Hey guys, Has anyone here had any experience using a skid steer to drill a water well? I did a search for an attachment that would allow deep hole drilling (as in water well drilling) I found the boremaster (a little light in the shorts I think) but did not find anything that I felt was suitable. I am envisioning something like a rotary table driven off the aux hydraulics of the skid. Loader arms would be used to raise and lower the kelly. Thanks, Tim
I have never seen such an attachment before. I just don't see any way a skid steer could have enough power or weight to accomplish that task.
i know when case introduced the xt series of skid steers, there was a brochure from case with a directional boring machine for the 90xt. you will probably need an add-on hydraulic cooler to run a drill and hi flow.
Even if you could find such an attachment, I seriously doubt a skid steer, even a big un, could pull off deep hole drilling. First, it would have enough weight and lifting power to lift a long drill string of sufficient diameter to drill a water well. Second, I doubt the work equipment pump on the skid would have enough gpm to drive a drill kelly of this size, I'm guessing they would require something in the 50 to 70 gpm range.
The well drilling rigs around here have 300+ horsepower engines dedicated to powering the drill, my guess is they wouldn't have them if they didn't need them.
Yair . . . All depends what you want to do, how deep, what sort of digging. This is one of many small drills available. http://www.lonestardrills.com/products/mechanical-series/ls100/ Cheers
Dug shallow wells (less than 35') by hand numerous times using a bucket hand auger its not a fun time but you can do it with less than 300 hp.
Not sure if they still do, but a company by the name of Geoprobe used to make a rig that would fit on a skid steer. It all comes down to your requirements. Are you wanting to direct push a 2inch well, or are you wanting to auger a 4 inch well? The geoprobe company has what they call the 100, 200, and 300 club. All accomplishments depending on the area and the soil. One area may be no issue to hit those depth with these small machines, in other areas its damn near impossible to hit half that depth. Their largest machine is not much bigger than a pickup. Depending on your soil strata, it can be relatively easy to hit a depth you need. Of course, any rig this size will start to run into trouble if you get into a large gravel seam. I have personally pushed a 2 inch well point to 38 feet with nothing be a well point, and a post pounder. We have also jetted with a piece of 1/2 inch copper and pipe/hose down to 44 feet in the same area. Both a pain, and a lot of work, but it can be done. Again, it ultimately comes down to what your specs are to get the desired results.
Hey guys, I appreciate your responses. I just drilled 6-36"X9' holes in cliche with my skid around a baseball field. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. It took about 7 hours including moving from hole to hole. That is when it occurred to me to explore the possibility of drilling a water well with the skid. Scrub, there are a number of manufacturers of small water well drilling rigs specifically designed for use in third world countries similar to the one you pointed out. They all look similar and they all say they have a version that will attach to a skid steer. None of them that I can find show any pictures of the skid steer version. The Lone Star LS100 that Scrub pointed out claims 100' depths with a 6" hole with a 5hp drill motor. The short video on the Lone Star site seems to be a pretty good primer on water well drilling with this type of equipment. It seems to me that I can get about 30hp to the drill off the aux circuit of my NH L190. The video shows two guys lifting the drill pipe out of the hole, so I should be able to lift the drill pipe out with the loader arms pretty easily. Tim
Yair . . . tmc_31 . Yes I reckon it would be doable. You have enough power and lift capacity it's just a matter of finding the equipment . . . at an affordable price. Some folks may recall an outfit advertised for years in "Popular Mechanics" about a small drill rig that with their special carbide bits would even drill through stone. I seem to remember it only had a small gasoline engine . . . as others have said it all depends on what you want to do. Cheers.
In your first post, you did mention that you want to do "deep hole" drilling. The obvious question is "what is the metric" used to determine "deep hole"? In just a cursory guess, I would wager 100 ft plus, give it a + or -. I have to admit, I'm not in Abilene TX, nor do I know anything about the strata there, I'm in E Tennessee. As for my area, you'd be lucky if you could go ten feet down and not hit limestone rock, and be in/out of that rock to achieve 100 ft. To cut through this rock with either conventional tri-cone roller bits or even carbide tip button bits requires considerable "down pressure", something a skid just does not have the arse to do. Your area may be totally different than mine, able to punch 100 ft easy. So I have to conclude the question of boring a water well hole with a skid attachment has as much to do with the strata of on area than anything. I hope you do find a workable solution to your question.
