Spencer Powell and his drilling crew assembled behind the Living Word Harvester Church at a spot where, according to Powell’s ancient craft, they would find water.
Powell, 59, learned to dowse for water more than 40 years ago from an old “water witcher” known simply as Mr. Ray. Now Powell runs a dowsing and drilling business, Diversified Water Well Drilling, and he carries a notebook filled with the lengthening list of those seeking his services. Demand has skyrocketed in recent months here, about 180 miles west of Dallas, and statewide, fueled by the ongoing drought, heat wave and a boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a type of oil drilling that requires lots of water.
To find the best place to drill behind the church, Powell stopped by a few weeks earlier and grabbed two L-shaped divining rods he keeps stowed in the back of his 1950s drill rig. Slowly, he walked through the grass near a few mesquite trees until he felt the rods move. Then they crossed, signaling a potential water source.
Then he recited a short prayer.
Powell has encountered plenty of skeptics. Abilene, a city of about 120,000, is known for its conservative churches and Bible Belt politics. Powell assures doubters that water witching has nothing to do with witchcraft; it’s a skill that can be learned, though some people are born with the gift.
These days, people are less likely to ask questions, including the folks at Living Word, desperate as they are for water. Powell receives several calls a day, mostly from residents whose wells have run dry.
The drought has taken a toll on Abilene, withering everything from the lawn at the town’s chief tourist attraction, Frontier Texas!, to nearby Dyess Air Force base. On the day Powell prepared to drill by the church, city officials were scheduled to meet to discuss whether to restrict outdoor watering to once a week because the level at Lake Fort Phantom Hill had dropped 10 feet below the spillway. Residents had already been restricted to watering no more than twice a week.
Powell drills at least one well a day, mostly in rural yards, on farms and ranches. He charges $25 a foot for drilling a completed well, $10 a foot if the well turns out to be dry. He says he finds water about half of the time.
About 40 feet into the sticky red clay behind Living Word, he found it — although he was still not sure if it was of sufficient quality and quantity to make a decent well.
He sent his brother, Kyle Caswell, 52, to find a hose while he and another worker began digging two pits near the drill. They would shoot water into the drill hole, softening the dirt as they drilled deeper. The overflow would gush into the pits.
A man from the church pulled up. He climbed down from his truck in black cowboy boots, surveyed the drill and asked about their progress.
Powell explained that they were about to reach the red bedrock, or “red bed.” Caswell arrived with a hose from the church building and started to sprinkle the dirt under the drill.
“It takes water to get water, don’t it?” the man said before he drove off.
Powell was nervous. It’s one thing to hit water, another to make a working well. He had sunk a well recently on nearby Anson Road, but the flow wasn’t very strong. On this morning, the temperature was climbing into the 80s. He had sweated through the rim of his cap and the back of his shirt.
He hit the red bedrock about 11 a.m., shading the pools of water a darker brown. The drill continued to churn, humming as dragonflies hovered over the pits of muddy overflow. About an hour later, they removed the drill and inserted a PVC pipe into the hole. Muddy water gushed through.
2011年10月18日星期二
2011年10月16日星期日
'Water witcher' is in high demand
Spencer Powell and his drilling crew assembled behind the Living Word Harvester Church at a spot where, according to Powell's ancient craft, they would find water.
Powell, 59, learned to dowse for water more than 40 years ago from an old "water witcher" known simply as Mr. Ray. Now Powell runs a dowsing and drilling business, Diversified Water Well Drilling, and carries a notebook filled with the lengthening list of those seeking his services. Demand has skyrocketed in recent months here, about 180 miles west of Dallas, and statewide, fueled by the ongoing drought, heat wave and a boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a type of oil drilling that requires lots of water.
To find the best place to drill behind the church, Powell stopped by a few weeks earlier and grabbed two L-shaped divining rods he keeps stowed in the back of his 1950s drill rig. Slowly, gripping the short ends of the rods, he walked through the grass near a few mesquite trees until he felt the rods move. Then they crossed, signaling a potential water source.
Then he recited a short prayer.
