One home builder isn’t keeping his appreciation for a certain drilling technique underground.
North Vancouver businessman Tony Rudner has become an outspoken advocate for what’s called directional drilling, a lesser-used method he said significantly reduced the cost and timeline of a recent storm drain extension.
Before starting a project to subdivide a single-family lot at 646 East Fourth Street into two single-family homes with suites, he hadn’t investigated the storm drain when he bought the property.
As it turned out, the storm drain was 300 feet west of the property, meaning no one on his block was connected. After speaking with the City of North Vancouver, municipal staff wanted him to hook up to the stormwater system.
A few months went by. When Rudner followed up with the city’s engineering department, staff told him they were overrun with work, and asked if he’d be willing to oversee the project himself.
So Rudner hired a civil engineer, who came up with a plan to employ directional – also called trenchless, or horizontal – drilling to do the dirty work.
The most common method used to install utilities is open-cut excavation. With this technique, a trench is dug, pipes are laid at the bottom and the hole is backfilled. Anything on the surface is torn up, whether it be sidewalk, or someone’s yard.
“You would have to close the road and dig up the asphalt and take it away, bring it back,” said Rudner. “It’s extremely expensive, and also toxic.”
But in directional drilling, the bore moves horizontally instead of vertically, leaving most of the surface untouched.
Potential pitfalls with the directional method are hitting services or a stubborn rock. But if you know where the pipes and wires are, and the stones aren’t too tough, there are no issues, Rudner said.
He hired a company called Ironman Directional Drilling, which is based in Salmon Arm.
“They happen to have the biggest and most powerful machine around,” he said. “They hit a rock, and they drilled straight through.”
The Ironman crew spent two days drilling the hole, then they pulled 300 feet of pipe through it – all with the same machine.
“Instead of taking three weeks … these guys went straight through, virtually in two days,” Rudner said.
Directional drilling becoming a more viable option for underground utilities, city staff say
“It’s an amazing process,” he said. “The footprint is amazingly small compared to what it would have been. The cost is about a third of the price.”
The builder also commended the City of North Vancouver and its staff for supporting his approach.
While rarer for residential projects, contractors typically use directional drilling machines to install telecommunications and traffic signal conduits, according to the city’s public works team.
“In this particular location, there is no existing storm sewer so we required the developer to build one to service the new development,” reads a statement from the works department. “There were also large buried utilities, including a large diameter high-pressure gas main, as well as mature trees to consider, so digging an open trench would have been difficult.”
Given the size of the city’s team, staff often engage specialized contractors for projects like this.
“We have found, in consultation with experts, that directional drilling can be a good approach in some situations – typically short runs of small diameter pipe in favourable ground conditions,” public works staff said.
With the lower cost, faster completion times and less environmental disturbance, would the city consider directional drilling for more projects?
“The capabilities of the equipment and the experience of local contractors continues to evolve and improve, so this methodology will hopefully become a more and more viable option for underground utility construction in the future,” staff said.
