Horizontal boring

[locoman]

Hi to all here,
I am new to the sight and was directed here from some friends at chevytrucks. I am starting a new garage project and took a few pic's today. I am going with a 28x30 with loft. This is the largest I can build by code. Any way this post is about the boring machines. I can't say how amazing they are. The pic's show the second of two bores done. They started about 70 ft away and went to the house under the footings and came up about three feet inside. The pic's show a patio with a truck project. the bore hole goes under the front wheel and up to where the electric meter is inside the house. They were about an inch off with a 2 inch hole. This will feed a new panel for the garage with the house feed as a sub panel from it. This will get ride of the drop and meter to the house. Cool stuff!

 

[locoman]

Sorry I can not post a pic more than 78kb? Am I doing something worng?

 

[bmwpower]

Sorry I can not post a pic more than 78kb? Am I doing something worng?

No, there are limits to size of the pict attached locally. You can shrink the file size or quality. If you host it and post the link to it, there is no limit.

 

[Charles (in GA)]

Boring machines are pricey, I'm surprised they would go to the expense to use it, but it sounds like it worked well.

Use Microsoft Image Composer, comes with windows, load the image with it, then do a save as, and select a higher level of compression. Use Windows Explorer (the file management program) to look and see what size it is. You should have no trouble getting it small enough, either with compression or pixle size reduction. If it is not, I'd make it 800x600, and you won't make the folks with dial up mad at you.

Charles

 

[locoman]

Pic's posted.Sorry it took this long. These seem like small pic's to me. They are the best I could get to upload!

 

[Uncle Buck]

So if you don't mind me asking how much does just the boring part cost?

 

[jimvannoy]

I use to be Manager of Networking and Telecommunications for a local College. We were laying a lot of fiber optic cable for building to building communication with our mainframe computers. We subbed out the cable laying and they used directional boring machines. I showed them the spot we wanted to exit one building and enter the next. They would bore across campus and pop up right on the mark.

 

[bmwpower]

How far can these boring machines bore?

 

[jimvannoy]

How far can these boring machines bore?

I am not sure but we had several runs that were around 1500-2000' if I remember correctly.

 

[bmwpower]

I am not sure but we had several runs that were around 1500-2000' if I remember correctly.

Damn. That would be nice to run electric out to my mailbox area.

 

[locoman]

So if you don't mind me asking how much does just the boring part cost?

I don't know for sure. I have not got the bill yet. I was told It was 75 bucks. Now your going to say B.S. but the rest of the story is that Ditch Witch was doing a demo for three potential buyers. My plumber was one of them and set this up for me. They said they could set in the alley and circle my house and come out the same hole they entered! The one in the pic's is about 170k give or take a few!

 

[Uncle Buck]

I don't know for sure. I have not got the bill yet. I was told It was 75 bucks. Now your going to say B.S. but the rest of the story is that Ditch Witch was doing a demo for three potential buyers. My plumber was one of them and set this up for me. They said they could set in the alley and circle my house and come out the same hole they entered! The one in the pic's is about 170k give or take a few!

No I would not say BS, but I would say You lucky SOB!

 

[dipper]

Hopefully that's not $75 per foot. 75 for the whole deal and you indeed are a lucky SOB!

 

[malibu101]

I am not sure but we had several runs that were around 1500-2000' if I remember correctly.

??????????????????
Surely the machine cannot push a bit horizontally with any accuracy for over a 1/4 mile. Can it???????
There must be pull points along the way I assume.

 

[jimvannoy]

??????????????????
Surely the machine cannot push a bit horizontally with any accuracy for over a 1/4 mile. Can it???????
There must be pull points along the way I assume.

The one I saw them use had a handheld device that would pinpoint the head underground and they could then aim it any direction they wanted anywhere along the bore.

 

[HacksawsGarage]

you ought to see them bore under interstate highways!

 

[Barty]

I own a Horizontal Boring company in Thailand. The industry is more commonly called Horizontal Directional Drilling or HDD.

A shot of 2,000 feet for us is just a regular crossing length. We often drill up to 3,300 feet at a time. The current world records are around 9,000 feet and are installing steel pipes up to 52 inches in diameter. Naturally the machines that we use and the ones that are achieving these long shots are much larger than the ones that the OP had do his installation.

To talk about HDD in detail would take a book to explain it all but if anyone wants to know anything specific please go ahead and ask.

And $75 for that shot is a great deal. From what I can tell of the US market at the moment you should be paying about $10 per foot for a small diameter HDPE pipe.

 

[PxTx]

I have plenty of customers who use the HDPE pipe in low pressure sewer systems. Cost can really vary, depending how rocky the soil is. It is still less expensive when you factor in the restoration costs of traditional open cut jobs.

Most guys I know doing it with HDPE for LPS do about 500' runs. I am not aware of anything over 1000' but maybe with fiberoptics it's different.

I own a Horizontal Boring company in Thailand. The industry is more commonly called Horizontal Directional Drilling or HDD.

A shot of 2,000 feet for us is just a regular crossing length. We often drill up to 3,300 feet at a time. The current world records are around 9,000 feet and are installing steel pipes up to 52 inches in diameter. Naturally the machines that we use and the ones that are achieving these long shots are much larger than the ones that the OP had do his installation.

To talk about HDD in detail would take a book to explain it all but if anyone wants to know anything specific please go ahead and ask.