Powell has encountered plenty of skeptics. Abilene, a city of about 120,000, is known for its conservative churches and Bible Belt politics. Powell assures doubters that water witching has nothing to do with witchcraft; it's a skill that can be learned, though some people are born with the gift.
These days, people are less likely to ask questions, including the folks at Living Word, desperate as they are for water. Powell receives several calls a day, mostly from residents whose wells have run dry.
The drought has taken a toll on Abilene, withering everything from the lawn at the town's chief tourist attraction, Frontier Texas!, to nearby Dyess Air Force Base. On the day Powell prepared to drill by the church, city officials were scheduled to meet to discuss whether to restrict outdoor watering to once a week because the level at Lake Fort Phantom Hill had dropped to 10 feet below the spillway. Residents had already been restricted to watering no more than twice a week.
Powell drills at least one well a day, mostly in rural yards, on farms and ranches. He charges $25 a foot for drilling a completed well, $10 a foot if the well turns out to be dry. He says he finds water about half of the time.
About 40 feet into the sticky red clay behind Living Word, he found it — although he wasn't sure whether it was of sufficient quality and quantity to make a decent well.
He sent his brother, Kyle Caswell, 52, to find a hose while he and another worker began digging two pits near the drill. They would shoot water into the drill hole, softening the dirt as they drilled deeper. The overflow would gush into the pits.
A man from the church pulled up. He climbed down from his truck in black cowboy boots, surveyed the drill and asked about their progress.
Powell explained that they were about to reach the red bedrock, or "red bed." Caswell arrived with a hose from the church building and started to sprinkle the dirt under the drill.
"It takes water to get water, don't it?" the man said before he drove off.
Powell was nervous. It's one thing to hit water, another to make a working well. He had sunk a well recently on nearby Anson Road, but the flow wasn't very strong. On this morning, the temperature was climbing into the 80s. He had sweated through the rim of his cap and the back of his shirt.
At about 11 a.m., he hit the red bedrock, which shaded shading the pools of water a darker brown. The drill continued to churn, humming as dragonflies hovered over the pits of muddy overflow. About an hour later, they removed the drill and inserted a PVC pipe into the hole. Muddy water gushed through.
Powell, 59, learned to dowse for water more than 40 years ago from an old "water witcher" known simply as Mr. Ray. Now Powell runs a dowsing and drilling business, Diversified Water Well Drilling, and carries a notebook filled with the lengthening list of those seeking his services. Demand has skyrocketed in recent months here, about 180 miles west of Dallas, and statewide, fueled by the ongoing drought, heat wave and a boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a type of oil drilling that requires lots of water.
To find the best place to drill behind the church, Powell stopped by a few weeks earlier and grabbed two L-shaped divining rods he keeps stowed in the back of his 1950s drill rig. Slowly, gripping the short ends of the rods, he walked through the grass near a few mesquite trees until he felt the rods move. Then they crossed, signaling a potential water source.
Then he recited a short prayer.
Powell has encountered plenty of skeptics. Abilene, a city of about 120,000, is known for its conservative churches and Bible Belt politics. Powell assures doubters that water witching has nothing to do with witchcraft; it's a skill that can be learned, though some people are born with the gift.
These days, people are less likely to ask questions, including the folks at Living Word, desperate as they are for water. Powell receives several calls a day, mostly from residents whose wells have run dry.
The drought has taken a toll on Abilene, withering everything from the lawn at the town's chief tourist attraction, Frontier Texas!, to nearby Dyess Air Force Base. On the day Powell prepared to drill by the church, city officials were scheduled to meet to discuss whether to restrict outdoor watering to once a week because the level at Lake Fort Phantom Hill had dropped to 10 feet below the spillway. Residents had already been restricted to watering no more than twice a week.
Powell drills at least one well a day, mostly in rural yards, on farms and ranches. He charges $25 a foot for drilling a completed well, $10 a foot if the well turns out to be dry. He says he finds water about half of the time.
About 40 feet into the sticky red clay behind Living Word, he found it — although he wasn't sure whether it was of sufficient quality and quantity to make a decent well.
He sent his brother, Kyle Caswell, 52, to find a hose while he and another worker began digging two pits near the drill. They would shoot water into the drill hole, softening the dirt as they drilled deeper. The overflow would gush into the pits.
