I only recently discovered your videos and as the daughter (and offsider for many years) of a driller in Australia, I can't wait to show Dad some of ur videos. When I worked with Dad during my teens I learnt so much and we encountered underground caves, artesian basins and I saw things I never would have dreamed possible. My Dad still drills and im inspired to try and get some videos of him for posterity sake. Thanks for sharing what you do.
I've been to a cave in Virginia where it looks like a well casing comes down from the ceiling, straight through the ~10' high passage, and into the floor of the cave.
I am an Underground miner and diamond driller. What this looks like to me is you hit a fault line. The oxidation on the small rocks and the gouge that your well returned confirms that thought. That fine silt or gouge is the result of the faults grinding against each other. I would say you were very lucky and a lot of guys would have pulled out and moved. Nobody ever said it would be easy.
We where drilling some water wells on the south side of mount saint Helen's. One hole was about 120 foot down when the bit blow in to a lava tube. we stop in the nick of time. pulled the bit out of the hole. The well was breathing! it would suck air in for 45 seconds and then blow out for 45 seconds. Craziest thing I ever seen. needless to say we abandoned that hole. Keep up the great work.
It is good to see videos like this as it show the difficulties that can be encountered in drilling wells, even in Oil and gas well drilling the encounter the same exact issues a mile under ground or more. I remember a news story on a Chesapeake energy well where they was a mile and half under ground, lost circulation and 2 miles away the drill mud started flowing out of the ground on the surface. We never know the formations under the ground, and there is a formation in eastern Oklahoma that is exposed on the surface, but in western Oklahoma, that same exact formation is 2 miles under ground and is very gassy and half way in between it is very oily. Please keep showing the videos like the one like this one, it helps to explain why drilling water well can be so expensive and the hidden difficulties one encounter on some wells.
In the early 1980s, they were drilling a oil well on a friends farm and drilled into a very reactive salt dome. Between the salt expanding and trapping the drill string and then zones of lost circulation they thought they were going to lose the well at 7000' feet. That well got me excited about drilling wells because of the technology and the unknown geology that can occur.
Friend was drilling into what turned out to be a layer of pumice. The pumice would expand into the bore, trapping the tools, it took two lost sets of tools to figure out what was going on. Roy then made a custom bit that had cutters on the top along with the bottom, with that rig he was able to drill to depth and drill back out when removing the tools and complete the well.
@@rocksandoil2241 my grandfather was a driller in the Oklahoma city field, at the turn of the last century, before that he was a driller in the Pennsylvania fields where cable tool was the how the wells was drilled. My father would talk about how Grandpa would talk about cratering a well to bring it in. I actually have photos of him outside of the drilling shack with the wooden derrick, and I still get royalties off a well he drilled back in the 1910's, in the 1990's the brought in a rig and went back in the hole and re-drilled parts of the well that has collapsed, but it still is a producer well over 100 years ago when it was drilled.
I love your videos, and I know your pain. I was a combat engineer in the military and drilled water wells in many places and several countries. I remember drilling and watching lava flow from a volcano and in another country hitting such strong water it would go higher than the mast. But one time we did hit a void and lost a couple hundred feet of string and a 6-inch hammer. That sucks. In Florida one time we drilled down about 800 to the upper aquifer and when we hit it, we lost all air and foam and by using a 5000-gal tanker we pumped down the hole and got our string back. We ended up running a trimmer pipe like you did to make it work. Your explanations and whiteboard are great just don't get too long in your videos.
Love your content buddi. Your pops defo taught you well and I enjoy the way you explain things. But I've got to say I am a little bit jealous of you. Lost my dad 9 yrs go this month. We worked hand in hand until his health made it impossible. Treasure this time man and yall keep blowing the bottom out!!!!
Great video Phil! I learned more here than a couple of geology classes in school. I really like how you and your Dad consult each other. You are so lucky to be able to work with your Dad and your Dad is so lucky to have a son like you. Until the next video, stay safe!! Greetings from the rocky country of the Arrowhead of MN.
Starting a Drilling & Pump Service company in GA this next year. My partner, brother in law, is a 4th generation well driller. I have no experience! Watching your content has been EXTREMELY helpful! Thank you for putting this content out there for all of us newbies. You're awesome man!
A friend of mine tried to drill a well - 60' or so fell into a cave. Ditto with foam. An hour later, a fellow drove by and stopped. Seems his water well was bubbling foam in his big chicken houses. And he was 2 miles away and near a cave known as the Logan Cave (near Siloam Springs, AR). They abandoned the well.
