Once the site is prepared and the rig is on location, it gets interesting. While the rig is rigging up, additional supplies such as fuel, mud, chemicals, water, bits, mud motors and sometimes housing must be brought in. Also, additional service companies must be coordinated to arrive when needed. Mud engineers, mud loggers, cementers and directional drillers are part of most modern wells.
Considered a mentor by those who worked with him, Tom Oothoudt is fondly remembered as a visionary in the sonic drilling industry. The former head of North Star Drilling passed away last November, but his legacy will live on for years to come.
George Hutchings was on a plane returning from water-drilling camp at Living Waters International when inspiration struck. Hutchings, whose humanitarian efforts had included facilitating medical procedures and delivering supplies to Kenya, decided on that day he could do something more.
In the late 60s, we attended the Florida Water Well Exposition in Orlando, Fla. We were living in Adel, Ga., at the time. There wasn’t much room for the four of us in our 1967 Ford F-100 single cab pickup, as it had two factory installed Mustang bucket seats. We had just purchased a microwave oven and went by the appliance store to pick it up. While there, we saw a big refrigerator cardboard box and the appliance dealer said we could have it.
I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but in mine, it’s open house season in the groundwater business. Many of the groundwater product distributors hold dealer open houses at this time of year to thank their contractor customers for their business and give them an opportunity to purchase products and supplies for the upcoming busy season.
Whenever I read an issue of The Driller magazine and see an article about limited-access drilling, I get a little excited. But then I usually feel a bit disappointed when I realize that it’s about limited access for foundation drilling. While it certainly is important to have buildings with a properly designed and built foundation, that’s not the only type of limited access drilling. In my case, the discipline is geotechnical and environmental drilling.
Remember that teacher from your early school years that always encouraged you to stay between the lines when coloring? Well, Lindsay Wadsworth never thought much of staying between the lines. So it is ironic that many years later, he earns his living not just by staying within the lines, but by creating them.
You probably don’t give shoes a second thought. I know I usually don’t. I slip them on in the morning, walk around in them all day and shuffle them off by the door when I get home. I bet you do the same. Lace them up, stomp around the jobsite, kick off the dust and call it a day.
While on a recent drilling project, I was unfortunate enough to pick up a virus that made me sick enough that I ended up in the hospital. Fortunately, between the doctors, lab technicians and radiologists, they were able to find out exactly what it was that made me sick. These experts had the information that they needed, so that they could use the proper medications to kill it off and get me on the road to a full recovery. In the drilling industry, we work in much the same way.
Repairing Wolf Creek Dam, which was build in the 1940s, would have been a big job under any circumstances. But new technology and help from Treviicos-Soletanche helped the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers complete the work with confidence.
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