You, regular readers, will recall that I have been doing a few columns lately on a product that was popular in the past, the pitless adapter tank or PAT. Last month I took a slight detour and wrote about a drilling demonstration and, in this column, I’m going to catch up on a few details that I had forgotten about the PATs.
A few days ago, I got a phone call from a retired contractor who is also a dear friend and he wanted me to know, based on my first articles on PATs, that I was absolutely out of my mind. He went on to say that these PATs were among the worst things ever invented by man. According to him, they were and are an absolutely worthless abomination to mankind and should be, if they have not already been, destroyed, burned to a crisp, the remains buried in a landfill and forgotten about. He did not use any swear words, as he is not prone to doing that like some well drillers and pump men — myself included — but he certainly hated PATs, and hate is perhaps too mild a term.