Oakland Drilling

This week I'm drilling in Oakland. We're doing 90 holes in five days.

We're working with two teams of geologists, so each group is needing to make about 9 holes a day.

Right now, we're a little behind the pace, but we've had some refusals (places where we could not reach depth), and so that may help us.

We made some good time today after lunch with a new procedure, and so we think we'll be back on track by the end of the day tomorrow.

Drilling Deep - Day 6

And... we're done.

I am so wiped out. And all I did was watch these guys work. Yes, I helped Yuko log the samples, but that drive killed me. And Yuko drove.

I'm so glad that we get to do it all over again in March. This time in Santa Clara. Now that drive is really gonna suck.

Drilling Deep - Day 2

First off, I need to remember to click "Publish Post." I forgot to do that last night for the post on drilling yesterday. I probably got distracted by the cat, and just went o bed afterwards.

Anyway, today was both worse and better.

First it started out with rain, and then moved to sunny but windy and cold.

We also started half an hour earlier than yesterday, but we finished an hour earlier.

So not a bad trade.

No other news though...

Drilling Deep - Day 1

Oh what a day.

We're drilling some deep groundwater monitoring wells at our site in Stockton. And because we're drilling through one layer of contamination we're installing conductor casing (a large pipe) first so that we can isolate the upper contamination from the lower water-bearing zone.

We got to the depth for the conductor casing at 9:30 this morning. And yet we were still on site until 4:45 because we had to get the 8-inch augers out, drill back down to depth with 15-inch augers, and then drop the 50 feet of conductor casing down, and then grout it up while removing the augers.

From leaving the office to returning, it was a twelve hour day.

I'm wiped.