Horizontal Drill Rig

[ATCOEQUIP]

I found some old pics of Horizontal drill rigs I used to operate. This was in the late 80's into the mid 90's. The purpose was to drill into slopes that had underground water causing the slope to move/slide. We would drill a hole at a grade and depth that the geologists recommended, then install a 1 1/2" sch 80 PVC perforated drain pipe to allow an outlet for the underground water, which would dry the slope and stop movement. The company was Jensen Drilling Company based out of Eugene Oregon. They custom built the drill themselves at their shop starting with a dozer tractor and mounting a drill on it. LoL, my left shoulder now feels the pain of handling a 36" cut-off handle pipe wrench and 110 lb drill rod all day long.



This was in Northwest Alabama. Sand and pea gravel, red clay, blue marine clay, and the occasional chunk of iron. This stuff was a nightmare to drill a hole in. :Banghead

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This was in Aspen Colorado at the former Buttermilk Ski Resort. Colorado Digger knows where this site is. The holes were 525 ft deep. Good soil to drill, but a fair amount of rock and boulders to go through to reach 525'. You can see one of the installed drains draining water to the right of the drill rods on stands

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LoL, this was the rig I probably ran the most, and old Allis-Chalmers HD-6 with a 4 cyl Buda engine in it. That engine sounded sweet. This pic was in Chattanooga Tennessee. I was on the west side of Missionary Ridge, the Brainerd Road Tunnel through the ridge was directly beneath me. The view is looking west over downtown Chattanooga with Signal Mountain to the west of town.

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[ATCOEQUIP]

Here's a couple more of the old Allis-Chalmers. This was in the Chatahoochee National Forest in the north Georgia mountains on U.S. hwy 76 between Hiwassee and Clayton Georgia. There was a lot of water came out of the side of this mountain. I had one drain that was putting out near 150 gpm of water.


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[OCR]

Very interesting pictures, ATCO... :thumbsup

Please post some more, if you find them.


OCR... :)

[td25c]

Thats pretty neet ATCOEQUIP.Sounds like you got to travel allot with the drill riggs and see allot of interesting country.That makes sence draining the water out of the hill to keep it from sliding.We have this problem in my area to a small extent.Lots of hills & valleys, spring water running out of the hills.We have some pasture ground that has slid in the past due to water in the ground.Love the pictures!I also noticed a Fiat -Allis dozer on the first post.

[roddyo]

Pretty neat ATCO

[ATCOEQUIP]

Very interesting pictures, ATCO... :thumbsup

Please post some more, if you find them.


OCR... :)

I'm working on it OCR, I don't have a scanner, have to scan a few when off the clock at work. :tong


Thats pretty neet ATCOEQUIP.Sounds like you got to travel allot with the drill riggs and see allot of interesting country.That makes sence draining the water out of the hill to keep it from sliding.We have this problem in my area to a small extent.Lots of hills & valleys, spring water running out of the hills.We have some pasture ground that has slid in the past due to water in the ground.Love the pictures!I also noticed a Fiat -Allis dozer on the first post.

Yep, done my share of traveling, I did this for seven years. Most fun question I got from contractors was "how long will it take you to do this?". I'd tell them "ask a carpenter how long it will take to build a house and he can pretty much tell you. I didn't build this mountain, God did, I have no idea what he put in there!". Yep, we had Fat-Allis tractor drills as well. They built drills on Allis-Chalmers HD-6 and HD-11, Fiat-Allis FD-7 and FD-9. They built one on a Cat, but it stayed in the western area, don't remember the model.

[ATCOEQUIP]

Pretty neat ATCO

Thanks Rodney. And just about all the stuff we used could have gone in your "fabrication" thread. We custom built or fabricated just about everything we used. I wish I had pictures of all the contraptions we built to work with. :tong

[ATCOEQUIP]

I guess I should explain something about installing the PVC drain pipe. Drilling a hole to a desired depth is the easier part using typical drilling bits, either carbide cutter bits in soils, or tri-cone roller bits if there's a lot of rock. Once the depth is obtained, if you simply pull the drill string out of the ground and attempt to slide the drain pipe up the hole, it would not be unusual to hit an obstruction in the hole before you reached bottom, maybe a piece of a rock you drilled through. And most job specs stated they only pay for full length installed drains. Drains shorter than what was requested weren't accepted. To achieve a full length installed drain, Jensen changed the way the drill bit attached to the end of the drill rod. Typical drilling industry applications have the drill bit attach to the end of the drill rod with threads. Jensen developed a sloted adapter that threaded to the end of the rod and had drill bit mfgs (such as Varel) make a bit that had a pin coupler that fit the adapter. This would allow the bit to stay locked to the rod as long as you rotated CW. If you rotate the rod CCW, it would "unlock" the bit. This would allow us to drill a hole full length, then remove the water swivel from the back of the drill, and slide the full length PVC drain pipe through the center of the hollow drill rod all the way to the bit. Rotate drill CCW, unlock bit, pull drill rod back away from bottom of hole, use PVC drain as a slide hammer, and knock the bit off the end of the rod. Now we simply pulled the sections of drill rod out, leaving a full length drain in the hole. Actually pretty simple. :)

[td25c]

Thats Interesting ATCOEQUIP.So you would sacrifice the drill bit for each hole,and get the full length of pvc pipe in the hole that the job needed.Am I correct?