A man from the church pulled up. He climbed down from his truck in black cowboy boots, surveyed the drill and asked about their progress.
Powell explained that they were about to reach the red bedrock, or "red bed." Caswell arrived with a hose from the church building and started to sprinkle the dirt under the drill.
"It takes water to get water, don't it?" the man said before he drove off.
Powell was nervous. It's one thing to hit water, another to make a working well. He had sunk a well recently on nearby Anson Road, but the flow wasn't very strong. On this morning, the temperature was climbing into the 80s. He had sweated through the rim of his cap and the back of his shirt.
At about 11 a.m., he hit the red bedrock, which shaded shading the pools of water a darker brown. The drill continued to churn, humming as dragonflies hovered over the pits of muddy overflow. About an hour later, they removed the drill and inserted a PVC pipe into the hole. Muddy water gushed through.
2011年5月2日星期一
CAT® 990 Wheel Loaders Keep Wood Moving at High Volume Paper Mill
On an average day, 450 log trucks rumble in and out of the woodyard at a paper mill in southeast United States. On a really good day, 600 trucks, each carrying 30 tons of pine or hardwood, queue up to be unloaded by one of two CAT® 990H wheel loaders or a 40-ton P&H portal crane.
The CAT wheel loaders were purchased in January 2010 to replace two log stackers. “The log stackers are good machines built well for unloading log trucks,” explains the mill’s woodyard superintendent. “It was more a reliability issue; they just would not hold up in our environment. The 990s were a Godsend. It was a nightmare when our old log stackers were our only machines.”
The woodyard superintendent is responsible for overseeing all activity in the yard from unloading log trucks to ensuring there are enough wood chips to keep the pulp mill well-fed 24/7. Basically, he’s got to keep the wood moving. “My biggest challenge now is making sure we have enough wood chips to feed the digesters of the pulp mill. We have to run very consistently, very reliably to keep the mill running,” he says.
Early in 2009 the biggest challenge was at the beginning of the process — getting log trucks unloaded quickly and consistently. “We would have problems with the log stackers. They would be down and trucks would back up for a half a mile out on the highway. We’d actually end up cutting trucks off for the day because we couldn’t get them unloaded because nothing was running,” he recalls.
Mill management decided to buy two new pieces of equipment. The main requirements for the new machines were: enough capacity to unload a log truck in one pass, stability to lift a full load off the ground without tipping and, of course, reliability. Bottom line, it was all about getting trucks unloaded and out of the woodyard in a timely manner.
Show and Tell
The team charged with determining what machine to buy included the mill manager, the procurement manager, the woodyard superintendent and a woodyard senior operator. They evaluated several makes and models of wheel loaders and log stackers. Besides the CAT 990, they also considered the smaller CAT 988 wheel loader. They still had a 1984 CAT 988B that had already gone through one rebuild and, at 100,000+ hours, now was used as back-up.
After doing their homework, they told their CAT dealer rep, Mike Farris with Thompson Machinery in Tupelo, Miss., that they wanted to go look. So Farris arranged for a one-day whirlwind tour on the company jet to several locations in Georgia and South Carolina to see both the 990 and 988 working in mills doing the same work they needed them to do — unloading 30-ton trucks and reclaiming wood off the ground.
The evaluation team concluded that the 988 could do the job unloading 60,000 lb. truckloads in one pass, but it would be working at close to its maximum tipping capacity of about 65,000 lbs. They were concerned that the machine wouldn’t survive its full life cycle working at the maximum every minute of every day. On the other hand, with a tipping capacity of about 90,000 lbs., the 990 could unload 60,000 lb. truckloads, with another 30,000 lbs. of available capacity to spare.
One mill they visited in South Carolina had two 990s. “The company shared its maintenance records that showed one of the wheel loaders had 30,000 hours and basically no down time other than a hose or two. That’s what the company was looking for — a machine they did not have to work on,” Farris says.
The senior operator was able to ride along with the 990 operator in the jump seat. “I could tell what the machine was capable of doing, just riding with him,” he says. “I didn’t actually unload a truck or handle any wood, but I did operate the machine just to get the feel of it and the functions.”
