Photo by Sue Watson
Doug Goss digs down to locate the underground boring as Tyler Cannon looks on.
Team puts conduit underground
New underground boring technology makes it possible to pull conduit for buried phone cable with the accuracy of threading a needle.
A three-man team with Delta Boring was at work recently on East Elder Avenue and South Market Street in Holly Springs.
Directional boring, also called horizontal directional drilling, is a steerable, trenching method of installing underground pipe, conduit, or cables in a shallow arc along a prescribed bore path. The technology involves using a surface-launched drilling rig that produces minimal impact to the surrounding area.
The steel drill pipe is pushed through the underground, link by link, and uses a drill bit on the end of the steel pipe . Then the conduit is attached to the last link by a back reamer and pulled back out through the drilled hole.
Drilling fluid is used in the process.
The method does not disturb the surface as does trenching.
Directional boring is used when it is not practical to trench or excavate and can be used in a variety of soil conditions and jobs including road, landscape and river crossings. Directional boring is being used in Holly Springs to run utilities under the railroad tracks at Salem bridge and to lay plastic gas mains that will replace cast-iron gas mains in the city.