And $75 for that shot is a great deal. From what I can tell of the US market at the moment you should be paying about $10 per foot for a small diameter HDPE pipe.

 

[Barty]

I have plenty of customers who use the HDPE pipe in low pressure sewer systems. Cost can really vary, depending how rocky the soil is. It is still less expensive when you factor in the restoration costs of traditional open cut jobs.

Most guys I know doing it with HDPE for LPS do about 500' runs. I am not aware of anything over 1000' but maybe with fiberoptics it's different.

Most of our work is for gas pipelines and nearly all of the work that we do is with steel pipe. HDPE installations here in Thailand are generally for electric and communication conduits and occasionally for water. Most of our HDPE crossings are limited to around 1,000 feet. If we have a long HDPE crossing we try to convince the client to install a steel casing first and then install the HDPE into the steel casing.

 

[locoman]

I own a Horizontal Boring company in Thailand. The industry is more commonly called Horizontal Directional Drilling or HDD.

A shot of 2,000 feet for us is just a regular crossing length. We often drill up to 3,300 feet at a time. The current world records are around 9,000 feet and are installing steel pipes up to 52 inches in diameter. Naturally the machines that we use and the ones that are achieving these long shots are much larger than the ones that the OP had do his installation.

To talk about HDD in detail would take a book to explain it all but if anyone wants to know anything specific please go ahead and ask.

And $75 for that shot is a great deal. From what I can tell of the US market at the moment you should be paying about $10 per foot for a small diameter HDPE pipe.

They did two for me one for power and one for water. The 75 bucks was for lunch for 5 people. We'll see. They were saying that going in is a lot easier than pulling out. I would guess that the type of pipe your pulling back would make a difference They also said that sand is harder because of tip temperatures

 

[malibu101]

I own a Horizontal Boring company in Thailand. The industry is more commonly called Horizontal Directional Drilling or HDD.

A shot of 2,000 feet for us is just a regular crossing length. We often drill up to 3,300 feet at a time. The current world records are around 9,000 feet and are installing steel pipes up to 52 inches in diameter. Naturally the machines that we use and the ones that are achieving these long shots are much larger than the ones that the OP had do his installation.

To talk about HDD in detail would take a book to explain it all but if anyone wants to know anything specific please go ahead and ask.

And $75 for that shot is a great deal. From what I can tell of the US market at the moment you should be paying about $10 per foot for a small diameter HDPE pipe.

WOW!! Thanks for the answer!

 

[Cebby]

I've never seen this before - cool stuff!

But if it's $10 a foot, looks like I'll be breaking out my shovel...

 

[boiler7904]

I've never seen this before - cool stuff!

But if it's $10 a foot, looks like I'll be breaking out my shovel...

This kind of equipment is used all the time in the midwest for a couple of reasons:

1. It's fast. AT & T is in the process of bringing fiber optic to my subdivision. On a saturday a couple of weeks ago, one guy on the drill rig and one with the locating device were able to bore the hole and pull innerduct for 300' of fiber through two yards and under a street in about 4 hours - started at 7:30 and were gone way before noon. There's no way you'd dig an open trench, place the conduit, backfill, repair the lawns, and repair the street in the same amount of time.

2. It's cheap when you consider other trenching methods. For a utility company doing thousands of feet of boring every day, they are saving tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of dollars by not having to dig trenches, manually place the conduit, backfill, and restore the original conditions. They generally have to dig an entrance hole and sometimes an exit hole depending on the pipe being pushed that need to be restored.

3. HDD can be done in almost all weather conditions. Rain, snow, frost that might stop conventional excavating can continue using a boring machine. Lightning will stop a boring crew.

4. HDD doesn't require completely closing streets. A few years ago, there was a water cooled power plant built 7 miles north of the Illinois river in Minooka, Illinois. They had to install a 72" water line from the river to the plant. One little obstacle stood in the way - interstate 80. There was no way that was getting shut down so they bored under it. In this area, HDD also gets used everytime a new set of stop lights or streets is installed on existing streets.

 

[Mandres]

Amazing, I didn't know such a service was available on a small scale. How does the machine work? How is the direction of the cutting head controlled? Has anyone ever seen / tried a homebuilt unit?

 

[Dodgepu360]

on the drill bit there is a flat plate that is mounted at an angle, it kind of acts like a rudder
inside the drill bit there is a beacon that transmits a signal to a tracker that displays the depth, pitch and roll angle of the drill bit
the roll angle is how the drill bit is steered, 12 o’clock the flat plate is pointed up, 6 o’clock down, 3 o’clock right, and so on
the machine pushes the drill string into the ground and the flat plate forces the bit which ever way it is pointed the drill has a little over a 100 foot radius when it turns
to go straight the drill bit is rotated

that a simple quick explanation of how it works

I used to live in Perry OK, guess where I worked

 

[kbs2244]

The neatest use I have heard for them is when they lay under ocean phone lines. It turns out the hardest and most fussy part of the project is what they call the "surf zone" at the end of the cables.
The waves beat up the cables.
Now they bore out half to 3/4 of a mile, dive down and hook the cable to a pull wire and avoid the whole "surf zone" thing.

 

[Jeffksf]

I've seen it cost about $30 - $25/ft
I'm an estimator for a excavation company so sometimes we get HDD quoted to us. Another popular application is for Sanitary Force mains.