Drill baby drill!(Directionally, HDD content)

[paulsharvey]

The money$$$ per ft to drill/pull that must as be high as Elon musk.

As a really Rough number, around $1/LF per square inch of the cross section of a pipe, is kinda in the ball park. I'm not on the money side, so I don't know how close those numbers track on a longer shot.

But
$7/lf for 2 and 3" is about right
$12ish/lf for 4" is pretty good
$28ish/lf for 6"
$110 or so/LF for 12"
Now, of coarse a big change in price is what's included, materials, generally the Utility provides pipe, hand holes/vaults; ect, but often those prices include setting handholds, gravel in vaults, ground rods, blowing pull string, and at times pulling wire.

 

[paulsharvey]

So, a question I've wondered, but never bothered to ask, 90% of the bores I watch, we used a solid reamer, but every now and again, we have used an open style reamer. Is it just cost of having a 16, 22, 30", ect, and the open type is cheaper, or do they offer an advantage in certain soils?

 

[Fixastuff]

As a really Rough number, around $1/LF per square inch of the cross section of a pipe, is kinda in the ball park. I'm not on the money side, so I don't know how close those numbers track on a longer shot.

But
$7/lf for 2 and 3" is about right
$12ish/lf for 4" is pretty good
$28ish/lf for 6"
$110 or so/LF for 12"
Now, of coarse a big change in price is what's included, materials, generally the Utility provides pipe, hand holes/vaults; ect, but often those prices include setting handholds, gravel in vaults, ground rods, blowing pull string, and at times pulling wire.

Thanks for that info double two pipes is the most I’ve pulled. Now it’s all 1.5” on this project. I’m working on expanding to power main line but haven’t made the right connection yet.

So, a question I've wondered, but never bothered to ask, 90% of the bores I watch, we used a solid reamer, but every now and again, we have used an open style reamer. Is it just cost of having a 16, 22, 30", ect, and the open type is cheaper, or do they offer an advantage in certain soils?View attachment 2396075

I don’t have an answer, everything I pull does not require any reaming. I just hook swivel to duckbill and backpull.

 

[paulsharvey]

I've seen guys pull triple 4"s or single 10" HDPE with a machine in the same class as yours, but its a struggle, and as you know, your always one bad job from disaster. Once you get into a veermer 40 class machine, now you need a CDL truck, larger tanks, larger vacs, ect

 

[Sportsman762]

I’ve just started back drilling this week. Was too cold for a few weeks, single digits to teens.

When I worked for a water well driller in Minnesota we would drill in the high teens. Took two hours to unthaw everything using weed burner torches, then we would take an hour draining everything at the end of the day. Not a very productive day but we generally finished with more work done then when we started.

There was one outfit that would drill in some darned cold temperatures. Their trucks would spend the night in the shop with only the drill rig staying outside on the job. They would heat a thousand gallons over night in the shop with a boiler to something like a 120 degrees then load the water truck and take it to the job. The water truck also had heaters in the bed to keep the water from freezing to it. Most of the drillers up there ran rosewall flat tanks as they were setup for cold weather with heater tubes and were just darned good tanks.

Water Tanks – Rose-Wall Manufacturing

www.rose-wall.com

We would do service calls when it was in the negatives. Boy did it suck breaking the joints on the drop pipe (pipe the water is pumped up in) and having the pipe full of water spray you. One guy would hold the torch and unthaw everything as the other did the work. All that water made for a skating ring around the well head. There was an extra charge for all the diesel, gasoline, and propane we used on the winter jobs as we would keep a truck running to dry our gloves and the pump hoist and air compressor were started at the shop and not shut off until they were back in the shed.

I sure don't miss those days!

 

[Fixastuff]

When I worked for a water well driller in Minnesota we would drill in the high teens. Took two hours to unthaw everything using weed burner torches, then we would take an hour draining everything at the end of the day. Not a very productive day but we generally finished with more work done then when we started.

There was one outfit that would drill in some darned cold temperatures. Their trucks would spend the night in the shop with only the drill rig staying outside on the job. They would heat a thousand gallons over night in the shop with a boiler to something like a 120 degrees then load the water truck and take it to the job. The water truck also had heaters in the bed to keep the water from freezing to it. Most of the drillers up there ran rosewall flat tanks as they were setup for cold weather with heater tubes and were just darned good tanks.

Water Tanks – Rose-Wall Manufacturing

www.rose-wall.com

We would do service calls when it was in the negatives. Boy did it suck breaking the joints on the drop pipe (pipe the water is pumped up in) and having the pipe full of water spray you. One guy would hold the torch and unthaw everything as the other did the work. All that water made for a skating ring around the well head. There was an extra charge for all the diesel, gasoline, and propane we used on the winter jobs as we would keep a truck running to dry our gloves and the pump hoist and air compressor were started at the shop and not shut off until they were back in the shed.

I sure don't miss those days!

I really appreciate the knowledge! Thankfully I did well enough where not working for month was no big deal.


My drill went sledding for a couple feet yesterday! It was a slight hill and the ground was frozen when I drove the drill into place on a side slope. During the drill the top .25” thawed and turned slippery, when I pulled the anchors up and to drive it out the machine slid down to flat ground. Such a blessing I learned this where I did and wasnt stuck waving by-by to a 10k lb machine.

 

[Sportsman762]

My drill went sledding for a couple feet yesterday! It was a slight hill and the ground was frozen when I drove the drill into place on a side slope. During the drill the top .25” thawed and turned slippery, when I pulled the anchors up and to drive it out the machine slid down to flat ground. Such a blessing I learned this where I did and wasnt stuck waving by-by to a 10k lb machine.

We had some bad job sites were we would have to use the drill rig to drag the water truck back out. The drill rig was an old 6x6 exploration rig so it had some offroad capability. The water truck was just a standard straight truck with axle and innerlock. Its never fun when you have to deal with hills. Had one job where the drill was sitting up on a hill next to the house and we had to fly every piece of drill rod and pipe in using a crane since we could not get the water truck in close. Hills suck when drilling, luckily where I was in MN it was pretty flat.

 

[paulsharvey]

Today I'm sitting here watching a 1700lf HDD, 12" steel, using a Vermeer D330x500. For anyone wondering, it's not an exciting process, every single step is slow, from loading each individual rod, to changing heads/reamers, to initial setup.

 

[Fixastuff]

Today I'm sitting here watching a 1700lf HDD, 12" steel, using a Vermeer D330x500. For anyone wondering, it's not an exciting process, every single step is slow, from loading each individual rod, to changing heads/reamers, to initial setup.View attachment 2578331

Thats quite a machine.

 

[paulsharvey]

Thats quite a machine.

They also have a 3700lf shot, and they are going to try something I've never seen. One drill on the north end, one of the south, both drilling towards the middle, and at the meeting point, southern drills pulls out, and north drill pushes through the path created by southern drill to the south exit. I've seen a push-pull double drill, where they basically pass the reamer between them, but never a meeting point.