Wow lots of water It sure is a good feeling when you hit a good water supply after all your hard work and happy customers. A lot of the older wells here in NW Pa still have one inch galvanized pipe connected to the pump and most are less than 100 ft deep I have 3 properties all steel casing one well is 39 feet deep and lots of good water another is 90 feet deep and is good but you can run it dry with high use but it all comes back overnight and the 3rd one has 3 foot steel casing at 40 foot lots of water in that one. The local driller did them all for me he also does deep gas wells Thaks for your informative videos
Feeling for you. It would be kinda interesting if you were to run a gopro down the shaft to see what actually was down there. But it's done so maybe if it happens again you might be able to investigate the bore hole. Stay safe and have a great day.
holy crap! 20 gallons of foam at once? dayum! In our geotech drilling we sometimes need to use a temp casing. We use a hammer that has a ring seat that seats into a weld on shoe on the first casing length. the casing gets screwed on as add drill rod. The hammer has a "wing" that spins out and over reams the hole to make room from the casing. Your rig should be able to run that kind of set up. We run it on a CME 75.
Our well in Southern Idaho was 430 feet and at 270 to 295 it passed though open space. Air temps purging from the well were over 12 mph and as low as 30 degrees if you pulled the cap and let the air to purge fast, normally it was 36 to 40 degrees and only a few times the well frosted up in summer.
Fun story about pumping products and no return. Doing big environment wells. Wanna say this one was 24 inch. Drilling way on a hill top because houses had been developed around the base of it. Lost circulation. Started to foam. Nothing. Switch ever to mud. Nothing. No other options kept pumping, over 8k gallons of mud. Ran out. This was before cell phones. Helper went down the hill to the closest house to ask to use the phone and call for more mud mix. Homeowner was freaking out. Happy to help but his basement was filling with "mud" and full blown panic. He didn't know where it came from or how to stop it. We'll, the new borehole connected to an old, open borehole just above this guys backyard. It filled the backyard and window wells, breaking the glass and filling his basement. Im sure that was a fun phone call for the driller to the main office.
@H2O Mechanic thanks again for showing difficulties. While I'm not a well or oil driller, your videos likely do educate other drillers to a certain degree. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise.
Phillip, Thanks to you and your dad for doing videos like this. Once the basic procedure is understood, then it's time to explain the problems. I have property in the northern Sierra where the rock is largely basalt. There tend to be voids in the rock, some of which may have water, some just nothing. A driller I knew was often seen with a U-cart mixer preparing to concrete a portion of a well he was drilling. Your videos tend to flesh out the procedures even though the geology is different, and the big ponds are different. Now a speculation. One piece of rock that you showed had a very smooth face. I'm wondering if you were drilling in a slip plane area. The rock coming out looked to be not a river deposit but a fault that had filled in with broken rock and fine material. Would sure explain the void with lots of air space and material collapsing into the borehole. This would also explain air coming around the casing. If the neighboring wells were in solid rock, you would probably would not have a pathway to them.
Glad it looks like a good hole!! Even tho I had a pretty good idea of what you were talking about, the whiteboard is a very effective tool in showing people just what you all were going thought. Like a couple of other comments, I like it that you have such an enjoyment of the trade as well as the knowledge too! Thanks!! may you all stay safe!! Looking forward to the pump test again!!
One time my Dad was drilling a well and I don’t remember exactly but it was somewhere around 200 feet deep and it broke through the solid rock into a 48 foot deep under ground stream or an underground river of crystal clear water. He did not have any of these problems because it was a hard limestone rock and once he hit that he was able to set the steel casing and keep drilling until it hit the big stream.
Went on cave tour of cave that was discovered when drilling. Casing was there coming in and going thru the floor of the cave. Luckily a separate entrance was found to the cave. This was in Texas, east of San Antonio.
Your well was the same nightmare as mine, depth n all. Finally got it screened out with 80 mesh and 250 micron screen.sand wouldnt stop filling the hole. No matter how much i bailed kept coming. Till i blew a 2 inch sand point screen into the 4 inch and now i have water :) 🎉
Great job, you never know what you will find. We had a well that we set 240' of 4" steel casing, the bottom of the casing collapsed so I couldn't drill out the bottom. I was only able to clean out to 239', but we had a well with 20 gpm of clean water.
