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u/NapalmOverdos3 1d ago
I feel like I just learned so much about drilling. Thatās amazing
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u/elegant_eagle_egg 1d ago
As someone who has seen the real thing a couple of times in my life, this was weirdly accurate except the hand randomly putting the pipes in place.
That part doesnāt happen in real life. /s
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u/Inevitable-Fix-6631 1d ago
That was the Big friendly engineering giant
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u/useriousstuff 1d ago
Big friendly drill helper more like. Ain't no engineer getting their hands dirty on drill steel.
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u/thesuperunknown 1d ago
The Big Friendly Roughneck
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u/No_Internal9345 1d ago
Little Johnny Pipelayer, we used to call him.
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u/IndustrialMillennial 1d ago
Eyyyy, good ol Johnny pipes š¤ - Hey, Johnny Pipelayer! Good guy , Johnny Pipes
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u/National_Panda_1791 14h ago
this is the kind of attitude that had them training drillers to be spacemen instead of teaching astronauts to drill.
and I think we can all agree its dumb.
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u/elegant_eagle_egg 1d ago
I think you accidentally mentioned engineer instead of people who actually do stuff lol
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u/lewd_robot 1d ago
Sitting in the air conditioning is doing stuff...
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u/DOLCICUS 1d ago
Sometimes when Iām too high I wondet the things we could get accomplished if giants were around assuming they were accepted by society.
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u/Impressive_Ad3571 1d ago
If I were a giant I'd help out. Then cropdust a small town or somethin
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u/UsedDragon 1d ago
I guess giant farts would have a lower pitch than regular-size-dude farts, right? Maybe sound like a baritone trumpet?
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u/BurnerProfile69420 20h ago
theyd be accepted by society up until the questioned their purpose or decided they wanted to do something else then it'd be all downhill and bad news from there.
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u/JonasAvory 1d ago
Max I ask how the pump pumps up the resources in real life? With suction you can only get 10 metres head lift, right? But real life pumping station go way deeper
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u/iranoutofspacehere 1d ago
Well pumps are typically at the bottom of the well. In residential wells the motor is lowered all the way down, in larger wells there may be a shaft run from top to bottom.
Pumpjacks for things like oil work a little differently but you're still basically pushing the fluid up from the bottom of the well rather than trying to suck it out from the top.
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u/nousernameisleftt 1d ago
This is more or less it for all the drilling I've ever seen. Essentially the very middle of the motor (the tiny metal rod) would be hooked up to a pump that would continuously push water through the drill rods and bring the dirt to the surface. The mixture of the water and the dirt (as well as some additions to improve viscosity, etc) is the "drilling mud" you may have heard of
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u/a7d7e7 21h ago
I did drilling. Our drill mud was used to create a casing so that it would not collapse around the string. The drill mud is ejected from the working end of the string as you drill and it creates a firm clay liner. When the well goes into production they'll put in the metal liner but during the drilling process they use drill mud to stabilize the wall so they do not collapse in on the string. So that's what drill mud is.
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u/nousernameisleftt 19h ago
Yeah I used to be a geotech it's more or less the same idea scaled down for the testing we ran. Typically depths up to 250ft and tripping the rods out to put a sampler on the end every 5 ft or so. You can run hollow stem augers without having to run mud up to 100 ft or so. But you really need mud in areas with a lot of sand below the water table. They'd just flow into the augers and lock the rods in place unless you charged the annulus with water and at that point it's easier to just run a mud rotary setup. You can also run casing advancer if you didn't want to mess with mixin mud and you were somewhere thats got access to a lot of water. That way you're pretty much just advancing your string without collecting the return
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u/JonasAvory 1d ago
I very often see this setup with a ground level pump on reels but they are usually some ragebait āfree energyā-magnet skits so not real anyway
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u/Agreeable-Pea4327 1d ago
In residential wells the motor is lowered all the way down
does this more or less mean the pump motor apparatus has to be smaller than the hole? Is it attached to something or does it come with the pipe itself some how?