[ATCOEQUIP]

Thats Interesting ATCOEQUIP.So you would sacrifice the drill bit for each hole,and get the full length of pvc pipe in the hole that the job needed.Am I correct?


Yes sir, 25c. A full length "paying" hole is worth a whole lot more than that bit. ;)

The average lenth for a horizontal drain would be between 100 to 200 feet. I think the shortest I ever did was 60 feet, the longest I did was in Aspen at 525 feet. The average charge for an installed drain was 10 dollars a foot. Extremely rocky strata or having to use a down the hole hammer would be more.

[td25c]

I thought I understood it ATCOEQUIP.You drill in the hole & install the pvc pipe the job needs to fix the problem and the drill bit left behind is "the cost of doing business".Job well done ATCO. It's the same way on some of my jobs pouring concrete, the job may call for 5 yards and I order 5 1/2 yards of concrete and the extra half yard maybe used and if not it's sent back. I call it the cost of doing business. Did you have to anchor the drill rigg dozer other than setting the brakes to set up to drill?Any scotch blocks or outriggers?

[ATCOEQUIP]

You've pretty much got it figured out 25c. ;)

When you drill a hole that deep, pull the drill string out, and try to shove a pipe up an open hole, more often than not, you will hit something that has fell into the hole. Fractured rock or something. Full depth installed drains were what was normally accepted. Sometimes we would encounter extremely tough conditions, like a lot of clay, which wouldn't allow us to drill the full depth. In those cases, it took some persuading with the customer to allow us to install a "short hole" drain.

Setting the brakes was enough to hold the machine. The feed pressure wasn't that high. In soils, the drag bits would feed with mild feed pressure. A little different for rock. Then we would use tri-cone roller bits. With them, when you sit on a rock, you slow down rotation speed and increase feed pressure. It would jack the machine around a little, but the weight of the rig was usually enough to hold it there. A couple of times the rig would get pushed out of position and I would have to disconnect from the drill rod and reposition the rig.

[roddyo]

QUOTE=ATCOEQUIP;194727] Once the depth is obtained, if you simply pull the drill string out of the ground and attempt to slide the drain pipe up the hole, it would not be unusual to hit an obstruction in the hole before you reached bottom, maybe a piece of a rock you drilled through.[/QUOTE]

As slick as that fix was ATCO it sounds like someone from Arkansas came up with it.:tong

Up EGS's way south of Whitewater a Buddy of mine was making a Road Bore. He got it punched thru one Saturday afternoon, company didn't want to pay anymore over time because we was waiting on permits for a different County so they say just leave the casing under the road till Monday then finish.:rolleyes:

Well Monday rolls around, they weld concrete coated pipe to the casing and start to pull. It won't move.:D Got everything with a winch around and 330 Cats all hooked on this pipe. Nothing. Guess little slivers of rock fell down around the casing and locked it up like a pair of Chinese Finger Cuffs over the weekend from the traffic.

Wasn't really a problem. Cut the concrete pipe loose and swapped sides of the road. Pulled the casing the way it was drilled and everything worked out fine.

I never did ask my old buddy but I guessed he knew what to do all along. I think he just let the Spreadman Sweat a little for second guessing him. I always though it was funny that he had everything wrapped up by quitting time Monday afternoon.;)

[ATCOEQUIP]

Yep, the drill was similar. Never muched liked leaving a long drill string in the ground over a weekend. Sometimes it would lock it down and make start up fun on Monday morning. Sounds like your buddy was doing some directional drilling, then pull a casing after he bored the hole. I did a little of that around Cinncinatti.

[ATCOEQUIP]

Here's ya another one of the old Allis-Chalmers OCR.

This one was a project in the area of Digger242j, near Monongehela PA. Biggest waste of money project I've ever worked on. The scope of the project was to drill into the side of a mountain and punch into a flooded coal mine shaft. First thing was to drill three 12" holes 20' deep, install steel surface casing, and pump grout between casing and hole to seal. Then I left the job for about two weeks while a contractor formed and poured a concrete wall to encase the casings. When I returned to finish the drill, when we hit the mine shaft, they could install valves on the casings to control flow of water. Problem was, we never hit the mine shaft. Drilled the first hole, dry. Same with second and third. I never went through any coal material, just soil overburden, sandstone and shale. I was dubious about our success from the start. I had viewed coal seam outcroppings in the vicinity, and they were below us in elevation. After the dry runs, the coal co white hats were scratching their heads as to why they missed the mine. The guy you see in the pic, he was an Office of Surface Mining inspector, he had no input on how the job was done, just to make sure it's done within their regulations. One of the white hats came over to me and him and (maybe joking) asked me where I thought the mine shaft is. I said "I think your about ten feet too high in elevation". Wouldn't you know it, they decided to cut a new bench ten feet lower and install one surface casing, then drill a hole. Drilled through a lot of nice black coal. This one hit the mine. The OSM guy got a chuckle that these college edjumacated folks asked a lowly drill operator where to find a mine shaft, and I still chuckle about it. You can see the "dry hole monument" above where I'm set up to drill the new hole.





