Reflections - Internal Climate Change (Part 2) New Wells for Wells Wood
Kevin Drilling and Dan Putting Up the Fabric Barrier

The rumble of two heavy trucks broke the country quiet at 9 a.m. Wednesday, December 15. Kevin and Dan from Dillan Geothermal and Well Drilling had arrived.

Hustling out to greet them, Spence asked if they would like some hot coffee.

They would.

While Spence brewed a fresh pot, I ambled out with another question. “May I take pictures of you working?”

The drillers grinned at each other. Perhaps Spence had warned them about me. Kevin, the lead driller, laughed. “Sure, but we’ll have to wear our hard hats.”

Washing breakfast dishes gave me a great view of the guys in their hard hats.

Dan signaled, the truck beeped, and Kevin maneuvered the drill into position above the white X painted on the grass across from the kitchen window. The back tires sunk into the soft ground.

Whirling his hand, Dan halloed. Kevin eased the truck back to the gravel driveway. After Dan dragged metal plates over the rutted grass, Kevin backed the truck onto the plates. No sinking.

At the back of the truck near the drill, Kevin removed the cover from the control panel revealing an array of levers and buttons. Selecting one lever, he pulled. Metal jacks shot out from the truck, slammed onto the ground, and raised all eight back tires into the air. The derrick swept ninety degrees counterclockwise to a vertical position. A twenty-foot drill extension swung back and forth until Kevin stopped it with his hand and guided it over the two-foot drill bit. Swiveling, the pipe screwed into the bit.

Dan unrolled fabric with wood stakes attached. Since they didn’t want the mud-rock slurry—that would spray out of the well—flowing downhill, across the floodplain, and into Deer Creek, he pounded the stakes into the ground forming a three-foot high, U-shaped barrier below the well.

They put in ear plugs, and a grinding roar swiveled six cat ears. Dirt sprayed.

Dishes done, I spent the rest of the day slipping in and out of boots to hustle out into spritzing rain with my camera. At least the temperature rose to a balmy 51° F (11° C).

Five feet down, the drill hit an old creek bed. Water and rock sprayed. Further down a white cloud announced they’d hit bedrock.

Dan dragged what looked like a fire hose from the second truck’s tank to the drilling truck.

After attaching the hose, Kevin pushed buttons on the panel to pump water into the well.

The truck roared. The drill twirled. Slate-gray rock chips and water sprayed onto the ground. Scooping shovelfuls of the slurry to clear the area around the drill, Dan deposited them at the bottom of the fabric. The fabric bulged with watery sludge but didn't break.

Mid morning Jerry, the Kenninhan project boss, arrived to check on the drillers.

Ande, our ambassador cat, circled Jerry’s legs.

He stooped to scratch behind Ande’s ears. “How’s my buddy today?” When the contractor pulled a copy of the eleven page permit from his briefcase, his hand shook and his voice quickened. “The inspector emailed this yesterday. I want a copy of it on the site.”

I tucked the papers into my orange geothermal folder on the end table.

Jerry’s neck muscles tensed and his voice increased to half-shout volume. “I’ve been playing phone tag with the inspector. He wants to see the trenches dug. I plan to dig Friday. I can’t leave two-foot wide, five-foot deep trenches open for days until he gets around to inspecting.” Jerry flung his arms over his head and pursed his lips. “That’s dangerous. We can take photos for him, but I won’t leave the trenches open.”

Ande put a paw on Jerry’s puffy plastic shoe covering.

Jerry’s tense frame and face relaxed. Placing his hands on his thighs he bent to look into the cat’s eyes. “You’re a good boy.” Jerry scratched the cat’s ears and left.

Outside, Dan waved while Kevin drove the truck forward and back to position the drill for the second well across from the guest room window. The three tabbies took turns sitting on the bed, flicking ears at the noisy truck, and watching the drillers.

Rills Watching

I carried my camera outside again.

Without speaking, Kevin flipped levers and Dan shoveled dirt that the drill sprayed. Kevin pushed buttons, and Dan fetched the hose. Still not talking, Kevin grabbed the hose and attached it to the truck. Kevin used his shovel to direct a stream of rock slurry toward the fabric barrier.

