ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Directional bore?

I was out there in my boat today. The directional bore seems to be about done and they have a barge out in the bay, right offshore from where the bore came out.
They are assembling the cable in 40' sections of black conduit that looks like some kind of flex PVC. and floating it out in the water.

By the height it is floating at, I assume it is stuffed with aluminum conductors.
I am waiting to see how much they float out there before they start jetting it into the bottom. My guess is they put a whole spool of wire in the pipe (x4). Then they splice in another spool and keep going.
The supply barge is not there so I guess they are loading up again.
I suppose the question is whether they are going to bisect that bay with a cable before they sink it. Someone in going to hit that. They already have close to a mile strung out across the water.

I got out there again and got some pictures of the equipment on both ends of the directional bore. They are out of the ground in the bay now and they will start jetting the raceway into the bottom soon. I want to see that process too.

http://gfretwell.com/electrical/DIRECTIONAL%20BORE/

This is the FTP directory for some of the pictures.
They are assembling the raceway in the bay about a half mile at a time, with two going at a time.
They have a half mile of water pipe from a fire plug, going down to the boring machine. Lots of big equipment there. The boring rig, a mud mixer/reclaimer making the slurry and cleaning the junk out and a big pump shooting it into the bore.

Greg:
Thanks for the update and the pics. Interesting.

The picture of the bore going into the mud has an O2 bottle leaning up against a post resting on the cap of the bottle.

I cleaned up the raw pictures and made an HTML out of this

I hope to get the same kind of information on the jet process when it gets started.

http://gfretwell.com/electrical/DIRECTIONAL%20BORE/Directional%20bore.html

Some very interesting and expensive looking gear being used there, but I particularly like the operator's sun shade on the drilling rig.

I wonder what the frac out recovery plans were on a bore like that?

Here in Manitoba you have to be ready with Suction trucks or other means to recover immediately any drilling mud that escapes into a waterway from a boring fracture.

Last week by my place there was a contractor doing a bore under a river for a large water main and there were the suction tucks on each side of the river bank and a barge with containment booms standing by.

There are some big pumps on the black barge but I am not sure where they would be pumping to. They had mud boom out and that may have been all DEP wanted them to do. It would have been some phenomenal shooting if they hit that 16" black pipe.
There may be a larger receiver on the other end.

My guess, they punched through and quickly got the pipe down over the hole before anyone noticed.
Within a few hours, the bentonite will have settled out and just become a little extra mud on the bottom. The bottom is very silty mud there anyway. (virtually quicksand when you try to walk in it)

I have some pictures of the plow that will be burying this line and info on the conductors on the web page.

http://gfretwell.com/electrical/DIRECTIONAL%20BORE/Directional%20bore.html

Greg:
I like the water meter on the fire hydrant!!

That aside, this a great photo collection of an interesting project.