Similar conditions here Willie. Ours is granite or hard shale and water is rarely hit at less that 200 feet. Casings are 8" steel and are hammered into the bedrock.
The water bore rigs around here use a comparatively small diesel motor to drive the drill rig but the drill truck tows an 8V92 powered compressor to do the real work - supplying air to the percussion boring head and to blow the hole clean as it is bored. His previous compressor was "only" a 350 Hp 6V92 and the new 8V92 will bore twice as fast. I would have thought that the cost would be quite high to set up your skid steer for well drilling - just the drill string alone would be pricey and that the pitfalls may well outweigh the benefits.
Sounds like they're using what we call a "down the hole hammer" Karl. They require a high pressure compressor, 350 PSI, to operate those hammers, it takes some engine HP to run those things. :yup
I just finished drilling 1 99 foot hole 6.5 inches deep, at 59 feet on the second I am using a post hole digger attachment with a home made swivel and a rotary bit off ebay(less than 100 bucks) got lucky with the drill stem, there is a directional borer who had about 150 foot of old drill pipe they did not use anymore and gave it to me Not so much the power of the machine but the power of the pump used to circulate the flushings will need to use bentonite quick gel, you can get from a well driller for about 10 bucks a bag also depends on what you are drilling through, clay, sand, rock
Ok, I forgot all about this post and saw it today so I figured I would update it. We,(the 2 of us) finished drilling the 3 holes, all 99 feet deep. I wanted to go 110 feet but it would stop drilling at 99. second hole finished with only a problem with a pump seal in the trash pump we were using. Got a new trash pump quicker than repairing the one we had. Started on the 3rd hole and everything was great until about 50 some feet, broke the drill stem about 20 foot in the hole I made a simple device and managed to recover all the stem but it took a few days. Started drilling again and around 85 feet it stopped. I added extra water and we were making progress We finished at 99 feet and pulled everything out and threw in the geothermal tubes and the job was done. Took a bit longer than planned, but since the real driller never showed up, we got it done. The biggest time consumer was swapping out drill stem. Use two 5 foot to drill 10 feet, pull that up, replace them with a 10 foot section and drop that into the hole and do the 5's again and repeat Wore out the used tri-cone bit we got off ebay The best thing about the whole job was at the end of winter when the service man was out for the geo unit, he said that the temperature reading on the ground loop was one of the best he seen for that time of year. So tmc_31, did you ever try doing it?
No gjinc, I have not tried it yet. Still hoping to find a solution. Do you have any pictures of your rig that you could share? I was thinking about drilling water wells and had not thought of geo thermal. I want to install a geo thermal heat pump at my house and had planned to install a horizontal loop since I have the space to do it and a backhoe. Most of the installations around here use 1 200' well per ton of ac. If I had an economical way to drill the wells I think I would like that better. If 100' is the limit that I can drill, I suppose that 6- 100' wells would work as well as 3- 200' wells. Tim
HI, 100 feet is not the limit but we hit something that would take about 1 hour to go 1 inch. They installed a 3 ton geo unit with 400 feet of tube in each hole. It is the same process as drillling for water, we hit water several times at different depths. see if i can one of the pictures
The photo in the last post was the first hole before we hit water. after hitting water we needed to start recirculate Benoite, which created these
Wow, great pictures. Thanks. I am not well versed in well drilling so please forgive my newbieness. Is that part below the drive the swivel that you built? Is that where you introduce the water/mud into the drill pipe? Do you have a sketch of that part that you would be willing to share? What size diameter is your drill pipe? Any idea what a 100' string of it weighs? Would more down pressure help you or hinder you? You seem to be relying on the weight of the skid to drive the drill. If you set anchors on either side of the front of the skid and then ran a chain between the anchors through the chain attach points on the front of the skid, you could use the down pressure supplied by the boom hydraulics to push the bit down. Would that be too much down pressure? I know that the speed that you can make hole depends on several factors including the type of strata you are drilling through and that can vary widely between locations. How quickly we're you able to drill your wells? Thanks Tm
That is the swivel I have all the info at the shop, i'll get it tomorrow. I know a "real" well driller can put 10's of thousands of pounds on the drill but the time I think it would make a difference is when you hit a rock. The water and drill do most of the work. at times we were drilling 15 feet a hour, would have been more but we have to keep swapping drill stem. I considered any progress that I could see was good.
