Mud Puppy or Cleaning systems.

What is everybody using to keep there mud clean?
We currently do not use anything but a 4'x8' mobile mud pan and shovel it. We do have a desander but rarely use it. We never thought it worked correctly on our M8 pump, so we stopped using it.
I am very interested in a mud puppy but don't have volume of work to warrant the price tag that comes with it!

 

IMHO buying or renting a mud cleaning system is and should be a last resort. Getting your desander to function properly would be step one. Get the performance chart for your cone and ensure that the pump that is feeding it is suplying enough volume at the correct pressure to make the cone function . You want to screen the inlet and pick the fluid up in the kneck of the pan and put your return from the cone directly into your rig pumps pick up.
Eric

 

Yes that is going to be step 1.
This desander is every bit of 20 yrs old, and finding my paperwork on it will be a task in itself. Has anybody ever ran a desander off a m8 pump? Does it work correctly?

 

Snark alert, but I can not help myself.

Without the sheet for your cone you are pissing in the wind. All cones have a performance chart showing their sweet spot in relation to flow and pressure. Either side of the sweet spot and performance suffers or it does not work at all.

The next question is how much mud are you moving a minute at what depth and how much mud are you hopeing to clean? Any clean mud is better than none but you have to clean enough to make the effort worthwhile.

SWAG
Your m8 is prolly barely enough to run your cone and will clean less than 1/2 the mud you are moveing and even less than 1/2 of the volume you are moveing drilling a six inch hole.

My m15 bareley keeps up with my 5x6 runing the 3 and 7/8 hole, but runs my cone very well. It is a balanceing act like everything else.
Eric

 

Nomenclature

I am also interested in Mud Puppy equipment. What does M8 or M15 mean?

 

Hi and welcome!

Driller? Tell us about yourself and your company.

m8- and m15 are model numbers for a diaphram pump made by the wilden co. They are air or hydralic driven and are excellant choices for pumping abrasives without complaining or needing a rebuild for 1,000's of hours.
Eric

 

Drillah'

t may be most effective to politely ask the outside consultant for the performance curve of the blower he or she is specifying. The operation of a centrifugal blower motor can have a high operating cost for many comfort systems.

In geothermal systems we have done all we can to improve the performance of a required compressor, and if we are good designers and installers, we have sized circulation pumps correctly for what little pressure drop in the ground loop there should ever be. The only component left to improve upon in terms of operational cost is the blower motor.
All you may be provided with is a curve, or performance data for the blower motor—without any specification that accounts for the fan that may or may not be installed with that motor.

Centrifugal E.C.M. blower motors with fans commonly installed in residential systems operate at their most energy efficient against an IWC PD/ 100 ft. of equivalent duct length of .4 to .6. Many persons employed in the residential market are not aware and design—or just install—comfort duct systems to an IWC PD of 1.0 or even 2.0.

Also, if you design a residential system to exactly .8 IWC PD, the ducts will most likely, finally be installed to perhaps 1.0 anyhow.

For residential buildings in California one particular code is becoming more stringent and will only allow a maximum of 300 fpm in return ducts or return duct registers (yes, that makes for one ginormous amount of return register, AK, or free area). This requirement solves many problems inherent to duct design and installation when performed by many residential installers; it lessens noise pollution, collects more particles due to a slower rate of flow at a filter, and 'hopefully' cuts down on the power draw of the blower motor.

That code does not mention turbulence mitigation or equivalent duct diameters before, or after, the blower, but I think this is an error on the code writers’ part.

A comfort system performance issue resulting from duct and duct register design and specification that many fail to pay attention to is the direction or characteristics of “air throw” (an endearing term I use instead of “airflow”) from supply registers to indoor comfort zones. Proper indoor air throw can be specified prior to construction by first determining air duct velocity just before any supply register and derating that velocity for any turbulence created by the upstream ducts or general system effect, then looking up the performance data from a good air supply register manufacturer and noting the tested and documented air-throw length, fall, or fpm. Good manufacturers will also note the temperature or temperature differences used in their labs during the determination of performance documentation. This is all explained extremely well in ACCA’s Manual T.

A lot of methods for duct system design employ safety factors or result in unbalanced systems before on site balancing. One of the most effective ways to install comfortable indoor airflow to and from occupants is to test velocity at the end of ducts, after duct installation, and before register specification or register installation. In my opinion this should be a step involved during nearly every system installation’s commissioning, testing, and permanent balancing stage.

(If you are not in a home from the 70’s and have no jumper ducts, close a door if you want to make testing, balancing, math, and real world application more chunky.)

For variable speed blower operation there is a method in Manual D section 9-15 that can be employed to kinda ‘fudge’ a compromise regarding air throw, comfort, and noise when installing single speed supply registers (to do this you need to locate or determine through engineering assumptions the previously mentioned register performance data). But I think that testing and balancing on site is more effective than most any specification of supply registers without it.

In your commercial industry you have an advantage because almost all systems are designed by engineers and almost all equipment performance is properly documented; circumstances are often opposite in the residential industry. I have not yet designed a commercial system, but the mathematics in regards to operation of blowers against the resistance of finally installed duct systems—never change.

