The geothermal industry is seeing many water well and truck mounted drills being repurposed for geothermal installations. These larger units can be difficult to maneuver through residential sites and can be costly to transport and maintain. RigKits LLC, however has produced a line of dedicated geothermal drilling rigs. Their rigs are compact, and are powerful enough to drill over 600ft, but without the hefty price tag.

“Drilling through over burden and into hard rock can present a challenge for many drillers”, says Simon Duck, CEO of RigKits. “But when you match your drill tooling to the right rig, torque and rpm, the problem is solved and penetration rates are increased significantly”.

Mark Nichols of North American Drill Services has been drilling with the equipment and has achieved staggering drill speeds using this ‘match method’.

“The rig is bullet proof”, says Nichols, “If people want to see a rig that’s worked hard, our unit has over 4,500 hours on the clock and has done about 500,000 feet of drilling, the rig is pretty incredible”.

“On our best day of drilling, we did 1,700 feet.  Last week we beat that record and got over 1,800 feet in one day “. Nichols says the 10ft rods and compact size allow the rig to get into spaces larger rigs could not.  “ We regularly drill 800ft a day and it drills just as well as the big rigs, but can get into the tight residential jobs too”.

RigKits Sales Manager, Elliott Duck says “our customers are always impressed with the speeds and power our units offer. Most are surprised that it doesn’t take a $300k machine to drill efficiently to the depths required by geothermal installations. Our equipment is designed for geothermal drilling and our team of technical specialist make sure that our customers get the right equipment and tooling for their ground conditions and even provide onsite drill training to get them started”.

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