Tractor Hire Rates?

[JerryPara]

On last trip I got a couple of tractors in to drop the side of 2 mountains by about 6 feet and do a couple of new road routes....great couple of guys .....2 days work and they only stopped for lunch...

9-00am start to sundown ...no complaints and cost me 10 K...

will get thm back again March again to do some drains and another road..

Now I need some bore holes....so.....

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been quoted 700bt a metre......

About 3 years ago I dropped a borehole for water next to my then proposed house. They quoted me 13000 baht for a 100mm hole. They found water at 20 m but went down to 31 m. I dare say that price would be higher now due to price of diesel increasing. If I wanted a electric pump that would have been 7000 baht extra.

I paid 5000 for a 4 inch Bore hole at 4 places and it was about 10K for a 5 inch place ... don't ask me why one more inch was twice as much. I know the normal house hole is 4" but we needed the larger one to irrigation at one farm. I insisted on the depth and lost that battle, but was guaranteed if it ever went dry he would be back to fix it. He is a local guy. The way I understand it is, they hit water then go a bit deeper. That is not a problem for they drilled a lot of hole and I expect they know a lot better than I do. I don't remember if they used slurry or not but there was a lot of red dirt and I know they pumped water down as they did it. I only worry the water level will change from dry to rainy seasons and the depth won't be enough.

As and aside, I had a well a our house stop pumping. It was in water but it was so deep the pump was not strong enough to pump it up. It was what they call "one line"[in thai]. For the deeper wells you need a "2 line" pumps. We bought a neighbors and it actually had two lines, one the water went up the other the water went down. They were different sizes lines also. One was about 1" dia and the other a little smaller say 3/4" made Italy.

If you are interested you should take a look at detailed explanation Maisefarmer gave in farming forum. They won't last long unless they use slurry to make the hole.

Edited July 16, 2008 by JerryPara

[Maizefarmer]

As the subject has come up again - let me reinforce the importance of getting any bore done PROPERLY.

There are very few instances in which the use of slurry is not required or justified ( examples in solid rock - lime stone, granite and sandstone) - other than for these cases it is a false economy to skip the use of slurry.

It serves 2 purposes:

a) increases the specific gravity of the fluid being pumped down the bore during the drilling which helps to "lift" bored sand, stone, pebbles and other material (check the settling the pond to see whats coming up - if nothing is coming up the slurry is to "thin").

helps consolidate the bore wall and prevent it from collapsing in over time - important because of the large seasonal fluctuations many regional water tables to subjected to in Thailand, and the resultant borehole/wall "movement" that results from repeated drying and saturation.

Use it