A very long week

Well, let's see... What happened this week?

Tuesday was a normal meet time at the office of 8:00 since the drillers were coming from Rancho Cordova to Santa Clara, and we met on site at 10:00. This looked to be a nice simple job: 3 extraction well installations to between 55 and 60 feet below ground surface (bgs).

Now for the non-geologist/non-environmental field people out there, you should know that there are many steps to installing a well.

1. First the asphalt or concrete must be cut to allow removal and access to the soil underneath. Our client requires a 2-foot by 2-foot square.
2. Then the soil must be hand augered and/or vacuumed out. This vacuuming involves using high pressure water or air to break up the sub surface so it can be sucked out.
3. For our extraction wells which were to be 6 inches in diameter, the driller had to go down with 10" augers first, during which we sampled every 2.5 feet.
4. The sampler is pounded in by a weight that is raised and released by a winch on the drill rig. In the sampler are three stainless-steel tubes that are 6 inches long and 2 inches in diameter. These are capped and stored in a cooler with ice for later analysis.
5. During sampling, I or another geologist logs the hole by describing the soil types with color strength, consistency, grain-size, moisture, and any other interesting qualities it might have.
6. The drilling and sampling continues until we reach our desired depth. At this site, that depth was determined by passing through a water-bearing sand and gravel layer, and then entering a clay later. But only slightly into the clay layer so that we don't go into a lower water bearing zone. We didn't want to dilute the contamination in the upper layer, or carry the contamination into the lower clean layer. And we didn't want to be in clay as clay doesn't allow much water through it in comparison to sand.
7. Once we reach our desired depth, the drillers pull the 10-inch augers and then drill out the hole again with 12-inch augers.
8. Once drilled out the well casing in lowered into the hole, and then completed by pouring sand around the screening of the pipe. The augers are slowly raised up, leaving the sand and the casing in the ground.
9. After the sand covers the entire length of screen (plus a bit), bentonite chips are dropped on top. These chips are then hydrated, meaning they have water poured onto them, which they absorb and swell up sealing off the sand.
10. Then the rest of the length pf the well is willed with grout. Grout is neat cement, where neat means the same as it does in a drink: no rocks.
11. The final step of completing the well is to set a well box, which is the flat iron plates which attach to a ring that is set in concrete.

And that's what Hooligan and I did and watched three times this week. It should have taken three moderate days to complete this job. That is not what happened.

Beyond the Field I know

It's a wonderful week in the field for me. I'm working in Sacramento this week installing three groundwater monitoring wells. So I'm driving a van (the stylish 1998 Ford Econoline 150) which at this point has:

• lagging seat belts that tend to loosen over time
• a radio that drops one or both speakers randomly
• a clock/radio display that is totally unreadable
• loose bolts in the wall dividing the cabin from the cargo area (rattle-trap)
• misalignment pulling to the right
• thermostat stuck on cold (the latest problem)

And yet this is the best vehicle we have to use because at least we don't have to unload it every night when we get back for security reasons like we would a pick-up. But the weather has been nice once the sun has come out in the morning, and the drive to William Land Park in Sacramento is a nice reminder that at least I'm not making the drive every day like I did for 15 months when I as working in West Sac.

And my coworker and I get along well and talk most of the way up. The drive back has been quiet from our fatigue. No not from working which is pretty minimal, but from liaising with our government regulator. And dealing with the pithy comments of local residents.

Many years ago, Jennifer asked me what I did when I was drilling at a site. I told her that I pointed to where I wanted the hole. Soon after that I was drilling near where our office was and she offered to bring the crew donuts. When she arrived... I was pointing where I wanted the holes drilled.

Now actually, I do more than that. I classify the soils we encounter, describe transitions, and store samples for later analysis. And then when a well is being set by the driller (adding the sand and bentonite seal), I get to stand around. That's what a college education does for you. You don't have to deal with the slop of grout and saturated soil.

So today while I'm standing around watching the driller and his helpers set the well, a resident of one of the nearby houses comes over and begins with what I will loosely term jokes. "Don't you have any shovels to lean on? ... It's true what they say about four guys on a job and only one of them is working. ... I wish I had a job where I could stand around all day." Of course my first thought is, "Well, it's 11:30 on a Tuesday morning, why the hell aren't you working at all?"

Remember, it's the thought that counts.

And then there's our groundwater regulator/inspector who should be retired, but says she has three more years to go (the driller asked her today) because she has to wait for Medicare to kick in. And because we weren't going to do a second well today (the time constraints of a unit price job) she gave us busy work. We (the regulator, the driller, his two helpers, me and the staff geologist) went around the site and let her look in all the wells already installed so that she could be satisfied they had not settled after construction. She said this was a requirement of all wells, but had not been done at all on this site (or most others). There are at present 40 wells on site, and some were installed in the early 1990s.

And tomorrow I get to do it all again.

Oh, just to clarify, I no longer point to show the drillers where I want the hole. I tell the staff geologist where I want them to point to show the drillers where to drill.