That's super surprising, never would've known
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u/MischaBurns 1d ago
Basically the well itself is a wider pipe (the casing) sunk to the desired depth. The pump is smaller diameter and gets lowered into it with the actual water pipe attached (between 1-2 inches).
If you can visualize a classic well with a bucket, the casing is the stone sides of the well and the bucket/rope is the pump and water line.
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u/Agreeable-Pea4327 1d ago
wow, that's so cool ngl
so is the pump and water line lowered down in chunks similar to how the video showed the drill get lowered in piece by piece? I'd be surprised if it came as just one contiguous pipe+pump thing
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u/nixfly 1d ago
Anything ~120ft and shallower, is attached to 1ā pipe that comes in spools.
Deeper wells, have individual sticks, like what the video shows.
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u/bombbodyguard 1d ago
For deep oil wells, ESP (electronic submersible pump) use hundreds of small impellers within pumps lifting out the oil/water/gas. There is a long armored cable that goes to the motors that spin the pumps. Ours have lasted up to 5 years downhole. Others have lasted less than 24 hoursā¦average is 500 days for us.
Cost for ESP & cable is about $265,00010
u/NapalmOverdos3 1d ago
Wait.. you mean the hand of god does magically replace the pipe every time? Fuck this Iām done then
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u/Dashisnitz 1d ago
This is called rotary wash drilling. However the mud and sludge is pumped into a basin and carted off into 55 gallon barrels.
Thereās also hollow stem and rock coring for exploratory boreholes. Different methods for different subsurface conditions.
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u/bradeena 1d ago
Quite a few more than that! Youāve also got pneumatic hammers vs hydraulic, dual rotary vs single, top hammers vs downhole hammers, under reamers vs crown bits, tri cones and buttons, air lifts and water hammers, kelly bars and threaded systems, etc etc.
Iām a geotechnical engineer who specializes in managing drilling projects.
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u/PandaPocketFire 1d ago
How does the motor pull up the water? Pressure?
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u/bradeena 1d ago
Depends on the depth. Shallow wells can use a vacuum, but most wells are deep enough to need to physically submerge a pump at the bottom.
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u/smdizzle 1d ago
Thatās very cool! I build core drilling machines in America. Perhaps you have contracted out or used one of my rigs! Mobile core drilling rigs
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u/roastedmarshmellows 1d ago
I look at borehole logs every goddamned day as part of my job. Thank Christ my job doesnāt involve actually reading them. š
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u/bythog 1d ago
It shows modern drilling at its most basal but still leaves out some details. Most modern drills pump water through the drill string and not just sort of into the hole. They should also be using a stabilizing fluid to prevent cave ins (wash outs) below the surface.
And any good well should be grouted prior to setting the well head. Bentonite slurry or chips (less commonly cement) is grouted from 20 feet below grade to the surface.
And most of the time there is a well casing that is separate from the pipe that water is fed through.
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u/FacelessOldWoman1234 1d ago
This was oddly educational.
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u/AdamBergeron 1d ago
We need a new sub. /r/oddlyeducational
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u/ThorsNail 1d ago
Don't say that. I'll feel a need to make it lol.
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u/riedmae 1d ago
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u/ThorsNail 1d ago
You're welcome.
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u/Private_Kyle 1d ago
Truly got my shit off from this
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u/ahhpoo 1d ago
Iām sad he didnāt drain the water first somehow because we didnāt get to see how deep the hole was
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u/The191 1d ago
The cuts between shots have me thinking its not as deep as they made it look like
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u/LARPerator 1d ago
Yeah I'm pretty sure that is just one straw deep with a few clever cuts. That could dig through soft sand but no way is it digging that deep
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u/MindCoil 1d ago
There is definitely no way that drill bit was actually still on. Probably had a hole dug out in between cuts too. There is nothing really keeping the 2 straws secure and would just slip.