Wow I have learned so much from you. Before it seemed easy to drill a well, maybe you would hit some hard rock and just take longer. This one was fascinating, for me I'm sure not for you. With all your experience you guys just kept coming up with more tricks to get it done. Very impressive.
I can't believe the variety of rock types and edges you're getting out of there. It almost seems like an old river bed that was then covered by an avalanche of that big blue stratified rock. What a mess.
so watching this, back in the 90's when i was a teen did some cave, cavern exploring off grid maps with a group of people in southern Indiana northern Kentucky. one part we got in to i remember seeing some ones well casing go threw this 4ft tall part of the cave, cavern. I know the parts we was in was mostly dry but you could tell they was full of water in wet times of year.
The whiteboard diagramming helped provide a good overview of what ya'll encountered drilling this well. Glad to see you prevailed and were successful. Enjoy your channel & content.
Thanks so much for a Wonderful Informative Vidclip .... The Illustration definitely made it a lot more clear of just what you are dealing with .... I did send you an email with a link to another Fascinating Drill Job .... Thanks again, Much Appreciated .... Best to You and Yours from ChCh NZ ....
Great work. I'm amazed at what that rig is capable of. I think the ones they use to drill our 6" irrigation wells set the casing and column pipe at once. I may be lyin for lack of knowledge of terminology. The guys I hire don't care if I have terminology right as long as my checks don't bounce. My dad started out with 10" wells at 350 ft, pumping 1200 gpm in the early 1950s, then went to 8's in the 60s-70s, but now they're drillin 6s for all the new holes. They're down to 350 gpm over 70 yrs since his first wells. Now USDA is tellin us to install underground drip tape, but the cost is more per acre than the land value. We're goin back to ranchin like my grandpa did before the Depression and simultaneous ten year drought. I've thrown all the money I want at irrigated wheat and corn production. We still have plenty of water for livestock so we're building fence one farm at a time. Thanks for the detailed explanation. People have no clue of the level of expertise they're getting with two generations working together. I dang sure do. I've had some real bad experiences with greenhorn foremen after two or three of the local drillers sold their businesses because as water gets harder to come by farmers get more and more frugal. I was surprised to hear you say you'd return the customer's deposit. None of these drillers I know ever mentioned returning or discounting anything.
Last Dec I took my sons scout troop to sleep in a cave, our sleeping area was in a an old aquifer/void and right above the spot I slept you could see steel well casing. It was hard to even fathom how much water would have been held in there. They told us they hauled in about 15 feet of gravel to help fill it in and level it out. I suspect it would have been about the size you were guestimating or maybe just a little bigger - it was quite an eye-opening experience!
Been there, tried desperate things, saved the well and left the well many times. I've used air pressure drilling machined but have used rotary machines most of the times, the old ones if you know that we pump water constantly and circulate it. Issues about the well is first there is a huge leak that air escapes, second the well is collapsing constantly. By having those bad experiences I usually leave the well and save myself of the costs (time, money, wear and tear on the tools and the machine itself). Our early years we had a similar well, 150 ft well collapsed at night with bit inside, our crew worked 26 days to save it, they couldn't and ruined almost every part of drilling truck; with that cost I can surely say we could buy a better drilling truck and equipment.
Damn great video man the more we all learn the better off we all are! Thank you for showing the good the bad and ugly its all very useful information! Very informative! keep it up! love from Aus mate!
All Drillers have tenacity we learn everyday are persistent and determined to succeed that's our livelihood and legacy ! All jobs may be similar but they are different as well you got it done and solved good job and good work! I still wonder if a mud rotary would have helped but so many ways to drill who knows we drill with what we have and know it works the odd shows up and makes the challenge real. You made a natural screen from the broken rocks. We'd hang a pump throttle it back with pressure on it and pump it for days it should clear up the sediment, in time.
Good job, just keep working with it until you get it. There's an area here, they rotary drill until they lose circulation, and then bring a cable tool in to finish the well to depth. In fact, if the rotary doesn't lose circulation, they'll move the rig forward through the field and try again. It's lime rock cavities, and those wells yield very well.
