Fill'N-loops

[Calladrilling]

Filling the loops.
What are you using to fill the loops with water to prevent them from floating?
I've been using a garden hose recently since all my other ideas have failed, or not worked conviently. I wanna use some kind of pump system but haven't had any luck without some sort of set back.

[Palace GeoThermal]

We use the garden hose

[Calladrilling]

That's the most Convenient way but there is never enough volume to completly fill the loop. It works okay, but I am looking for a better solution.

[waterpirate]

How do you get the water out of your water truck? We pump the water out of the tanker to the drill rig via a 3hp irrigation pump and 1 1/4 hose. We have a fill adapter that goes from the shut off valve on the rig to a quick connect x the correct size barb fitting for the loop at hand. We definately achieve "scouring velocity" filling the loops.
hope this helped
Eric

[Calladrilling]

That was a plan of mine that I abandon early on. We always park our water truck so We can gravity feed to the mud pan. We never use a pump.
I do have a 3" pump we thought of using but I don't want to use the water truck water since sometimes it gets a little irony from being in the truck over night, and driving to the sites with it..
I would rather make some kinda booster pump set up and use the garden hose potable water for loop filling.. All my ideas failed so far though.

[waterpirate]

Mud rotary driling in it's purest form can be done by hand with a stick and a bucket of water. The more peices and parts you add to that system the more complicated it becomes. The trick is to add efficency to the proccess not another obstacle to performance.

I understand you are fighting your dad here, but gravity feeding the pan is like running a model T pickup on Sunday for nascar. Think of it this way, nature and gravity control you, not the other way around.
Eric

[Calladrilling]

We gravity feed our pan with 2" pipe. To be completely honest , it works very well. I would say we get an easy 30-50 gpm depending on where the truck is in relation to the mud pan.
I do not see a big advantage to fill my pan any faster than that, but having a pump would benefit me in filling the loops.
Today I had no problems filling the 1x300' loop with a hose hooked to a 1" hydrant in the customers yards now I can only convince all my customers to install hydrants my problem would be over!

I am going to calculate my gpm from our water truck tomorrow.

[ACES-Energy]

Although we do not do the drilling for our vertical loop installs, something that we do at homes that have good quality but low quantity water is bring a couple clean blue 55 gallon drums to the job. We slowly fill these during the install and than use our larger pump for flushing...

[Palace GeoThermal]

I should say that our garden hose is usually hooked to a fire hydrant.

[waterpirate]

The pump and the water hose is about location, location, location. It gives us the ability to not worry about the logistics of the water truck in relation to the rig. On most residential jobs the tanker stays on the road and only the drill sees the yard. I built a hose reel like the fire dept. so spooling off a 150' of supply hose and having water at the other end is no biggie. The guys keep telling me I am cheap for not putting a winder motor on the reel. We wind it up with a crank I took off the landing gear on a junk tractor trailer.
Eric