OT: Drilling rig at my place

[Black Forest]

I am having all my power lines buried underground. Plus running electricity and water to a couple of buildings and to some pastures. The operator is quite good at hitting his targets. Three men on the crew. The HDD drilling rig, an excavator, a front loader, the support truck that recycles the water. They are only using 5 cubic meters of water for all the drilling. The recycling rig is quite impressive. It consists of a centrifuge and filters to remove the dirt from the water.

To get water to one pasture across the street they drilled under our driveway, under the road, under a bridge on the road and came up about 20 meters from the side of the road along a fence and another road. He missed his spray painted mark b 3cm! I told him he would never get a job in Texas with such sloppy work. He took it the way I meant it and we both had a good laugh.

[Noitoen]

Does he still have to cut the coaxial cable inside the drill pipe and splice it again every time he adds another section?

[The Artful Bodger]

Is that a rotating drill or a 'thruster'?

[RB140]

Seen one something like this
They were extending a gas line under a 4 lane highway with out interrupting traffic don't know how he hit his mark must have used GPS or something it looked like the gas line as about 4 or 5inches in diameter

[J Tiers]

The ones I have seen have an angled plate on the front. They seem to be both pushed, and turned. Turned I suppose so that they go straight, because they will angle off if stopped.

I've seen a guy out front with a device that seems to sense location and depth, and the operator apparently does the indexing and pushing to turn corners based on the feedback from in front. They put fiber through in front of the house, supposedly for 5G repeaters. The operator was way down the block, and was pushing the thing to the end of the block, to the next connection box location. They dragged plastic pipe back through, and whatever they were installing went in that.

[Guido]

YouTube: Ditch Witch.
For show/tell regarding world class manufacturer and developer of technology. Kinda ironic and interesting, the guy was German, DitchWitch is in Oklahoma. ‘Find a need and fill it’, has nothing to do with water witching.

[true temper]

Directional drilling, that is what my wife and I did for 17 years. Sold out little over a year ago. We had 3 different Vermeer rigs.

[Black Forest]

Does he still have to cut the coaxial cable inside the drill pipe and splice it again every time he adds another section?

No co-axial cable involved.

[Noitoen]

I serviced the hydraulic pump electric motor of a similar system many years ago and it had some sort of steering system on the drill head that used a cable inside the pipe so, every time they added a section, they would cut the cable, solder and then shrink a sleeve over it. I guess it's wireless now.
It still intrigues me how they steered the thing through more than 2000 meters of swamp like field to pass a natural gas pipe.

[darryl]

Throughout my 'career' installing satellite dishes, I've had the need to run wiring under sidewalks, and once under a driveway. I used a water drill, which was nothing more than a garden hose attached to a long straight thing so it could be guided. I may have gotten lucky with the driveway, but it punched through fairly easily. Sidewalks were easy.

[SVS]

Directional drilling, that is what my wife and I did for 17 years. Sold out little over a year ago. We had 3 different Vermeer rigs.

Any “bad locate” stories?

A buddy of mine poked a hole in the proverbial sewer line that wasn’t quite where the drawings claimed. Hilarity ensued.

[true temper]

Yah I got a sewer line in a down town area in an old part of town. It was marked and we were drilling along all of a sudden no resistance and the drill head was headed for the line. Come to find out the old sewer line had a hole already and washed out a void under the concrete.probably didn’t actually hit it but had drilling fluid coming through the manhole down the way. Was able to pull back and get another bite and move over and keep going.
lots of other stories.

[deltap]

They pushed a large hole (10") near me for power line construction. Line was around two miles long with drill intervals every few hundred feet. The drill has a protrusion on one side to steer it. The operator turns drill to the side of the turn and pushes with 20,000 lbs of force to make it turn. For straight it just drills with less force. Operator says he can steer it around a cul due sac. Helper is out at the drill location to verify location and depth with instrument. Once the drill reaches next dig hole, conduit is attached and pulled back. Drilling mud lubes the drill and stabilizes the bore.

[true temper]

Drilled threw 3 fiber optics cables in my 17 years of drilling, but didn’t have to pay for any of them.

The first one technically was my fault, my one call was good there was another contractor that had a locate on the same job as mine. When he was done he pulled all the flags on that side of the road. It was listed on my paper and I should of found it. But I never got a bill for it.

The next one my locate was good I hydrovaced 2 cables at the marked location. They didn’t look right to me so I called the phone guy to come out and verify that they were right. He said that they were his lines and I would be fine if we were 2 feet below them. Shot across no problem put on a big reamer was cutting 18” right under the 2 cables I hit something and couldn’t ream any more. I was plenty deep. Come to find out the fiber was in conduit under the other 2 lined. Ripped the fiber line out of the pedestal 1/2 mile down the road and wrapped it around my reamer, filling it up where my teeth wouldn’t cut anymore. I pushed it back out and the phone guy was panicking said that can’t be mine. Then his phone started ringing about no service. Then the white pickups started coming. Shut down panhandle of Oklahoma. The phone guy almost lost his job over that one, they take miss marks and hits very seriously.

The third one was missed marked they marked the old copper instead of the fiber.

Been in underground business on my own for more then 24 years and never had an insurance claim or had to pay for anything out of pocket.

[SVS]

That’s pretty impressive!

Good stories. Thanks.