Offshore, when completing Wells, we would normally add a little bit of calcium chloride with the cement to help aid in setting up faster, but that is also using specialized cement, not concrete. And also, if you want cement to take a longer time to dry, you could add Coca-Cola or a little bit of sugar that ax is a retarder for cement and makes it dry a lot slower. Hope this helps out
@@my_channel_44 Right. Nothing wrong with the original post. Sounds like they used voice to text and he spoke "acts as" and the AI (which will be our demise-Musk is right) heard and printed "axe is"
Air drilling oil wells... you can have dry air and dry cuttings, but if you hit something that has a little water, but not a lot, the cuttings will make "mud ring" that will plug off the backside / the annulus. So, we either could be dry or use enough water / foam so that the cuttings coming out will not stick together. Just little water and the cuttings stick together like puddy... plugging the back side - then everything you pump will go somewhere else... into the formation, fracking the ground. Or... it can pump out your bit / bha and drill pipe. The air that was coming out later - you injected air and built pressure in the formation.... then after you got read of the plug - it all normalized - air coming back out. The pressure you see at surface is reduced by friction in the line, surface equipment, hammer, etc..before it goes out of the bit... the bit doesn't see that much pressure. On a big drilling rig, we might be pumping mud at 5,000 psi on deep well, but on the back side there is only a minor friction loss and cuttings load - no real pressure unless you plug / pack off the back side, then you can easily frac into the formation with the pressure that we are drilling with (it normalizes / builds up outside of the bit and below the plug). Last, we have to cement the surface pipe to prevent fluids breaching to surface up that annulus. I assumed you guys threw gel or cement down to plug it...
In any situation, it's crucial for the customer to have an alternative drilling location. If the first site proves unsuitable, the second option can be utilized. For instance, I'm aware of a scenario where the rig's location had to be shifted three times before successfully locating water and establishing a functional working well.
I would like to see some graphics on the steps you are doing. A small screen showing what is going on underground would be very helpful. Great site. Thanks.
It feels like you should have a drill bit that opens out underneath so you can keep the casing right behind the cutting edge so it fills in as you go. More like a TBM model. Then when you stop pumping springs retract the drill edge so it can come back up.
I only recently discovered your videos and as the daughter (and offsider for many years) of a driller in Australia, I can't wait to show Dad some of ur videos. When I worked with Dad during my teens I learnt so much and we encountered underground caves, artesian basins and I saw things I never would have dreamed possible. My Dad still drills and im inspired to try and get some videos of him for posterity sake. Thanks for sharing what you do.
I've been to a cave in Virginia where it looks like a well casing comes down from the ceiling, straight through the ~10' high passage, and into the floor of the cave.
Thanks for the White Board illustration. Helped to understand a lot more for someone who knows next to nothing about well drilling.
I am an Underground miner and diamond driller. What this looks like to me is you hit a fault line. The oxidation on the small rocks and the gouge that your well returned confirms that thought. That fine silt or gouge is the result of the faults grinding against each other. I would say you were very lucky and a lot of guys would have pulled out and moved. Nobody ever said it would be easy.
That's what I was thinking too. I'm also a diamond driller with experience with geotech and a bit of water well.
@@roddraper9921 comments like yours help me tremendously! Thank you! I also like learning from others who have knowledge on these topics
What is the difference between diamond and water well driller please
Would a minor move over (maybe 30 feet away) have been enough to potentially avoid the fault?
The whiteboard & classroom portion is a nice touch to your already excellent videos. A++
Yes!! Definitely helped me understand more of what is going on.
We where drilling some water wells on the south side of mount saint Helen's. One hole was about 120 foot down when the bit blow in to a lava tube. we stop in the nick of time. pulled the bit out of the hole. The well was breathing! it would suck air in for 45 seconds and then blow out for 45 seconds. Craziest thing I ever seen. needless to say we abandoned that hole. Keep up the great work.
You were a hair from awakening the Balrog..
It is good to see videos like this as it show the difficulties that can be encountered in drilling wells, even in Oil and gas well drilling the encounter the same exact issues a mile under ground or more.
I remember a news story on a Chesapeake energy well where they was a mile and half under ground, lost circulation and 2 miles away the drill mud started flowing out of the ground on the surface.
We never know the formations under the ground, and there is a formation in eastern Oklahoma that is exposed on the surface, but in western Oklahoma, that same exact formation is 2 miles under ground and is very gassy and half way in between it is very oily.
Please keep showing the videos like the one like this one, it helps to explain why drilling water well can be so expensive and the hidden difficulties one encounter on some wells.
In the early 1980s, they were drilling a oil well on a friends farm and drilled into a very reactive salt dome. Between the salt expanding and trapping the drill string and then zones of lost circulation they thought they were going to lose the well at 7000' feet. That well got me excited about drilling wells because of the technology and the unknown geology that can occur.