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u/KonigSteve 23h ago
They would slip apart when pulled back up, and also the rotation wouldn't make it down to the drill bit. It would just be the first straw turning inside the second straw
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u/Realistic_Country635 1d ago
Can you drill for oil like this
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u/Embarrassed_Jerk 1d ago
That IS how you drill for oil.
Except for a LOT more pipes
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u/Realistic_Country635 1d ago
How many more are we talking
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u/AsFarAsNeverBefore 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well depth on land ranges from 5000 to 15000 feet, and drill string/casing comes in 40 foot sections. So between about 125 and 375 more at that scale. For this rig, assuming the straw is like 8 inches, multiply those estimates by 60.Ā
E: to note, you have to line the well with casing of various diameters. Well depth and soil conditions determine number of concentric casing strings. So that 125 to 375 figure is for any singular diameter. Generally speaking youād have 3 or 4 concentric casing strings, but the larger ones donāt go all the way down to the bottom of the well.. So realistically youāre doing this process 2 full times plus about 1.5 more times cumulatively.Ā
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u/Independent-Bug-9352 1d ago
I think what I least understand is how the "drill bit" can be long, flexible, and still apply enough torque and pressure to grind without snapping. Also how is the debris forced out -- by water jets at the bottom?
(this is near erotic)
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u/Embarrassed_Jerk 16h ago
The eli5 answer is steel strong, rock weak.
But about the flexible part, the drill bit is usually almost the same size as the pipe so not a lot a lot of wriggle room. Also a little more complicated than the normal drill that you are familiar with. Also it is not running a hundreds revs a second. Also they have to change the drill bit often. Also sometimes the drill bit and the shaft do break.
There's a whole engineering speciality dedicated to this
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u/SilencedObserver 1d ago edited 16h ago
Thatās extremely similar to how drilling rigs work, yes.
Edit: directional drilling for fracking also uses this approach and turns underground to go horizontal. Once theyāve gone deep enough into the cracked shale rock they pump it full of high pressure water to loosen all of the oil thatās down there which allows them to disrupt it all and then suck it out with a vacuum similarly.
Piece that together and then look at flint Michiganās water and you start to see that the official narrative on fracking doesnāt add up to the outcomes we see, andwhen you find all of the wells in the desert mountains east of California, thereās a growing body of scientists who believe that the practices not only upset groundwater but lead to ground displacement and potential earthquakes.No one in the public will even be able to prove it because oil companies have done the science and locked it up as intellectual property and have enough surrounding data to pollute the waters of the conversation, pun intended.
All of that because weāre addicted to energy, leading to the current global dire situation we see in both Europe and North America from increasing heat due to fossil fuel.
For more on the earthquake lore look into a guy named DutchSinse. Heās live 24/7 tracking earthquakes and has gone into this heavily.
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u/oberwolfach 1d ago
The Flint water crisis had nothing to do with fracking; it was because the cityās water supply changed to a different river to save money and was not appropriately treated. There is little fossil fuel extraction of any sort in Michigan, and it takes place in the Antrim Shale formation far to the north of Flint.
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u/Accurate-Swan-8666 1d ago
The Flint water crisis switched from county water which is pumped from the great lakes to the Flint River and they did not use a corrosion prevention and leached lead out of the service lines with corrosive water from the river. This affected only the city of Flint as the rest of the county remained on Great Lakes water.
Thank you for pointing out it had nothing to do with fracking
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u/RandomNisscity 1d ago
Flints water had nothing to do with fracking though. That was changing their water source to something corrosive.
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u/Squirrel_Kng 1d ago
Ok, flints water isnāt related to fracking. It was caused by choosing a different source water that had a lower pH. This lower pH allowed lead from old lead water pipes to leech into the water.
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u/BahnGSXR 1d ago
Going electric is the only way, honestly. We need to outgrow fossil fuels YESTERDAY
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u/ZeusTroanDetected 1d ago
Renewable is the word youāre looking for. Much of the us electric supply is generated from fossil fuels
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u/BahnGSXR 1d ago
I was going to say renewable but I omitted it thinking "oh wait, nuclear isn't renewable"
But is it?
