I meet Maarten van Veem at 7Am downstairs in the cafeteria. the field guys are having coffee (of course), so we all sit and chat for awhile. Maarten is a bit taller than me but built very top heavy, like popeye. his hands are enormous and they completely engulf my hand when he shakes it. he's nearly bald, and has a very jolly nature about him. always smiling, positive, making little jokes. we jump in his truck and head out to the jobsite. we have one drill hole today to about 21 meters. it will be a long day though because its a limited access rig. we're drilling in the middle of a socer field so we have to be very careful not to disturb the field. the project is for a HDD electric line that will traverse underneath the field and is about 15km total length.
we meet Arno who is the operator. he's 27, with shocking blue eyes and a bit of a jokester. he and maarten have worked together many times so they are doing little pranks to each other all day. in Fugro NL, there are specific people who do the logging. the engineers dont do any field work at all. Maarten is surprised to know that i've done plenty of logging before. we unload all of the bentonite and plastic tracking from the truck and make our way out to the field. it takes awhile since we have to track out one sheet at a time. i'm really tired from lifting all the bags of sand and bentonite and the tracking. we get the rig positioned and of course, go in for a coffee break.
drilling starts at about 9:30AM and we finish up at about 3PM. drilling is slow and REALLY messy. the upper 15m is all vey soft clays and peats, and the GW table is only 1m below the ground. the cuttings are put into wheelborrows and i have to run them over to a stockpile off of the field area. the sampling is all push tubes (short ones, about 40cm long) and also they obtain bag samples from the cuttings every meter. the sampling procedure is very similar to offshore sampling. the push samples are waxed at the end of the day. classification is done by Maarten using a PDA, like a Plogger i guess or similar. i am COVERED from head to toe in mud. my coverall was orange and now its grey. i dont think i've ever been dirtier in the field. awesome!!!
after drilling we track back out and load up the truck, and go inside again for more coffee and fill out the paperwork. arno wants to email me. i give him my email address. he says he will send me some photos of the rig since i forgot my camera today. sure.
i got back in the office around 6PM after making a detour to check a water level on a well that was installed a few days ago and unloading the truck. elisabet and robin are still in the office and they laugh at my mud-covered jacket. we laugh with Adriaan about the days events and then i head home around 7PM. i go downtown to get some food and walk around and get back home around 9PM. i'm exhausted!!! bed time :)
we meet Arno who is the operator. he's 27, with shocking blue eyes and a bit of a jokester. he and maarten have worked together many times so they are doing little pranks to each other all day. in Fugro NL, there are specific people who do the logging. the engineers dont do any field work at all. Maarten is surprised to know that i've done plenty of logging before. we unload all of the bentonite and plastic tracking from the truck and make our way out to the field. it takes awhile since we have to track out one sheet at a time. i'm really tired from lifting all the bags of sand and bentonite and the tracking. we get the rig positioned and of course, go in for a coffee break.
drilling starts at about 9:30AM and we finish up at about 3PM. drilling is slow and REALLY messy. the upper 15m is all vey soft clays and peats, and the GW table is only 1m below the ground. the cuttings are put into wheelborrows and i have to run them over to a stockpile off of the field area. the sampling is all push tubes (short ones, about 40cm long) and also they obtain bag samples from the cuttings every meter. the sampling procedure is very similar to offshore sampling. the push samples are waxed at the end of the day. classification is done by Maarten using a PDA, like a Plogger i guess or similar. i am COVERED from head to toe in mud. my coverall was orange and now its grey. i dont think i've ever been dirtier in the field. awesome!!!
after drilling we track back out and load up the truck, and go inside again for more coffee and fill out the paperwork. arno wants to email me. i give him my email address. he says he will send me some photos of the rig since i forgot my camera today. sure.
i got back in the office around 6PM after making a detour to check a water level on a well that was installed a few days ago and unloading the truck. elisabet and robin are still in the office and they laugh at my mud-covered jacket. we laugh with Adriaan about the days events and then i head home around 7PM. i go downtown to get some food and walk around and get back home around 9PM. i'm exhausted!!! bed time :)
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