Worked as a geologist in E. OK to E AR and air drilling analysis was my specialty - Real problems occur air-drilling you rarely see in an oil well.
Friend was drilling into what turned out to be a layer of pumice. The pumice would expand into the bore, trapping the tools, it took two lost sets of tools to figure out what was going on. Roy then made a custom bit that had cutters on the top along with the bottom, with that rig he was able to drill to depth and drill back out when removing the tools and complete the well.
@@rocksandoil2241 my grandfather was a driller in the Oklahoma city field, at the turn of the last century, before that he was a driller in the Pennsylvania fields where cable tool was the how the wells was drilled. My father would talk about how Grandpa would talk about cratering a well to bring it in.
I actually have photos of him outside of the drilling shack with the wooden derrick, and I still get royalties off a well he drilled back in the 1910's, in the 1990's the brought in a rig and went back in the hole and re-drilled parts of the well that has collapsed, but it still is a producer well over 100 years ago when it was drilled.
I love your videos, and I know your pain. I was a combat engineer in the military and drilled water wells in many places and several countries. I remember drilling and watching lava flow from a volcano and in another country hitting such strong water it would go higher than the mast. But one time we did hit a void and lost a couple hundred feet of string and a 6-inch hammer. That sucks. In Florida one time we drilled down about 800 to the upper aquifer and when we hit it, we lost all air and foam and by using a 5000-gal tanker we pumped down the hole and got our string back. We ended up running a trimmer pipe like you did to make it work. Your explanations and whiteboard are great just don't get too long in your videos.
Love to see a camera shot of the well. Drain camera etc
Yeah, that would be cool, but there's work to get done.
THIS!!! :D
Yes I agree and it would have been helpful for them
@Isnt_ThatRight I put a camera in the well. The water was so nasty you could not see anything clearly
@@fastst1he could make more from us in donations than the job pays I guarantee it!
Love your content buddi. Your pops defo taught you well and I enjoy the way you explain things. But I've got to say I am a little bit jealous of you. Lost my dad 9 yrs go this month. We worked hand in hand until his health made it impossible. Treasure this time man and yall keep blowing the bottom out!!!!
Great video Phil! I learned more here than a couple of geology classes in school. I really like how you and your Dad consult each other. You are so lucky to be able to work with your Dad and your Dad is so lucky to have a son like you. Until the next video, stay safe!! Greetings from the rocky country of the Arrowhead of MN.
Getting the job done and getting the equipment out of the hole is more important than getting the videos.
Great job.
Starting a Drilling & Pump Service company in GA this next year. My partner, brother in law, is a 4th generation well driller. I have no experience! Watching your content has been EXTREMELY helpful! Thank you for putting this content out there for all of us newbies. You're awesome man!
What a nightmare, you did a great job explaining the problems with shooting the well , good job .
A friend of mine tried to drill a well - 60' or so fell into a cave. Ditto with foam. An hour later, a fellow drove by and stopped. Seems his water well was bubbling foam in his big chicken houses. And he was 2 miles away and near a cave known as the Logan Cave (near Siloam Springs, AR). They abandoned the well.
Wow lots of water It sure is a good feeling when you hit a good water supply after all your hard work and happy customers. A lot of the older wells here in NW Pa still have one inch galvanized pipe connected to the pump and most are less than 100 ft deep I have 3 properties all steel casing one well is 39 feet deep and lots of good water another is 90 feet deep and is good but you can run it dry with high use but it all comes back overnight and the 3rd one has 3 foot steel casing at 40 foot lots of water in that one. The local driller did them all for me he also does deep gas wells Thaks for your informative videos
You eat it up !! I enjoy watching a young man who enjoys what he is doing and loves a challenge.
Feeling for you. It would be kinda interesting if you were to run a gopro down the shaft to see what actually was down there. But it's done so maybe if it happens again you might be able to investigate the bore hole. Stay safe and have a great day.
holy crap! 20 gallons of foam at once? dayum!
In our geotech drilling we sometimes need to use a temp casing. We use a hammer that has a ring seat that seats into a weld on shoe on the first casing length. the casing gets screwed on as add drill rod. The hammer has a "wing" that spins out and over reams the hole to make room from the casing. Your rig should be able to run that kind of set up. We run it on a CME 75.
Our well in Southern Idaho was 430 feet and at 270 to 295 it passed though open space. Air temps purging from the well were over 12 mph and as low as 30 degrees if you pulled the cap and let the air to purge fast, normally it was 36 to 40 degrees and only a few times the well frosted up in summer.
