Mud Puppy or Cleaning systems.

Am glad you are on your way! It has been my experiance that the wilden pumps are the greatest misunderstood pump ever.
Eric

 

What pressure are you running you desander cones at?
I know it's suggested to be run at 32-40 psi, but at that pressure it wasted more water then produce sand. The return line also had some sand in it too.
I ran it down near 22 psi and had a solid stream of sand come out the entire time, with clean sand free mud at the return line.

Up next on my list of to-dos is re design a mud pan!

 

I run my cone around 50 psi, by default. As you mess around with the cone you are going to find out alot about mud weights and viscosity and the pressure relationship you run the cone at.

I would hold off on your new pan if I were you. Give yourself some time to be best freinds with your cone and you may have a different take on how and what your new pan should be.

Do you ever drill with polymer? Polymer plus bentonite? It is an experiment you should try with your cone. You said that before the cone had thinned you out to much in the hole, a shot of polymer could have restored viscosity and fixed that, or turn your cone on and off to control your mud weight. I do all the above.
Eric

 

When drilling sand wells we mainly only use Baroid quik gel.
When drilling into clays and sticky silts we will use quik gel and add Baroid ez mud and or ez mud gold.
I am going to try the cone again this week coming up on some 300' bores we are drilling on the bay in Stone Harbor,NJ.

 

UPDATE

Desander cone has been working great on 22 psi with a 2" trash pump instead of our Wilden M8.
I run it for awhile then turn it off/on as needed.
The problem we ran into now is the trash pump has been destroyed from moving so much sandy water.

Eric, Does your M15 surge during pumping or does it stop surging with that 50 PSI backpressure? How long does it go between rebuilds?

I am in the hunt now for a better built pump to run my cone now.

 

Hey Dan,

At 50 psi it does not surge. Even if it did it does not make a significant impact on it's performance other than a decreased flow. I ran a rig for a short time that had a wilden for it's primary mud pump, and when it was taxed it really on hit every other stroke.

The wilden I am running on my resi geo rig now has been on the truck for 4 years and not had one thing ever done to the wet side of it. I do change the o-rings on the air piston on 1 year intervals.

It loves to pump sand.
Eric

 

Eric,

Do you have on board air to run the Wilden?

 

Dewayne,
I do have on board air. I also still owe you some pictures. I am rebuilding the top head on our resi-geo unit today, as thursdays job really took it out of her!

One of the major flaws in rig design is the manufacturers not really understanding what a driller wants and needs to do. To save money on hydraulics, most rigs are set up to run either the mud pump or the air commpresor on the same circuit. This means you can not run both at the same time. We had our resi-rig set up to run air and mud simaltaneously. That means I can run the mud cleaning system and drill at the same time in one operation.
Eric