This is our Well Driller. It's an Ingersoll-Rand T-4 machine. It weighs about 28 tons fully loaded.

Our second machine is a 1995 T-2 machine. It has many benefits above the T-4 and allows us to do a variety of different work easily. There are a number of drawbacks, but overall it's the machine of choice over the T-4.

This is a picture of the roller bit that drills the hole for the casing, it's about 9" across, and 17' long. It cuts the hole by rotating the three cutting wheels while pressing down. There are three holes in the bottom of the bit that allows air and water to pass through and the mixture blows the cuttings back to the top of the hole. Water is only used sometime to help lift the cuttings all the way to the top. This paticular hole we are having to drill a 380 foot hole and set that much casing to protect the well from a number of coal mines that were 'discovered' while drilling. In our area, 380 feet of casing is very rare. More popular is 40 to 160 feet.

This is just another picture of some more tools that are used. To the upper left is a hydraulic driven 'break out wrench', it helps unthread all types of stuck drilling tools. In the middle is another roller bit, much the same operation as the larger one in the above picture only this is about 6" in diameter.

We spend countless hours getting ourselves stuck, and unstuck. These tires are great. We still get stuck, but it's fewer and far between now. (they don't look like a lot, but they really do work)

We're never really done with schooling

This is one of the bit designs that we tried to use at one point.

We tried putting buildup and all sorts of stuff on it

This is usually how it ended up, on to the next idea.

We have a number of machining tools in-house so we went to work to try some other ideas.

And this is what we thought up for the next one.

This is a well level indicator. It tells how far down the top of the water is. When a test pump starts pumping we can see what the water level does and make calculations on how much the well can produce.

This is a number of equipment for Socket-fusion work. it melts the plastic pipe and fuses it back together in one continuous piece of pipe.

This is how the pipe looks after it has been fused together. At this point it's one continuous piece of pipe, there are no seams and it won't come apart even when it's been split in half like this.

This is a type of device for butt-fusion There are no fittings in butt fusion. each piece of pipe is just melted on the ends and joined to another piece of pipe This is the same process that large high pressure gas mains are installed.

This picture is showing the heating element melting both pieces of pipe at the same time. (about 550 degrees F)

And we are pushing both pieces of pipe together here to form the joint.

Pipe cutters on 4" pipe? No, just an average saws-all.

This is our newest Rig-tender truck. (still being completed in this picture) Complete with 300 Gallons of fuel to be pumped to the Rig and a crane to lift the heavy stuff.

This is the 1500 gallon water tank that will be mounted on the above truck to bring water to the drill site.