Discharging water from well that had accumulated overnight; preparing to perform an accurate GPM air test.

Drilling basalt under the water off the end of a barge for pilings in the San Juan Islands.

20" surface pipe inside 24" conductor pipe for deep irrigation well.

Running 60' of 10" surface pipe through overburden into the bedrock to unknown depth for geothermal research & development, geophysics testing, heat gradient testing, and will be completed for a ground source heat pump system to heat a 50' x 80' shop.

This rig was brought from TX to WA and rebuilt for deep commercial irrigation and geothermal exploration drilling.

Venting unknown gas bubbles in UT hot springs.

This power plant is capable of 13 Megawatts which could service approximately 11,000 to 12,000 homes.

These wrenches were constructed for breaking drill pipe joints underneath a substructure work floor, or can be used to break joints on column pipe without crushing it.

Brent & Linda Barker are standing on the workfloor and Linda's hand is on the roller bushing (which is part of the drill rig's rotating equipment).

DTH hammer with 20" bit. The ribbed tooling above the hammer is a stabilizer to assist drilling a straight hole.

The cuttings pile is basalt rock from drill hole. Floor hands are about to add another drill pipe. Inserting the drill pipe threads into the next pipe is called stabbing.

This drill rig is referred to as a double, in other words, when removing pipe from the hole (tripping pipe), two sections are left screwed together and stand on work floor held by racking board half way up the derrick. This is called a stand of pipe. Note: this drill pipe is 31' lengths or one stand is 62'.

The substructure is the steel construction including the work floor & rotary table, & constructed with enough strength to hold thousands of feet of drill pipe in a stand on top of it. It gives the rig additional stabilization. The weight indicator in the picture to the left of the driller lets the driller know the correct amount of weight on the drill bit; too much & drill bit can be damaged or get stuck, or too little & rate of penetration slows down & drilling is not efficient.

This driver is an electric motor that turns the line shaft which in return turns the turbine (the pump down the hole). Drivers come in all sizes, this one is 450HP. Tank to the left of the driver is for line shaft & turbine lubrication.

Sedimentary strata between basalt flows.

The top of the drilling derrick is referred to as the crown.

Looking down on drill site after climbing to top of derrick to lubricate sheaves (which are the pulleys the wire ropes rotate over).

The drill stem, referred to as a tool bar, has components similar to the bottom hole assembly used with rotary rigs. Directly above Brent's hand is the stabilizer, below that is called the hydrolift which helps lift the cuttings from the drill bit. The bit is very similar to a rotary down-the-hole hammer bit. The weight of the drill stem, in a dropping motion, breaks the rock with carbide buttons inserted in the bit.

Column pipe oil tube & shaft removed for repair from commercial irrigation well.

Column pipe installation with worker up on racking board.

This turbine is for a commercial irrigation well. Note the previous pictures of column pipe, the shaft turns the turbine, which pushes water up the inside of the column pipe and discharges above the ground for irrigation. This turbine produces over 2,000 GPM from approximately 700' below ground.

Lowboy trailer helps with long distance drilling equipment moves.

450/250 Schramm drill rig mobilized on lowboy trailer. Air rotary rigs are rated by the cubic feet per minute and the pressure the air compressor puts out, in this case 450 CFM at 250 PSI.

Similar to the previous drill rig picture, this rig puts out 750 CFM at 250 PSI. The more CFM and pressure put out by a drill rig allows drilling larger diameter and deeper holes. Note: depending on the well construction, sometimes an air compressor booster is added to the drill rig to increase CFM.