Drillers, how many feet per day?

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LLigetfa

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How many feet can you drill in a day? Assume a 6" bore in hard precambrian rock.

Across the road from me there is a new house being built and the drill rig has been there all week. Mind you, it is -18°C this morning so that might slow them down a bit.
 

Valveman

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I would tell you I could drill 200’ in a day, and price it accordingly. Then the –18 would have everything frozen, stuck, or jelled. I would be walking around with a torch, extension cords, and a handful of wrenches for a couple days getting everything going. The rock would be much harder than I thought and I would eat up a couple of drill bits, make a few trips, and break some things on the way to 200’. My helper would call in sick or just not show up, which would make it take a couple more days. If I could get it done before spring thaw and not loose more than $10,000, I would be happy. But when I present a bill for the $3,000 as quoted, the owner wouldn’t want to pay because the well only makes 8 GPM and he wanted 10.

Or…

I pull up in a new million dollar drilling rig with equipment heaters and everything automated. My two 100K a year helpers jump out and guide me back to the drill spot. Before I get my hard hat on get out of the cab they have it rigged up and made 20’ of hole. While I am still doing the paperwork and getting paid by the land owner, they bounce casing at 200’, rig down, clean up, and call their wives to tell them they will be home for dinner.

Most drilling jobs will fall between these two scenarios somewhere. Some days you can do no wrong, and the next you can do no right. That’s what makes drilling so much fun. :)
 

Craigpump

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Many times I drilled and set 100' of casing, drilled to 450' stripped the hole and was back in the yard by 5.

There is a local company with fairly new Reichdrills, they expect 600' in and out every day per machine.
 

Texas Wellman

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We can drill about 600' in a day. This is for a fully cased and screened well. It all depends on your equipment.

The type of rock you are encountering up there requires a totally different set-up and approach. A guy near Branson, MO told me once that he is not a real driller because he uses all air. His rig is basically an overgrown jackhammer. I think they use a DTH (down the hole hammer). One size does not fit all in the drilling industry.
 

LLigetfa

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I pull up in a new million dollar drilling rig with equipment heaters and everything automated. My two 100K a year helpers jump out and guide me back to the drill spot. Before I get my hard hat on get out of the cab they have it rigged up and made 20’ of hole. While I am still doing the paperwork and getting paid by the land owner, they bounce casing at 200’, rig down, clean up, and call their wives to tell them they will be home for dinner.
And then you wake up... LOL

I would think that with this cold weather that there would be a lot of setup time each morning and so they would try to make good time and keep going as late as they can. Seems like they are on banker hours.

I am just curious since there may come a time that I need to go deeper. At least I know these guys can work in cold weather. The only way to get a big rig to where my well is now, is on frozen ground. Of course I could always punch a new hole where the rig could reach and trench over to where the existing well is.
 

Craigpump

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The Foremost DR is the machine of choice up there, they're about $1.2 million. It's either that or conventional tophead doing a mud job and using a casing hammer driving 21 lb pipe to get through the overburden.

Texas, yeah that's hammer country drilling in limestone. Easy drilling, easy on the bit, lots of hole per day.

It's mostly hammer drilling here with an occasional mud job. The rock can be sandstone, gneiss, mica schist, granite with quartz and feldspar to some really soft red crap that won't stay open. We also have "ocre" which is like a pulverized pasty limestone that looks like Guldens mustard and is a bitch to get pipe through. Casing depths range from 20- 300' in some places.
 

LLigetfa

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Overburden here is pretty much pure clay to maybe a depth of 60 feet so no problem to keep the hole open. Then you get into the really hard stuff. My rock drilling experience was with airtrack and going through the clay overburden was tricky so as not to close up behind the bit. I also did some auger drilling for a soil testing outfit but then again, you don't put down casing or bentonite seal for that.

I didn't expect them to be at it for this long. Would like to know how deep they are now. Not that it means I could expect to find water at the same depth on my land 500 feet from where they are setup. The neighbor about 1000 feet to the North of me sunk $15K into his well and then had to frac to get enough GPM.
 

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Is "mud job" referring to using drilling fluid in a tri-cone bit?
 

LLigetfa

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Looks like maybe the welldriller is done as the boom is now down. Not sure why the rig is still there.
 

Craigpump

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Yeah, either a bentonite or polymer slurry or both is used to control the hole and is drilled with a tri one bit here in these parts, but a PDC bit is used in other places.

I learned in Ky that mud is a science all by itself
 

DonL

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We can drill about 600' in a day. This is for a fully cased and screened well. It all depends on your equipment.

The type of rock you are encountering up there requires a totally different set-up and approach. A guy near Branson, MO told me once that he is not a real driller because he uses all air. His rig is basically an overgrown jackhammer. I think they use a DTH (down the hole hammer). One size does not fit all in the drilling industry.


I think they passed that no Fracking bill in Texas, because of the earthquakes.

