Will there be a mess left at my property?

Well drilling is messy business. If you can imagine a young child making mud pies and cakes out in backyard that’s pretty much what our driller’s go home looking like on a daily basis. During the process of drilling we use water, dirt, mud alternatives, polymers and additives that mix with all of the returns that we are removing from your hole and it can be quite messy!

If you are contracted for an air-rotary, hard-rock hole the mess made at your property will be much less. During the drilling process you will see granite cuttings or shavings that are being removed by our large air compressor, water run-off from the well itself or the water we are using as a part of the drilling process and most likely foam or dish-soap looking suds. Those suds are caused as a result of a lubricant that is used to keep the tooling moving in the hole and clean the hole while drilling. “Foam” as it is called in the drilling industry will not contaminate your well and just like doing the dishes, easily washes away. The more water we encounter while drilling the larger the mess you will have with this type of drilling. Many times we will require our clients to provide some sort of containment for these fluids. This could look like a pit somewhere away from the drilling site, at a lower elevation to catch these returns or it could look like an embankment built up to collect these returns as they come out of the hole. In California we are required to keep all of the cuttings and debris from your drilling project on your property. It is not acceptable to allow these items to leave your property and migrate onto a neighbors property or into the street. 

If you are contracted for a mud-rotary hole you will have a much larger mess made during the process of drilling. This type of drilling uses large amounts of water, mud and polymers in order to install the well and in the process of drilling sand and clay material are removed from the hole. The same rules apply as it relates to the cuttings and debris from the well, these must stay on your property. In areas where containment is difficult we do have containment options where we can pump the material from mud-rotary holes into large holding bins, have a vacuum truck pick up the material and environmentally dispose of it. Containment options can add a significant cost to your project but provide a good option when you are in a tight space. 

When we are done with the well installation our team will clean up the area we were working in, smooth out the cuttings from the well to prepare for a slab installation around your well. A typical drilling project does not include puting the property back into the same order it was before we entered as usually we are the first step in the construction process and there is much more mess to be made. But, we are pretty tidy for a crew playing in the mud all day!