Again regarding your first question about duct design and code or best practices, your IWC PD should be specified while paying attention to variables such as noise, the material cost to the client to upsize ducts, the expanse that you have where all of those ducts are installed, and final balanced air throw at all installed registers just to name a few. But an important variable that I was not aware of until taking classes form experienced service providers is the “sweet spot” in the curve of the blowers commonly being installed in new systems, and, although E.C.M.s motors are forgiving, the resultant operation cost and eventual, higher maintenance cost incurred when we do not specify and operate comfort system centrifugal blower motors within this beneficial parameter. “We should first sell comfort to a client” and then work our way backwards, but we must also keep in mind the operating costs that a client will pay for many, many years after our design and installation.



Regards,

Conor
P.S. Sorry about the delay in updating this. I am not an engineer, but some of the most effective builders, especially those working in an office will get something down on paper, whatever it is, lest they never get anything done.

“He that can have patience can have what he will.” – Benjamin Franklin

 

Eric,

Does the m15 just pump through your cone? and your 5x6 pumps down the hole?

 

We rented a mud puppy for a job and were not very impressed.

 

Hey Eric,
We have a 5x6 too. I would prefer to clean as much mud as possible. It has been so long since we've used the cone that I do not remember its performance. I know it thinned our mud out a few times too fast and, that's why we stopped using it.
I am only going to use it on geothermal drilling, with a 6 inch bore.
If I remember correctly it ran around 40-45 psi.
How do you remove the solids from the pan ( clay and silt) if you do not shovel your pan?

 

Dwayne,
What happened from a few weeks ago?
Why was it not impressive the second time around?

 

*
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,665

I bet the pics will be great...hope you share them.

We tried out a Mud Puppy yesterday....pretty impressive.
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My previous post was the after the first day of the mud puppy on the job..

We had hoped that the mud puppy would clean all of the sand from the mud. Our Sonic Rig came with a small Kerr Triplex Pump. Any sand in the mud, and the pump needs to be rebuilt.

What we found out was the mud puppy removes only some of the sand. We had to rebuild our Kerr pump the second day.

Granted our expectations were not in line with how a mud puppy works, but we were still disappointed.

 

So the mud puppy did not remove the sand better than your mud pan?
I am not familiar with kerr pumps, how many gpm does it flow?
It is a rental unit, could the desanders be worn out, or not set up correctly?
What model puppy was it?

 

Nail on the head

Waterpirate hit the nail right in the head. There is a tremendous balancing act to getting cleaning systems to operate efficiently. Desanders are a vital part of any cleaning operation. Shaker screens are a close second when sized appropriately. We have the luxury of having several different set ups dependant on hole size and material expected. For our 6 in holes we run a homemade combination. It is a 1000 gpm centrifugal pump that feeds down hole and to the shaker. The m8 feeds the desanders. All run via dietz 6 cyl that runs a hydro pump mounted on self contained trailer with 500 gal tank. pretty simple and inexpensive.

 

Call me old fashioned, but I have been called worse.

For me the education is crucial to the understanding, once you get to there, spending the kind of money they want for a pre-built unit to me seems folly.

Fully understanding how,when and why to clean that mud will give you the answers we all need. Everything has a relationship to everythng else. When you commit to 100% mud cleaning your pan and the design of that pan changes drastically from what we have all been taught and understand about pans with baffles, riffles, ect.

My 5x6 does the drilling and my m15 does the cleaning. My pan holds 1/3 the volume of my typical bore hole and I have estimated that I clean the total volue of the bore and the pan 1 every two minutes.

Loop drilling is not your fathers oldsmobile. Meaning the mud make up,weight, and construct of the mud is tottally diferent from any other drilling, water wells ect.

When I put mine together the screens or shaker for the clay and shale made it to coplicated and large to stay small, fast and portable. My guys clean the clay and shale from the screen manually. My desander will accept all the silt and up to #3 gravel you can feed it all day long.

Hope this helps
Eric

 

Thanks.
I am going to rebuild our desander cone and start fooling around with it next week.
I can see a problem arising due to the fact that we are limited by the size of our drill rod (4"OD) so we drill a 6" bore. I know this 5" cone is not large enough to handle everything, but it's a start.

 

I am a pretty good mix of what hapens when kenetics meets physics. I have a pile of failed ideas out behind our shop that did not meet our expectations. I prototyped 5 ways to not clean your mud prior to hitting it out of the park. The five prototypes cost nothing, whencompared to the first lease payment for a mud puppy.

Eric

 

Hey Eric,
Thanks for the motivation to rebuild my existing desander cone!
I removed our m8 pump from the equation and hooked it a new 2" trash pump we had just bought, and BOOM. It cleaned better than it ever has in the past!
The m8 never removed this much sand from this cone before ( due to the surge from the pump).
Granted we only drilled a 100' irrigation well today in sand/clay but it worked like a charm,

 

We hooked ours up to trash pump and were surprised by how it works.