Does that affect water wells also ?

We poke to many Holes in Mother Nature.


I can lay a mile of pipe in a night, but it takes a lot of strokes.
 

LLigetfa

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My understanding of the slurry is that it has 4 purposes. 1, it stabilizes the borehole through the overburden. 2, it forms a seal in the annular space around the casing. 3, it lubricates the casing. 4, it makes the cuttings more buoyant to carry them up out of the bore.
 

Craigpump

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True it does transport the cuttings to the surface. In Ky we had two pits each about 25' x 8' x 6' deep. The first pit was a settling pit and we pulled clean mud put of the second pit.

Part of the science in mud is to keep it heavy enough to control the hole, but not so heavy as to invade the formation. True mud drillers know how to figure the weight with a mud balance, figure the filter cake and use a marsh funnel to determiine viscosity. Stuff I used to know but forgot along time ago...

Drilling mud isnt the same as grout.
 

Boycedrilling

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I'm drilling as I write this. And yes, the sun is down, and the light plant is running. Mud drilling 19" in basalt. Drilled 110 ft 23" and cemented 20" casing in place. It changed about 2 ft ago from a brown broken basalt that I was getting 5-8 ft per hour to a hard grey basalt and now I'm down to under a foot an hour. I'm expecting about 150 ft of this. If I was using my air rig with a down hole hammer my production rate for 19" in the same formation would be between 10 and 20 ft per hour.

It's very hard to compare production rates in various parts of the country. I could move a few miles and have to use entirely different drilling methods. That's also why you can't compare drilling prices with other areas of the country
 

Craigpump

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My guess is the big hole is for irrigation.

Drilling prices here in Ct are great for the consumer, $9.00 a foot is about the going rate. For comparison, my father was getting $6.00 in the early '70's when fuel was .13 cents a gallon, a good driller made $250 a week, his new T4 was $100,000, there was no such thing as a DOT stop and 250' was a good day.

I have a journal from the 1900's, cable tool work here in Ct was $3 and change a foot just before the crash of '29, after that $1.50 became the going rate until the late '30's when it started to creep up. Cable tool now is $19 foot, some get 20-21 maybe. Still cheap if you ask me.
 

Texas Wellman

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Actually to set 4" casing we drill a ~7" hole. For a 2" casing we drill a ~5" hole. The last few wells I have been involved with worked out to about $22 per foot for 4" casing(200 ft). A 500' well would cost you about $16 per foot.

Why such a large hole? Around here, 6" is common. Down in Texas, TWM drills 4" holes.
 

Texas Wellman

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And FYI a 500' 2" well would cost about $10 per foot. I hate em but people like them because they're cheap and about 2-3 of the local drillers still put them in. With high water levels and abundant water they are still real popular here.
 

Boycedrilling

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Why am I drilling a 19" hole? The customer has a permit to pump 4500 gallons per minute. We hope to do that from no more than 3 wells. Yes it's an irrigation well for my former business partner who is a farmer. Cost per foot? On the north side of $200/foot.

I don't drill very many domestic wells anymore, but in my immediate area, a 6" steel cased well is in the $35 per foot area. With every thing included, a 100 ft well is going to run 5k. No, that doesn't include a pump.

Just finished a community well for a church. Mud drilled 525 ft, 12 1/4" pressure grouted 8" steel casing. drilled 8" air, then switched back to mud to 855 ft. Pressure grouted 6" steel casing from surface to 825 ft. Sealing off 3 unsuitable water zones. Cost? Over 125k, not including new pump and decommissioning two existing wells. Total job will be over 200k.

Successful bidder yesterday on new well for school. Mud drill 12 1/4" to 525. Pressure grout 8" steel. Air drill 8" to 800 ft. Cost? 160k, including test pumping.

Expensive area to drill. Also you need a to get a return on a 3 million dollar investment in equipment.

If you regularly consume French fries from a fast food place, odds are at some point in time you have eaten fries that the water used to grow the potatoes or process them came from a well that I drilled or have worked on.
 

LLigetfa

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I don't drill very many domestic wells anymore, but in my immediate area, a 6" steel cased well is in the $35 per foot area. With every thing included, a 100 ft well is going to run 5k.
Those prices are in line with what the going rate is here. Not sure about what in the all inclusive list drives the price up from $35 to $50 but I've heard the same numbers here. The guy building across the road told me he was quoted $38 per foot but not sure what that includes. My neighbor to the North went down more than 300 feet and his bill came to $15K, I'm guessing all inclusive and perhaps even a bit exaggerated (guilt trip). Previous to that he was in the same aquifer that I am in. He complained to me when I put my well in that his 30 foot shallow well ran out of water because of mine which is 65 feet deep. My water table sat at about 15 feet the last I checked some time ago.

Another neighbor to the South of me had a 60 foot well in the same aquifer and I saw a drill rig in his yard about a month ago so I am getting worried that I might be next.
 
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