WorldWide Drilling Resource

90 DECEMBER 2014 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® Driving in Fog and the Solutions to Seeing in Dirty Water by Ray Roerick Sales Manager, Well-Vu, Inc. I am sure all of us, at one time or another, have driven in heavy fog at night. Well, this is very similar to lowering a camera into a cloudy well, such as right after we pull a pump and the casing is too tight to get the pump back in. If you recall traveling down the road in heavy fog, you can hardly see with your lights on dim, much less putting them on bright and seeing less. (Yet a lot of operators think we need more light.) So take this same scenario, when we are driving in a thick fog, and pull up behind another car (or cloudy water in a well), and all of a sudden we can see a lot better. The reason is the car in front of us literally has the same prob- lem we had, limited visibility from its own lights. But, since his lights are reflecting back at his vehicle illuminating the entire road and ditch, we can see better to the front and defi- nitely to the side. Now the road and ditch out our side window, driveways, and mailboxes are easier to see; and we can see farther thanks to the lights on the vehicle in front of us. This is simple to replicate in a well. One option is to attach an auxiliary light six to ten inches in front of the camera by taping it to any rod, such as a braz- ing rod, then tape the rod to the cam- era housing so the camera is six to ten inches in front of the camera. The other driving scenario is when a vehicle pulls up behind us in fog, we still can’t see much farther in front of us, but the visibility out our side window has greatly increased, so we can see the entire ditch, fence, mailboxes, etc. To repl icate this, simply take two or three lights and tape them to the back of the camera housing so they are point- ed at the sidewall about six to eight inches in front of the camera. A good rule of thumb is to pump water into a five-gallon pail. If you can’t see five inches into the water, the cam- era will not be able to either. NOTHING CAN SEE THROUGH DIRT. Remember like all wells, every well you video will be different. Ray Ray Roerick may be contacted via e-mail at michele@ worldwidedrillingresource.com Light in front. Light in back.