15'/hr sounds plenty fast. Thanks gjinc. I am sure that one can apply to much pressure to the drill stem and break something really easily. I have not decided what size drill stem to use, some simple calculations say that I should be able to lift a 200' string of 2-3/8 drill stem full of mud and a bit and stay within the capabilities of my skid (2-7/8" drill stem would be to heavy by several hundred lb). Looking forward to seeing how you built your swivel and seeing what size drill stem you used. I was checking EBay to see what equipment prices were like. Lots of stuff available there. I have a Bobcat 15C auger drive that I hope to use to drive this drilling system. Tim
Our drill stem was 2 1/4 and weight about 60 pounds per 10 feet lengths. The swivel is made from 4 inch pipe and a couple of flat plates and 2 pieces of rubber. We drilled a 1 inch hole and welded a nipple to connect a hose to it to circulate water and Benoite. The plates we bored 2 3/8-2 1/2 holes and welded 2 of them to the 4 inch pipe before welding the plates we paired them and drilled 3/8 holes in the corners Cut one of the drill stem (with the threads) and drilled 3 holes (1/2 inch) 120 degrees apart at different heights. Just to the center, not all the way through welded a piece of hex that will attach to the post hole digger. the only thing that holds the swivel in place is 2 pieces of steel connected to the auger frame. we did break this at least twice, i angled it and it snapped in the swivel, just took it apart and welded it up
gjinc, thanks for the pictures and description!! Several years ago I bought a tool called a BorZit. It is for boring under sidewalks, roads and such. It has a swivel much like yours except smaller. I used it several times, once to bore under a 30' track at a high school football field. Your pictures and descriptions have been very helpful. You have certainly shown that a skid steer can be a viable well drilling tool. The town of Abilene, near where I live, has several creeks that run through it. A number of people who live along these creeks have drilled wells in their back yards to supply water for watering their grass. Most have hit good water at around 30-40'. By good water, I mean enough water flow to water a lawn with not necessarily good drinking water. During the drought (which we are still in) these folks are the only ones who have green lawns during water rationing. It would be a lot easier to get a skid steer powered rig in a back yard than a large truck mounted drill rig. Tim
I have mid sized skid steer and never thought about using it this way...very interesting. tmc, I bet those creeks aren't running much water these days. I'm ~100 miles Southeast of Abilene and you won't find a live creek around here. IMHO, Sure hate to hear about folks drilling wells just to keep their lawns green, seem to me that water is too valuable these days for such waste...
Skid Shear, you are right the creeks have been pretty dry over the last few years. We got about 4-1/2" of rain over the last few weeks which helped but we could sure use some more. I agree that ground water could be used for better uses than lawn watering but some people will do almost anything to keep their yards from dying. If they have that attitude, I would sure like to be able to drill a well for them. There also is a market for wells for geothermal installation like what gjinc was doing. I was going to put in a horizontal loop at my house because I had the room and I have a backhoe. If I can get this drilling thing to work I will probably put in a vertical loop system. Typically, around here the geothermal guys recommend 1-200' well per ton of air conditioning.
Did you ever figure anything out? I have a drill on my skid steer. It is rated to drill 300'. I have never drilled that deep but I have drilled a ton of shallow holes. I can drill about a foot a minute in solid rock. In easier conditions I drill a lot faster. This is using either an auger in soft rock or dirt and air in hard rock.
Your string weight alone would be problematic for your lift arms. I own skid steers and ironically I build drills for a living. The rotary would not be a problem on a skid steer, but your pull down would not be strong enough. Plus your up and down motion would not be even therefore you would have to advance and back up to match the radius of your loader. We built some seismic drills off a skid steer platform and they only went 60 feet with water for drill circ, and it was very problematic. that was only a 3 inch hole. we were using a 90 xt. You need a mast that is straight up and down or binding occurs when you try to ream the hole. Also tripping out of the hole is near impossible without slips. anyways, there are many other problems if you wish to know more about our experience you can email me at pm me for my number
You don't use the skid steer arms for the up and down or at least I don't. I have a mast with a 12' stroke that is mounted on my skid steer and I use the skid steer to power the hydraulics. String weight is not on the lift arms. I have plenty of thrust and pull back. I have not used mud but can auger 20' and air rotary or DTH a lot deeper than that. I am doing 3.5" holes as well.
I would be interested to hear about your rigs though and the problems you had.
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this got my attention today. i was thinking about using my skid steer to spin it and my excavator to lift or apply down force. http://www.ebay.com/itm/182154246062?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
Anybody ever try to build a unit? It’s been a few years.
