulsharvey]

No I'm using a sonde and locator! Just meant drilling without someone experience helping.

You had me worried for a minute

 

[Tinhack]

My wife and I had drills for 17 years, that’s all we did for a living. Have a lot of stories to tell, they will make big money if you do it right. done really good and sold out a couple of years ago for a nice premium.

Big money is right. When I put city water in about 14 years ago, the water company wanted to put my meter on the other side of an adjoining county road. They wanted $5k to drill under the road. I said put it off the main at the front of the property. The main was already on my side of the State Hiway. It was about 1000 feet more of pipe for me to install but it was only about $700 for the full 1300' of 2" PVC buried two feet down. I rented a digger for a day and that was under $200 IIRC. I had less than $1k in the whole job.

 

[paulsharvey]

Big money is right. When I put city water in about 14 years ago, the water company wanted to put my meter on the other side of an adjoining county road. They wanted $5k to drill under the road. I said put it off the main at the front of the property. The main was already on my side of the State Hiway. It was about 1000 feet more of pipe for me to install but it was only about $700 for the full 1300' of 2" PVC buried two feet down. I rented a digger for a day and that was under $200 IIRC. I had less than $1k in the whole job.

That's money, But, when you take labor (a drill foreman isn't a cheap employee, at least 1 helper, normaly a locator, and a digger), equipment (2 trucks at $80k, drill at $250-400k, vac trailer, mud mixer, locator, sonde, pipe, pipe reel, any HDPE fusing equipment), insurance, possible (eventual...) damage claims; it's not as rosy as people think. It is, however Fast, and often cheaper than the alternative (open cutting a road; MOT, flowable fill, milling, and asphalt).

Replacement rods, heads, sondes, are $$$.

What's a full basket of 10 ft rods cost? I would guess $200/ea, x 38, $7600. And those are a wear item.

 

[paulsharvey]

I'm guessing Mr Fixa got this drill pretty cheap, but I'd bet the set-up was still not Cheap. That mini in the picture, is what, $65k new?