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[OCR]

Is that you on the drill, ATCO... or did you take the picture?


OCR

[ATCOEQUIP]

My helper took the pic, I was at the back of the rig just starting the new 12" hole.

[OCR]

My helper took the pic, I was at the back of the rig just starting the new 12" hole.

Yeah,... thought I recognized you... :D


OCR...:)

[ATCOEQUIP]

Yeah,... thought I recognized you... :D


OCR...:)


LoL...in that grainy pic? That was taken with a Polaroid camera. Man, this was back in the day before we had digital phone cameras! :D

I wish I had more pics of different things about the drill, but at that time, you weren't thinking about pics, you were thinking about the work. :)

[RobVG]

The OSM guy got a chuckle that these college edjumacated folks asked a lowly drill operator where to find a mine shaft...

Sounds like those college guys weren't all that stupid....just a little slow:)

[ATCOEQUIP]

Sounds like those college guys weren't all that stupid....just a little slow:)


LoL, I know those boys weren't stupid. But it was humorous that he asked a muddy High School educated drill operator where the coal seam was. And that's where it was. :tong

[OCR]

LoL...in that grainy pic? That was taken with a Polaroid camera. Man, this was back in the day before we had digital phone cameras! :D

I wish I had more pics of different things about the drill, but at that time, you weren't thinking about pics, you were thinking about the work. :)

Yup, same here ATCO, got tons of those old Polaroid pictures.

Have to get around to scanning some of them, some day.


OCR

[ATCOEQUIP]

Found another one. CM1195 may know where this site is. It was on US 31 going south out of Birmingham Alabama before you get to Vestavia Hills. One day, the material the road was built on decided to slide to the bottom of the hill, taking some traffic lanes with it. :eek: The contractor began the process of rebuilding the slope with a lot of rock, making stepped benches as they built upward. Once they reached a determined bench elevation, they would step inward and start rock fill again upward. After filling about 3 ft, they would lay culvert pipes on the rock fill that were placed against slope and extended to the outer part of the rock fill, then they would continue fill over top of culvert pipes. The purpose of the pipes was to allow a way for us to drill into the slope material without having to bore through the rock fill, simply run the drill rod through the pipe. They also provided protection of installed drains from shifting rock. LoL, I looked on Google Satelite map a few minutes ago, and I believe I found the site. Still a big rock fill there. :tong



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[CM1995]

CM1195 may know where this site is.

Yep, I know that section of HWY pretty well. That is where HWY 31 crests Shades Mountain. It's a pretty good drop off down towards Homewood, Google earth makes it look nice and flat in 2D.:cool:

Is this the section you worked on?

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That is a pretty slick idea to put in "sleeves" as the rock fill progressed to allow you guys an easy path. There seems to be alot of water coming out of that hill side, it runs out of the small cut on the upper side of the HWY. Who was the GC/ dirt mover on that project?

[ATCOEQUIP]

Yep, that's the spot. ;)

It was back in the early 90's. I worked for so many contractors all over the country while operating these drills, it's hard to remember all the contractors. I have Wright Brothers Construction stuck in my head, but I could be wrong about that.

BTW, you guys still got that giant statue of Vulcan on the mountain south of Birmingham? Was that Red Mountain? Can't remember. Damn old age! :D :cool:

[CM1995]

Wright Brothers does some work in B'ham, they are from Tenn. I believe. They constructed an interchange on I 459 couple of years ago. About 10 miles south of where you bored those holes.

BTW, you guys still got that giant statue of Vulcan on the mountain south of Birmingham? Was that Red Mountain? Can't remember. Damn old age!

Yeah, it's still there. Several years ago they refurbished the statue and grounds for the park. One of my uncles worked on the construction project. Here (http://www.mlahanas.de/RomanEmpire/Mythology/VulcanStatue.html) is a link with more info to the pic below, if anyone is interested, it's an amusing read.:cool2

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Vulcan's backside is unclothed and the joke is that it's the "Moon over Homewood".:D Red Mountain is where the statue is located, named for the rich deposits of iron ore that runs through the range. HWY 31 cuts through Red MTN a couple of miles north, dropping down into Downtown B'ham. The shotcrete on the cut walls is stained red from the ore. There are many "pocket mines" throughout the area.

[ATCOEQUIP]

Excellent! Red Mountain, eh, Ha...the old boy from Tennessee remembers a few things. :D

Great pic CM1995...thanks!

[ATCOEQUIP]

Check this out CM1995. This from online Birmingham Public Library. Pic taken in 1965 showing Vulcan overlooking Birmingham. Gives a good idea of the size of it. :)


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