All drills that i have built. I have built over 100 drills in my lifetime.. 5 ft, 10ft, 15ft, even a 30 ft mast. If you are drilling under 3 inch...easy...our wells here are 6 inch or better and have to be grouted and cased.
The guy that dug holes to do percolation tests at my old acreage had a drill rig set up on the back of a 1 ton. Worked pretty slick until he lost a bit in the hole. I dug it out later with the backhoe. I don't think a drill rig on a skid steer would be very productive for deep holes unless you had a straight up and down mast. Here is a custom built drill rig for pilings from a local contractor around here. I think at least 2 of them were built and I heard the modifications cost of over $100,000 each using Bobcat 975's as the starting point. They used to advertise they could drill anywhere anytime in all conditions. I've seen the unit(s) on the road many times. Looks like it has a telescopic extension in addition to the regular extension. https://lundenterprises.ca/ https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/lundrill/?hl=en http://cottonwoodpassivehouse.ca/steel-frame-installation/
Very impressed. The Polaris is inspired!
That's for sure, a lot of know-how and engineering involved.
Hey Guys, I see this is an old thread. A basic well put in by a pro costs about $5000 for a 1 hp / 1" pipe well, $6500 for 1.5 hp 1"1/4 pipe to $8500 for a 2 hp 2" pipe at about 120' depth were I need it. I have an assortment of heavy equipment to include a bobcat and a hydraulic drive unit. I have a 9" post hole type auger head and I have 300' of used ditch witch 6' long drill stem that is about 1.5"s in size. I was looking at attempting to drill a water well myself. I thought this might be a good skill set to have if I needed to do it again. Planning on using a 4" casing with a 1.5 to 2 HP motor to go for maybe 30 to 40 gallons a minute. I was thinking of trying to drill the hole without water. I spoke to a local well driller and he did not think I could get down deep enough and that I needed water and a large piston mud pump to get the cuttings out of the bore hole. He made it seem like a would fail without the large mud pump setup. He told me that I could not attempt to drill the hole dry because when I get to the wet sandy soil the soil will not stay on the auger. I am planning on drilling through coastal type soil that is a dark red color and will more than likely turn to sand. The drill stem I have is hollow and I believe I could fab or buy a water swivel to use water if I must. There is a well 1000' from where I am and I could use a long roll of pex to get water to a holding pond near the new well site. I am not sure if I need quick gel or not. I saw where you can use a semi trash pump from harbor freight to get a fair amount of water flow... I was thinking I could put two 30' tall trees / posts in the ground to each side of the bore hole and put a pulley and a cable up in the air to pull the auger head up and get the dirt out if I tried to do the job dry. Do you guys think it can be done to a depth of say 120' with the items I have? Any thoughts or suggestions on how to accomplish this task.
I found drilling deeper holes with a skid steer required lifting the auger up and down while drilling so it wouldn't get stuck in clay type soils. Not fun when the bit is stuck down in the hole. Not sure a skid steer would have enough lift capacity with 120' of extensions and would take a lot of time removing and recoupling all the extensions every time the auger had to pull out to remove the soil. Would probably want the extension boom attachment most contractors use for drilling deeper holes. Below is a contractor in the area who spent mega bucks converting his 975 Bobcats into specialized drilling units. Home - Lund Enterprises
you have to pay yourself something, and the odds of completely wasting your time getting down 120 are pretty good with what are really the wrong tools. That link above Lund was drilling for footing piles and things like that, 20~30' and as Dave said it was mega-bucks to develop.
I think it was over $100K to convert a 975 into a specialized drilling rig. About the only thing original on the machine is the frame. Note that the Lundrill has 4 times the torque of a standard Bobcat auger so must be using pretty high pressure pumps.
Any thoughts or suggestions on how to accomplish this task? Yes get out the checkbook and pay the man $5,000.
Yup, some jobs you just need the right machine. 30 feet maybe you could attempt but 120 feet is a long way down. I live in an 80ft. mobile home so have a good prospective of how far down 120ft. is. I don't think you'd need a real huge drilling rig if it's a small diameter. When they drilled test holes to check percolation rates when I sub-divided they had a neat drill rig on a 1 ton truck. Actually lost a bit in the hole but I later dug it out with the backhoe. It was only about 5' down. You might need something a little bigger but not much.