Fun story about pumping products and no return. Doing big environment wells. Wanna say this one was 24 inch. Drilling way on a hill top because houses had been developed around the base of it. Lost circulation. Started to foam. Nothing. Switch ever to mud. Nothing. No other options kept pumping, over 8k gallons of mud. Ran out. This was before cell phones. Helper went down the hill to the closest house to ask to use the phone and call for more mud mix. Homeowner was freaking out. Happy to help but his basement was filling with "mud" and full blown panic. He didn't know where it came from or how to stop it. We'll, the new borehole connected to an old, open borehole just above this guys backyard. It filled the backyard and window wells, breaking the glass and filling his basement. Im sure that was a fun phone call for the driller to the main office.
"Oh yeah, i have no idea what's going on. Anyways, can i use your phone for an urgent unrelated issue?"
Ever use the drill back mode? It’s helped me from time to time. The right amount of up pressure can make all the difference
As someone who was born and raised in Nova Scotia, gotta say I love the shirt.
This is an incredible video. Thank you so much for explaining all this. So interesting!
Yall outta pan for gold in the sludge runoff
Mamma said there would be days like these. lol Life on the steel, never a dull moment.
Eric
@H2O Mechanic thanks again for showing difficulties.
While I'm not a well or oil driller, your videos likely do educate other drillers to a certain degree. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise.
That was certainly an epic labour of love guys. Fantastic. Thanks for "indepth" analysis and explanation.
Regards from South Africa
Love the whiteboard “classroom session”
Props for the Oak Island reference on this ! Very nice.
I have welded everything from 6 inch to 12 inch casing 600 ft and deeper. Loved it we would rase each other as to who finished his half first.
Phillip, Thanks to you and your dad for doing videos like this. Once the basic procedure is understood, then it's time to explain the problems. I have property in the northern Sierra where the rock is largely basalt. There tend to be voids in the rock, some of which may have water, some just nothing. A driller I knew was often seen with a U-cart mixer preparing to concrete a portion of a well he was drilling. Your videos tend to flesh out the procedures even though the geology is different, and the big ponds are different. Now a speculation. One piece of rock that you showed had a very smooth face. I'm wondering if you were drilling in a slip plane area. The rock coming out looked to be not a river deposit but a fault that had filled in with broken rock and fine material. Would sure explain the void with lots of air space and material collapsing into the borehole. This would also explain air coming around the casing. If the neighboring wells were in solid rock, you would probably would not have a pathway to them.
My boss runs a crew of 2 on his T4. We are in PA, so steel casing is a must. When your set up for steel casing, makes it alot easier
Glad it looks like a good hole!! Even tho I had a pretty good idea of what you were talking about, the whiteboard is a very effective tool in showing people just what you all were going thought. Like a couple of other comments, I like it that you have such an enjoyment of the trade as well as the knowledge too! Thanks!! may you all stay safe!! Looking forward to the pump test again!!
Wow... Great Job on a tough hole.
love the video and the white board illistration. This video shows just how complex well drilling can be. I learned a lot through this video!!!
One time my Dad was drilling a well and I don’t remember exactly but it was somewhere around 200 feet deep and it broke through the solid rock into a 48 foot deep under ground stream or an underground river of crystal clear water. He did not have any of these problems because it was a hard limestone rock and once he hit that he was able to set the steel casing and keep drilling until it hit the big stream.
Went on cave tour of cave that was discovered when drilling. Casing was there coming in and going thru the floor of the cave. Luckily a separate entrance was found to the cave. This was in Texas, east of San Antonio.
That's wild, and yes the whiteboard helped explain that funky situation a LOT better!
Your well was the same nightmare as mine, depth n all. Finally got it screened out with 80 mesh and 250 micron screen.sand wouldnt stop filling the hole. No matter how much i bailed kept coming. Till i blew a 2 inch sand point screen into the 4 inch and now i have water :) 🎉
Great video. Enjoyed seeing the hammer operate when seating the casing around 8:00 mark.
Great job, you never know what you will find. We had a well that we set 240' of 4" steel casing, the bottom of the casing collapsed so I couldn't drill out the bottom. I was only able to clean out to 239', but we had a well with 20 gpm of clean water.
Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise. Really enjoy watching these videos.
