In my last column, I talked at some length about selecting screen openings and then ended up by describing one installation method: just driving a pointed screen into a water-bearing formation. Now, I am aware that in this day and age many screens are either threaded or glued directly to the bottom of the casing in a rotary hole. This certainly works, but if the screen has the wrong openings or fails for some other reason either at installation or later, it is impossible to pull. I’m going to limit my comments to screens that can be pulled and would be used in a cable tool or hollow rod drilled well.
In the ’70s, after drilling and pushing tools for a few years, I had every roughneck’s dream. Every roughneck I ever met wants to be a fisherman. They see him sit in his truck, making pretty good money, and they trip pipe. That’s gotta be better, right? Sometimes, but not always.
In the 1950s, I was involved in oil drilling gas in southeastern Kansas. Much of the free-flowing, 28 gravity (thick) oil had diminished to one to three barrels per day. Hence came secondary recovery!
Rig maintenance is an ongoing project for those of us who operate complicated mechanical devices in harsh conditions. Seldom do we get a day when the weather is the same as our living room, but we still need to make the job. Sometimes it is hotter’n west Texas and the radiator boils over before the corned beef hash on the manifold gets done.
These old Fats Domino lyrics, written for a love song, are apropos for the groundwater industry, especially in this era of changing weather patterns and dropping water tables.
In the ’70s our sons, Bess and myself were building dune buggies as a hobby in south Georgia. We were known locally as the dune buggy builders of Adel.
Someone approached us one day and asked if we would be interested in buying an Amphicar. There were only 3,000 of these boat/cars manufactured in Germany in the ’60s, and I had always wanted one but thought the possibility was out of the question. But, here it was.
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.
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.
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