Maybe you guys are right. Today i drilled in 25 3.5' deep fence post holes the auger never missed a beat I did it on low idle. Pushing down with the 12,000 skid steer seems to be plenty of down force to send a bit down. I understand if I hit rock but I donot believe there is anything more than hard packed clay. seems like each time you add a drill stem it would just add a little more weight to help it bore down. Not sure what I am missing or not understanding about this. Seems like if you keep the machine running on low power you could avoid breaking the drill stem. My skid steer is a vertical lift type so it moves the boom up in more of a straight line But I do not mind loosing a few pieces of pipe and an auger head giving it a go. I spoke to a man in TX today that does boring work. He stated that as long as I make sure the slurry coming back out of the hole contains the cuttings and I keep the pump going that he thought I could get it done with just using regular bentonite clay to cake the walls. Once I get down to the wet sandy area the question is if the bore hole will fall in on the drill stem and auger head and stick it. He told me they make specialty drilling compounds that can be bought to hold the walls in place if it starts falling in. But he thought it would not be needed. He told me regular gel-rite would complete the task. And he calculated how much based on a 10" bore with a 120' depth and told me to run 6 to 8 bags pre mixed in the bore . He said give it go and just make sure that I do not bore faster than the pump and water flow can handle removing the cuttings. He stressed that the mud pump bringing the cutting back up and out of the bore is the key to success. And told me to slow way down and give it extra time to work We spoke about me using a 2" harbor freight semi-trash pump attached to a water swivel on my drill stem. He stated it would provide enough flow to get this bore in.. Now I need to figure out how to put a homemade water swivel together without a using a mill or lathe, I would like to make it out of common junk laying around the yard.
I started getting set-up to drill several wells years ago but never finished due to a back issue. I went with the following design: Hydraulic motor that will drill 24" in soft soil 2 3/8" tubing cut and threaded at 7' tapered thread with collar bucked and tack welded no tool joint ( not ideal without tool joint but for a few jobs it would work) swivel with 1 1/4" water course coupled to hydraulic motor old forklift mast for derrick (could use track loader with vertical lift) 3" trash pump for circulation (probably not enough pressure or volume) break-out table with slot for pipe in place of slips While this is certainly no "professional " rig I have less than $1,000.00 in it as I had everything but the pipe and swivel. Son in law just had a 300' well drilled and cased for 7K in soft strata so if time permits I think it is very doable. There are many YouTube videos on this where people drill on the cheap. Sure there are problems but I consider is another adventure for cool weather. I think most problems occur due to not having enough pump to flush the cuttings and don't get their drilling fluid right.
I have decided a mud pump is not the way to go. I ran into a fellow that learned how to drills his own wells for his farm. He learned the hard way and in the process had 4 different bores collapse every time he attempted to use a mud pump each time spending more money to get more pressure. He used 2 different water swivels , one pro-made and a custom home made one and 3 different types of pumps including a top of the line 3" pump. No rock mostly sand and hard clays. According to him, it was too hard to get the cuttings out of the bore once you went below 35 to 40' deep. The sand would just want to sit back down on the auger and the boring would slow down to a snails pace. He found out that an air pump is the way to go. Using a wheel barrow air compressor and a 1.5" pvc pipe along with an airline he was able to create a pump that would reach close to 90 gpm suction from 100' down. It will clean the sand and clay out just as fast as you cut the bore. Using a basic home made platform with a hydraulic motor from a lull he spins a short auger bit using the rigid metal pipe. Using a short 9' auger type bit and 3" ridged metal electrical pipe from home depot sold in 10' pieces. He uses this type pipe because the fittings are well machined and the pipe is very straight right from the big box store. After doing several small wells, he was able to increase to a large well with the goal being to run a pivot. Using a 24" top casing to a lower 18" screen getting 700 gallons a minute with a 30 horse electric motor. That is a $35,000.00 well. Keeping the bore full of water from a gravity top feed is the key to keeping the bore open. The air pump will preform similar to an super expensive professional mud pump on a drill rig. The holding pond for the water to keep the bore full is quite large at 20' x 20" x 2' deep with an earth dam in the middle similar to a gold rush holding pond to allow the silt to settle out. No special mud or pumps required. No pump is even used. The PVC pipe is duct taped together and increases in length as the auger goes down. It takes 3 people to do the job. One to hold the pvc just above the drill stem, one to keep up with the water and one to run the drill. Water from the holding pond is gravity feed to the bore hole with a 6" pipe. Of course I figured this out after I bought my benonite, and water swivel bearings about $200.00 down the hole....