Wow I have learned so much from you. Before it seemed easy to drill a well, maybe you would hit some hard rock and just take longer. This one was fascinating, for me I'm sure not for you. With all your experience you guys just kept coming up with more tricks to get it done. Very impressive.
I can't believe the variety of rock types and edges you're getting out of there. It almost seems like an old river bed that was then covered by an avalanche of that big blue stratified rock. What a mess.
Exactly our thoughts as well.
Although it's not feasible to get a downhole inspection done, it sure would have been cool to see what that cavern looked like!
so watching this, back in the 90's when i was a teen did some cave, cavern exploring off grid maps with a group of people in southern Indiana northern Kentucky. one part we got in to i remember seeing some ones well casing go threw this 4ft tall part of the cave, cavern. I know the parts we was in was mostly dry but you could tell they was full of water in wet times of year.
Always check tails for gold. Have some fun.
the whiteboard was a HUGE help. thanks!
The whiteboard diagramming helped provide a good overview of what ya'll encountered drilling this well. Glad to see you prevailed and were successful. Enjoy your channel & content.
Excellent content, whiteboard was a good addition. Happy for so far a positive outcome
This was a really interesting video. Thank you for putting it together and sharing it.
This should be an epic video if drilling through a large void like an underground cave.
Thanks for these videos. Interesting stuff!
Great explanation, followed 100%
I am glad to see the bad with the good. It gives a better picture of the well drilling business.
Thanks so much for a Wonderful Informative Vidclip .... The Illustration definitely made it a lot more clear of just what you are dealing with .... I did send you an email with a link to another Fascinating Drill Job .... Thanks again, Much Appreciated .... Best to You and Yours from ChCh NZ ....
Man what a fight that turned into, I’m glad yall won the battle, I hope we get to see the pump test results
New to this channel, and very impressed. Good job all
Great work. I'm amazed at what that rig is capable of. I think the ones they use to drill our 6" irrigation wells set the casing and column pipe at once. I may be lyin for lack of knowledge of terminology. The guys I hire don't care if I have terminology right as long as my checks don't bounce.
My dad started out with 10" wells at 350 ft, pumping 1200 gpm in the early 1950s, then went to 8's in the 60s-70s, but now they're drillin 6s for all the new holes. They're down to 350 gpm over 70 yrs since his first wells.
Now USDA is tellin us to install underground drip tape, but the cost is more per acre than the land value.
We're goin back to ranchin like my grandpa did before the Depression and simultaneous ten year drought.
I've thrown all the money I want at irrigated wheat and corn production. We still have plenty of water for livestock so we're building fence one farm at a time.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. People have no clue of the level of expertise they're getting with two generations working together. I dang sure do.
I've had some real bad experiences with greenhorn foremen after two or three of the local drillers sold their businesses because as water gets harder to come by farmers get more and more frugal.
I was surprised to hear you say you'd return the customer's deposit. None of these drillers I know ever mentioned returning or discounting anything.
Thanks for the teaching us what is happening under ground
That well worked you both ! Thanks for bringing us along.
I have learned so much watching your videos. Thank you.
Last Dec I took my sons scout troop to sleep in a cave, our sleeping area was in a an old aquifer/void and right above the spot I slept you could see steel well casing. It was hard to even fathom how much water would have been held in there. They told us they hauled in about 15 feet of gravel to help fill it in and level it out. I suspect it would have been about the size you were guestimating or maybe just a little bigger - it was quite an eye-opening experience!
I don't recall the details , but I toured a cave in Kentucky that someone had drilled a well through. Nice round hole in cave ceiling !
This is a fantastic video!!!!
Good work Hensley
Been there, tried desperate things, saved the well and left the well many times.
I've used air pressure drilling machined but have used rotary machines most of the times, the old ones if you know that we pump water constantly and circulate it.
Issues about the well is first there is a huge leak that air escapes, second the well is collapsing constantly.
By having those bad experiences I usually leave the well and save myself of the costs (time, money, wear and tear on the tools and the machine itself).
Our early years we had a similar well, 150 ft well collapsed at night with bit inside, our crew worked 26 days to save it, they couldn't and ruined almost every part of drilling truck; with that cost I can surely say we could buy a better drilling truck and equipment.
Good job and good explanations, even I understood them..... ... .. .
👍 🙂
This is so cool and interesting!
Super interesting, thanks for explaining
I saw an old Bucyrus Erie Combo Rig, Cable Tool/Rotary with 600 feet of Drill Rod for sale for $15K about a week ago that would do the job nicely.