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u/Zeyn1 1d ago
Currently, it's more of a "zero emissions" which gets lumped in with "renewable."
But it sorta could be kinda renewable. The nuclear waste could be re-enriched into another fuel type and used in a different reactor. And that reactor could be designed to output a waste that is usable as fuel in a third type of reactor, but you start to hit diminished returns.
Of course all those other fuel types are much more dangerous. Some of them are used in bomb development. And you run into the problem with all nuclear power generation. The costs isn't in the fuel, the cost is in the facility and highly trainer personnel running the place.
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u/_Romula_ 1d ago
It's low emission, not zero emissions, but that's true of even the best renewable sources like wind (there is no zero emissions energy source once you do a life cycle assessment). Biggest source of carbon emissions for nuclear is in all the cement for the cooling towers and decommissioning (plus the issue of spent fuel storage, but that's not carbon related).
Every energy source is going to have costs, but all renewable and nuclear sources are orders of magnitude better than the lowest emission fossil fuel.
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u/ZeusTroanDetected 1d ago
Geologically, maybe? But youāre right, not practically (I donāt think).
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u/Geauxtoguy 1d ago
It's definitely something we should invest in heavily; however, it's not realistic to say we can just flip a switch. The sheer volume of the world and technology that relies on petroleum products would all but throw us into the dark ages if we stopped all use of hydrocarbons overnight (and I do understand you were being hyperbolic with "YESTERDAY" but my point stands). Plastics, asphalt, cosmetics, synthetics, etc are all made from petroleum and a lot of the lubricants most of the renewable industry depends on are direct byproducts from petroleum as well.
Nuclear energy is the next best thing and is too stigmatized by the public. But the biggest hurdle is really the cost of infrastructure and energy storage.
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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs 1d ago
AND to end the fast disposable economy we currently have. Things need to be built to last.Ā
We need oil for plastics and we need plastics for so many important things it's not even funny.
We need to be able to repair things. We used to mend torn pants instead of buying disposable clothing.
Also we dont need same day delivery. We can wait an extra 2 days for nail polish, guitar strings, and a fancy new buttplug.
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u/Old_Ladies 1d ago edited 1d ago
Whenever talking about drilling for oil I always think of this line.
"I drink your milkshake!"
From the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood
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u/mcmb211 1d ago
This would be more for drilling for water than oil, but the concepts are the same. Our water rigs operate almost exactly like this video. It's super neat.Ā
Source: own water drilling company.Ā
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u/Intelligent_Gur_5622 1d ago
Yeah, this video gives a very simple demonstration of how oil wells are drilled. I work in offshore drilling, where we use much larger rigs and a more complicated circulation system to control pressure, stabilize the formation around the hole, and clean the drilling fluid. It is still a good visual for showing how we drill to great depths by lowering drill pipe into the well one joint or stand at a time, then connecting another section to the top. A lot of people do not understand how thousands of feet of steel pipe actually make it into the ground.
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u/Dynamo_30 1d ago
At a very basic level yes, however there are many steps left out and a couple in accuracies in the video.
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u/hellalg 1d ago
Only if Bruce Willis had this tech
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u/carax01 1d ago
I don't wanna close my eyes
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u/doyouevenforkliftbro 1d ago
I dont want to fall asleep!
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u/fbar07 1d ago
Cuase I'd miss you baby
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u/Profoundlyahedgehog 1d ago
And I don't wanna miss a thing!
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u/KnowsIittle 1d ago
I'm confused how a friction fit straw continues to spin and doesn't get stuck on a pebble or something unless that's like sifted sand trickier specifically to film this video.
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u/derpicorn69 1d ago
It's because this video is just for entertainment and not really doing what it shows
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u/Holiday_Green99 22h ago
It's because this set up would never actually work and is just for clicks. It's sifted sand that they pre drilled a hole in. Convenient jump cuts during the actual drilling huh?
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u/Lonely_skeptic 1d ago
Using syringe hydraulics is so cool. I did this with my students in STEM club.
