Picking an Architect III

Picking up where we left last time. The construction driveway is in and the tree stumps have been cleared. We did it with somewhere around 3 feet of snow on the ground. Luckily the frost was only 6-12" deep into the ground. I have the feeling when the snow does melt, there will be a lot of mess to clean up, but for now, the driveway is in and we have access to the site.

So the next step up is to get a water well drilled. Given the experience of the driveway contracting, I decided to handle this myself. Calling up two local water well drillers, I get a bid from each one after showing them the location I want for the well. In the best tradition of the engineering profession, I give each one a look at the site and point out the location I want for the well. Like good contractors they give me a folksy sashay around the well site and their ability to handle each and every possible eventuality. The sun is shining and the bluebirds are singing, even in February.

Good written quotes, explicitly listing assumptions, pricing and known information, come in the day after the site visit in the case of both contractors. I make my decision and authorize one of the contractors to do the work shortly thereafter. A day after that, the contractor not chosen calls me up and wonders how his quote looks. Uh-oh. In a flat business like voice, I tell him that I chose the other contractor to do the job. After a pause, he asks the natural question, "Why did I choose the other contractor?"

To tell the truth, I don't have a good reason. The price was close enough that a choice based on price alone would sound weak in my ears, my pride as an engineer required a better reason. They both were experienced and had a good reputation. The real reason was that the driller chosen had charmed me. He was an old oil and gas geologist from Kentucky and had that bluegrass charm. That doesn't cut it as a rational reason either. So I lied. Or rather I provided a plausible excuse. The beauty of the simple hard logic of the engineer when confronted with the complexity of human interaction takes refuge in the comfort of a little white lie.

What happened next certainly proves that there is justice in the world, at least when viewed by the drilling contractor not chosen. We mobilize on site and drill the water well. It soon seems that this is not a well chosen spot ( pun intended). Hard rock interspersed with clay/rock mixtures ruin drill bits and slow down drilling. At the end of a weeks drilling, we are at 925 feet and a well that flows 1.5 gpm. Not only are we going to have a big expensive high pressure pump, its not going to be pumping much water. This is not a good well, it will work, but I had hoped for much better.

Now disaster strikes. In casing the well, it turns out that the sides of the borehole around 400 feet down won't hold. They keep caving in and the driller can't hold the well casing without its breaking. Something about a mix of weathered rock and clay not being stable. Not only do we have a poor well, but we don't even have that. The most realistic option is to cement the well and start over. The driller and I, looking at our boots and kicking the dirt, make half-hearted comments about sharing the cost in an equitable way and moving on. The precision and logical beauty of the bid process had been totally destroyed by the chaos of inscrutable nature.

But chastened now, the driller and I seriously consider where to drill the next time. Before, the driller had simply accepted the location I chose. At the time, the driller had said that the site looked ok to him. But in all honesty, I had appeared as the knowledgeable owner, while he had been the humble contractor, trying to get the work. Now we were both in the manure and somewhat humbled, for the minute at least.

The driller took off his Kentucky Colonel persona and got out his geologist's hammer. We walked along the road and took notice of things that I had not even seen before. He brushed a thick layer of snow from a number of rock outcroppings and inspected the newly visible rocks. The driller's son, who actually ran the drilling rig and had let his father do the talking up to now, found his voice. He had a lot to say about the practical issues of particular locations and rock layers. Over the course of fifteen minutes, I learned a lot about the geology of my land.

Choosing a new location, we decided to move forward and drill again. Doing what we should have done the first time, success smiled on our efforts this try. We found a 12 gpm well at 325 feet.