Damn great video man the more we all learn the better off we all are! Thank you for showing the good the bad and ugly its all very useful information! Very informative! keep it up! love from Aus mate!
There is a first time for any thing - learning as you go - its life thank for the video
All Drillers have tenacity we learn everyday are persistent and determined to succeed that's our livelihood and legacy ! All jobs may be similar but they are different as well you got it done and solved good job and good work! I still wonder if a mud rotary would have helped but so many ways to drill who knows we drill with what we have and know it works the odd shows up and makes the challenge real. You made a natural screen from the broken rocks. We'd hang a pump throttle it back with pressure on it and pump it for days it should clear up the sediment, in time.
Keep up the good work, the white board and being able to get your message across both verbally and your hands kept the video interesting.
Good job, just keep working with it until you get it.
There's an area here, they rotary drill until they lose circulation, and then bring a cable tool in to finish the well to depth. In fact, if the rotary doesn't lose circulation, they'll move the rig forward through the field and try again. It's lime rock cavities, and those wells yield very well.
Offshore, when completing Wells, we would normally add a little bit of calcium chloride with the cement to help aid in setting up faster, but that is also using specialized cement, not concrete. And also, if you want cement to take a longer time to dry, you could add Coca-Cola or a little bit of sugar that ax is a retarder for cement and makes it dry a lot slower. Hope this helps out
Dude
Learn English
@@Squat5000He's a driller, not an english major.
@@my_channel_44 Right. Nothing wrong with the original post. Sounds like they used voice to text and he spoke "acts as" and the AI (which will be our demise-Musk is right) heard and printed "axe is"
the white board really helped me to understand what is going on
31:51 How is reception? That´s a rock solid device You have there :)
Great job Phillip!
Very impressive. Would offer more compliments but.
You do do, very good work. Funny/ interesting that the other wells are not effected.
Top Three video , if not the # 1 👍👍👍🇺🇸
We want to see part 2.
Did you sleeve the void area?
@rich3784 yes. The void ended at 88ft. We got the sleeve down to 96ft & it is working 👌 now
Crazy crazy, well done so far 👍💪
Here in Australia they have gotten to huge TBM stuck in a fracture zone 😊
Another great video.
can a well
screen be put inside the 4" down the hole to keep the gravel out of the pump? good video
Air drilling oil wells... you can have dry air and dry cuttings, but if you hit something that has a little water, but not a lot, the cuttings will make "mud ring" that will plug off the backside / the annulus. So, we either could be dry or use enough water / foam so that the cuttings coming out will not stick together. Just little water and the cuttings stick together like puddy... plugging the back side - then everything you pump will go somewhere else... into the formation, fracking the ground. Or... it can pump out your bit / bha and drill pipe.
The air that was coming out later - you injected air and built pressure in the formation.... then after you got read of the plug - it all normalized - air coming back out. The pressure you see at surface is reduced by friction in the line, surface equipment, hammer, etc..before it goes out of the bit... the bit doesn't see that much pressure. On a big drilling rig, we might be pumping mud at 5,000 psi on deep well, but on the back side there is only a minor friction loss and cuttings load - no real pressure unless you plug / pack off the back side, then you can easily frac into the formation with the pressure that we are drilling with (it normalizes / builds up outside of the bit and below the plug).
Last, we have to cement the surface pipe to prevent fluids breaching to surface up that annulus. I assumed you guys threw gel or cement down to plug it...
thats wild seeing the bit actuating in mid air, its crazy fast and powerful, must be so loud standing close to it.
In any situation, it's crucial for the customer to have an alternative drilling location. If the first site proves unsuitable, the second option can be utilized. For instance, I'm aware of a scenario where the rig's location had to be shifted three times before successfully locating water and establishing a functional working well.
I would like to see some graphics on the steps you are doing. A small screen showing what is going on underground would be very helpful. Great site. Thanks.
Some fun drilling every day is an adventure.
Love your videos , thanks
It feels like you should have a drill bit that opens out underneath so you can keep the casing right behind the cutting edge so it fills in as you go. More like a TBM model. Then when you stop pumping springs retract the drill edge so it can come back up.
Nice Oak Island shirt ! Haha They make many hole in the ground in this island ! haha
YES! More white board please.
Great job men I know it was tuff things like this makes you go Humm
33:40 the liner is actually moving there is so much flow in the cavity. There must be a huge cavern and labyrinth of veins down there
I loved the 'rock' phone. That's how you get'r'done!!!