Admiring their silent coordination, I shouted, “Watching you two is like watching a ballet.”

Kevin jumped off the truck. “I’ve run this drilling truck for fifteen years.” He monitored the spinning drill for a moment. “I apprenticed on it two years before that.”

By the end of the afternoon, they’d dug the second 225-foot well, and Jerry called on the house phone. His voice sounded calm like when he greeted Ande. “I finally talked to the inspector. He’ll come on Friday to see the trench and the connection to the house.”

A single heavy truck broke the country silence at 9:00 Thursday morning, December 16.

I hustled outside in forest green yoga pants, a hunter-orange jacket, and a purple knit stocking cap. The drillers, in mud spattered blue jeans and gray hoodies, made me look like a tropical parrot. Camera in hand, I asked, “Is that a blow torch you’re using?”

“Yes.” Kevin waved the flame back and forth above the U-bend at the bottom of the loop of hard, one-inch plastic, black tubing—the geothermal pipe.

The day before they had unrolled a four-foot wheel of the tubing across the field which left a black trail like a curvy medieval serpent.

“We have to get the curves out. It has to be straight to go into the well.” Satisfied with the straightening, Kevin stuck a ten-foot, half-inch diameter, metal pole between the pipes and held them straight.

To secure the pipes to the pole, Dan wound duct tape around them.

Kevin shoved the pipe into a twenty-foot steel casing—the commencement of the pipes vs the drillers wrestling match. Kevin grabbed and pushed. Marching across the front yard, Dan dragged and lifted the pipe to give Kevin some slack. At one point, when Kevin let go to grab another section, the pipe pushed back several feet.

“Why is it coming out?’ I held the camera against my chest. “Is it at the bottom already?”

While Dan toted the hose from the water tank truck, Kevin wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “No. We hit groundwater. The well is full of water.” He fetched the open ends of the tubing. “We need to put water into the tubes to make them heavier.”

Water flowed, muscles bulged, and the wrestling match resumed. Grab-push-drag-lift. Panting, Kevin traded places with Dan. Grab-push-drag-lift. Watching them made me tired. Grab-push-drag-lift. All of a sudden the two stopped and let go of the pipes.

“Is it all the way down?” I stared at the extra loopy piping that snaked across the front yard to the south garden. “Could you tell by feel?”

Kevin Pushing and Dan Arching the Pipe Up to Get It into the Well

Picking up the pipe, Kevin pointed to white squiggles stamped on the black plastic. “These mark every two feet so we know how far it’s gone.”

I trusted his answer because I couldn’t distinguish the tiny marks without a magnifying glass. Before my next trip out to check on the drillers, I changed into my dish washing outfit—a royal blue sweater Mom had knitted and a plastic sunflower seed bag apron worn over the green yoga pants.

The drillers climbed onto the water truck. Dan swung fifty-pound bags of powdered grout to Kevin. He ripped the sides on the edge of a mental funnel then dumped the contents into the mixer.

Back at the second well, they watched the white specks on a feeder pipe and shoved it to the bottom. Kevin pushed a button on the control panel. The truck rumbled and pumped moist, silver grout into the well.

Dan held the feeder pipe. When the pipe stuck in the grout, he tugged it free to fill the next part of the well. They stopped pumping five feet from the top, where the pipes would bend into a trench and enter the basement. Dan pulled the feeder free.

Done with dishes, I changed for my daily health walk with Spence. I slipped into a floor length, empire waist, puffy-sleeved, blue gown—a regency dress to celebrate Jane Austen’s 246th birthday. For warmth, I added the jacket I’d appliqued with blossoms and Emerson’s quote, “The earth laughs in flowers.” As on the two previous trips, I slugged across the torn-up yard in mud boots and wondered if the drillers would comment on my crazy outfits.

They didn’t. No blinks. No smirks. All business.

“What’s next?” I asked.

“We have to thread the pipe through the casing.” Kevin scrunched his forehead.

