WorldWide Drilling Resource

WorldWide Drilling Resource ® is a proud member of this association. National Drilling Association Tel: 877-632-4748 Fax: 216-803-9900 www.nda4u.com 11 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® JULY 2015 About Boring Logs by Scott Cosby The topic this month will focus on boring logs. Specifically, a detailed def- inition and a brief list of items which should be included in the logs. All the work and cost of drilling (e.g. water well, geotechnical, geothermal) is done for a single purpose - information. Boring logs can make or break a project. Accurate boring logs become the basis for foundation and excavation de- signs, and so on. Poor boring logs cause problems from the very beginning, and can negatively impact project budgets as well as the outcomes. The boring log is the basic record of almost every type of drilling activity and provides a detailed record of the work performed and the findings of the inves- tigation. It is a description of exploration procedures and subsurface conditions encountered during drilling, sampling, and coring. The field log should be written leg- ibly, and should be kept as clean as possible. The final version should be generated into a neat, clean log with some type of boring log software. The following is the brief list of items, which should be included in boring logs: • Boring location • Dri l l operator and/or contrac- tor name. • Borehole start and finish date. • Boring number. • Type of drilling equipment used. • Drill bit and/or sampler size and type. • Ground elevation of boring. • Water level information. • Type of drilling operation used to advance and stabilize the hole. • Comparative resistance to drilling. • Sampler depth, penetration, and recovery. • Soil and/or rock identification, in- cluding density, consistency, color, moisture, structure, and geologic ori- gin. • Drill operator’s remarks on miscel- laneous occurrences during drilling. There are numerous online sources on this topic and excellent boring log software available through the current Internet search engines. Other articles of mine related to this topic in the WWDR archives: see January 2010 ( After the " ; # 511-,(2 0) 20'5&43 %9 4+(3( ,/( $/5)$&452(23 ; 08 029'0/ # ! : : $8 $,- 3$-(3 *,6(/3,/4(2/$4,0/$- &0. "(% ,4( 777 *,6(/3,/4(2/$4,0/$- &0. Cosby cont’d on page 12.