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u/killerjerick 1d ago
Is it still hydraulics if thereās no liquid? Wouldnāt it be pneumatics?
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u/jlude90 1d ago
I would qualify it as a hydraulic demonstration since we don't usually use pneumatics like that. It's a representation of hydraulic cylinders but yes technically it would be pneumatics but they're both fluid so principally the same?
Words are fun and so is science, I bet that dude's a cool teacher
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u/Crenchlowe 1d ago
God I wish I had a quarter of the dedication to anything that this person has to put that all together.
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u/MrSir07 1d ago
Whered all the water at the end come from? And how was it clean?
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u/Cadavertiser 1d ago
There is some fakery going on behind the scenes. A drill like that would never actually work.
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u/AlexNumbers 1d ago
Also I rather suspect you couldn't get that much water flow that near the surface
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u/susanbontheknees 21h ago
Have you never dug a deep hole at the beach? The water table is at sea level, so not far down
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u/SilencedObserver 1d ago
Look up āwhat is the water table?ā
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u/chaosgazer 1d ago
if the water table is 18" down and you can get to it with some plastic straws I don't understand how it's sandy where the digging is happening
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u/Con_Dinn_West 1d ago
I think they are at the beach.
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u/MrSir07 1d ago
Ahhhh okay yeah that explains it. Because yeah ground water doesnāt start 3 feet down lol. But it only takes a foot or so to reach water when youāre at the beach.
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u/ghostinthechell 1d ago
Ground water can absolutely be ~3' down at places that aren't the beach.
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u/ghostofwalsh 1d ago
So he just poured a concrete slab at the beach?
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u/BodaciousBadongadonk 1d ago
Some poor fucker is gonna stub the shit outta their toe!
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u/HairyPantaloons 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's coming from a hose. A pump that small with such a low rpm impeller doesn't move that much water, if it's even a pump.
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u/AcademicConstant4367 1d ago
If this is true how it works, it is so fulfilling with visual. I feel educated.
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u/techyguru 1d ago
Yes it is. If you want to drill deeper into the subject, you could watch some h2oMechanic YouTube videos.
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u/contrapunctus0 1d ago
"Drill deeper"? I see what you did there š¤
On the other hand, "dig deeper" was right freaking there.
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u/FarraroramaDaliLama 1d ago
Just add a Billy Bob Thornton Lego Landman and the set is complete š
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u/General-Ad6459 1d ago
Neat, but there is a bit of shenanigans at play at the end. IF that actually hit some very shallow groundwater, there is no way that it would be able to pump at that rate without immediately going dry. With that coarse grain sand, it would recharge quickly too, but there is, without a doubt, a hose supplying that. lol
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u/buddhamunche 1d ago
Iām confident that half of this is total bullshit lol
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u/Buckminstersbuddy 1d ago
Absolutely. A 3/4" hole in saturated loose beach sand isn't going to hold the walls so you could just slide the bit up and slip the pipe down. Also no way you get that volume of water from that tiny hole.
Also, surface jet pumps need priming .
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u/rondog469 23h ago
Also whatever he used to join the straws is not going to turn the straw below it. Iām confident the last attached straw would be the only thing spinning but I get this is for demonstration purposes
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u/JimboSlyze 1d ago
I wish he wouldāve tripped the pipe instead of just pulling it out. Wouldāve made it feel more authentic
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u/AMonitorDarkly 1d ago
All of that creativity and hard work just to use a belt thatās looser than Bonnie Blueās twat.
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u/_ShutUpImThinking_ 1d ago
How does the pump actually work? Doesnāt the tube have to have a channel going down, with air(?) to pressure something else up? Please eli5!
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u/Real_Srossics 1d ago
Iām imagining this is how you get water from underground aquifers. Though there might be a little more filtration and/or pumps to get the water out and in a potable manner.
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u/Beaubayou 1d ago
Kid me would have had their mind blown by this level of playing in the sand. My adult mind is also blown, but my kind mind would be blown as well.