Dan straightened the seventy-five extra feet of double plastic tubing along the ground.

Kevin pushed a lever pulling the twenty-foot steel casing out of the well. He left a three foot section between the bottom of the casing and top of the well. “Some jobs are easy. We cut the pipes here.” He bent and pantomimed cutting the hard rubber tubing at the end of the casing. “But Jerry wants all the extra pipe in one piece.”

While Kevin tugged the pipes below the casing, Dan pulled the pipe across the lawn until the pipe wouldn’t budge. Then Dan climbed the derrick—not difficult where X pieces filled the metal squares on the side. Near the top of the steel casing, however, only diagonals filled the squares. A broken hydraulic hose had sprayed, making the metal slippery under his muddy boots. He wrapped his legs around a square and diagonal but couldn’t get a secure footing for tugging the pipe. He climbed down, stood beside the truck, and shoved the pipe up for Kevin to pull down.

Threading and Pulling the Pipes through the Casing

Leaving them at the Herculean task, Spence and I scuffed through the woods for exercise.

That afternoon, Kevin knocked on the front door. “Do any lines run underground near the third well?”

“Yes.” With Kevin and Spence following, I traipsed down the ramp to the front yard. “A pipe connects the gutter,” I touched the down spout, “to a cistern.” I pointed to the patch of dried girasole stems by the road. “Another pipe goes from the cistern down the hill to the hydrant.”

“She’s right.” Spence put his hands on my shoulders. “Your drill is close. You might hit the pipe.”

Kevin gritted his teeth. “I need to move the well. Where the flag’s placed, lifting the derrick would hit the fiber optic cable.” He pointed to the overhead wires.

The front truck wheels just missed the yew bush at the edge of the parking pad. That solved the problem for me because their boss had paced the front yard and muttered about the third well placement. “Todd said you’d have to run over that bush.”

Kevin’s face changed from stormy to sunny. Grabbing the shovel that Dan had used to clear mud and rock from around the drill, Kevin dug up the bush.

I filled a bucket of rain water from the cistern hydrant and stuffed the yew roots in.

Spence removed Timber LOK screws from landscape lumber and moved two pieces aside so the truck didn’t have to back over the wood.

Kevin moved the truck to the original, white painted X position.

All three of us stood and watched Dan hammer in the stakes for the fabric barrier.

Poking me with his elbow, Spence spoke to Kevin. “You didn’t ask about Janet’s fancy dress.”

Kevin turned his head to conceal his cheeks puffing into a wide grin. He didn’t ask.

By the end of the day, they’d drilled the third well and forced the tubing down. Only filling that well with grout and threading the ends of the tubing through the steel casing remained. They easily accomplished those tasks Friday morning without me interrupting with questions or photos—I’d already observed those operations.

When they rolled the grout filling tube into a four foot wheel, however, I went out to say goodbye. “Thanks for letting me ask questions and take photos. I appreciate all you did. Watching you was better than watching an award-winning documentary.”

Kevin’s cheeks reddened.

“Do you have another job this afternoon?”

He paused in securing the wheel of tubing to the truck. “What’s the date today?”

“The seventeenth,” I blurted. “Yesterday was Jane Austen’s two hundred forth-sixth birthday. I wore the regency dress to celebrate her.”

Grinning, Kevin shook his head. “Our next job is Monday. We’ll prep the truck today.”

A blue Kennihan truck had arrived a half hour earlier. Reluctant to leave Kevin and Dan, but telling myself they had work to do, I marched to the other side of the house across the white trench lines painted on the grass. An older man operated the backhoe. Two younger workers stood at the edge of the trench—one with a shovel, the other poised to fetch tools.

Intending to ask permission to take photos before Spence could warn them about me, I approached the young men.

The scraping, crunching, and beeping of the backhoe masked the rumble of the two drilling trucks driving down West Creek Road. Sorrow and gratitude jostled inside me—the friendly professional drillers wouldn’t be back, but, in two and a half days, they’d completed three geothermal wells, ignored the camera flashing, and answered a myriad of questions. They’d also treated me with respect—not like a crazy old busybody.