He asked himself if he would want to run the 990 on a daily basis. “Comparing it to all the machines I’ve experienced in my years at the mill, I thought this was going be a real nice machine — a lot easier to operate, a lot more comfortable,” he says. “The cab was roomy and all the controls were user friendly and handy.”
He especially liked the joystick operation compared to the steering wheel in the old 988 back in the woodyard. “The joystick just seems to give you more room in front. You don’t have that big steering wheel right there in front of you. And I feel like I have a little more control, too.”
According to Farris, by the end of the day, the mill team had pretty much made up their minds that the 990 was the machine size they were looking for.
The CAT wheel loaders were purchased in January 2010 to replace two log stackers. “The log stackers are good machines built well for unloading log trucks,” explains the mill’s woodyard superintendent. “It was more a reliability issue; they just would not hold up in our environment. The 990s were a Godsend. It was a nightmare when our old log stackers were our only machines.”
The woodyard superintendent is responsible for overseeing all activity in the yard from unloading log trucks to ensuring there are enough wood chips to keep the pulp mill well-fed 24/7. Basically, he’s got to keep the wood moving. “My biggest challenge now is making sure we have enough wood chips to feed the digesters of the pulp mill. We have to run very consistently, very reliably to keep the mill running,” he says.
Early in 2009 the biggest challenge was at the beginning of the process — getting log trucks unloaded quickly and consistently. “We would have problems with the log stackers. They would be down and trucks would back up for a half a mile out on the highway. We’d actually end up cutting trucks off for the day because we couldn’t get them unloaded because nothing was running,” he recalls.
Mill management decided to buy two new pieces of equipment. The main requirements for the new machines were: enough capacity to unload a log truck in one pass, stability to lift a full load off the ground without tipping and, of course, reliability. Bottom line, it was all about getting trucks unloaded and out of the woodyard in a timely manner.
Show and Tell
The team charged with determining what machine to buy included the mill manager, the procurement manager, the woodyard superintendent and a woodyard senior operator. They evaluated several makes and models of wheel loaders and log stackers. Besides the CAT 990, they also considered the smaller CAT 988 wheel loader. They still had a 1984 CAT 988B that had already gone through one rebuild and, at 100,000+ hours, now was used as back-up.
After doing their homework, they told their CAT dealer rep, Mike Farris with Thompson Machinery in Tupelo, Miss., that they wanted to go look. So Farris arranged for a one-day whirlwind tour on the company jet to several locations in Georgia and South Carolina to see both the 990 and 988 working in mills doing the same work they needed them to do — unloading 30-ton trucks and reclaiming wood off the ground.
The evaluation team concluded that the 988 could do the job unloading 60,000 lb. truckloads in one pass, but it would be working at close to its maximum tipping capacity of about 65,000 lbs. They were concerned that the machine wouldn’t survive its full life cycle working at the maximum every minute of every day. On the other hand, with a tipping capacity of about 90,000 lbs., the 990 could unload 60,000 lb. truckloads, with another 30,000 lbs. of available capacity to spare.
One mill they visited in South Carolina had two 990s. “The company shared its maintenance records that showed one of the wheel loaders had 30,000 hours and basically no down time other than a hose or two. That’s what the company was looking for — a machine they did not have to work on,” Farris says.
The senior operator was able to ride along with the 990 operator in the jump seat. “I could tell what the machine was capable of doing, just riding with him,” he says. “I didn’t actually unload a truck or handle any wood, but I did operate the machine just to get the feel of it and the functions.”
He asked himself if he would want to run the 990 on a daily basis. “Comparing it to all the machines I’ve experienced in my years at the mill, I thought this was going be a real nice machine — a lot easier to operate, a lot more comfortable,” he says. “The cab was roomy and all the controls were user friendly and handy.”
He especially liked the joystick operation compared to the steering wheel in the old 988 back in the woodyard. “The joystick just seems to give you more room in front. You don’t have that big steering wheel right there in front of you. And I feel like I have a little more control, too.”
According to Farris, by the end of the day, the mill team had pretty much made up their minds that the 990 was the machine size they were looking for.
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