Pilot guided Auger Drilling in UXO area – village Hooge Zwaluwe

What to do if you have to drill in ground that is marked as a UXO (unexploded ordnance) area?

Since this is a challenge that we regularly face, we have developed a new technique in cooperation with survey and clearance contractor AVG to investigate through a pilot bore whether the drill path is free of unexploded ordnance. After much consultation, testing and constant adjustment, we have found a way; we the  result is a probe in the front of the auger rod and this probe registers metallic objects that are in the ground. Anomalies are displayed on a monitor which is read in real time by an expert from AVG.

This is how we tackled the challenge in  the village Hooge Zwaluwe, where the drill path under the track could not be declared free of unexploded ordnance through the usual method (excavating layer by layer and scanning the layers in between). We completed the pilot guided drilling of 21 metres with a ø110 mm rod, after which we pulled back the clients HDPE casing pipe for a fibre optical cable the work on installing this fibre-optic line has progressed further!