Is the route of your pipeline blocked?

When you want to install an underground pipe or cable, then you would normally think about digging a trench along the route the pipe will follow and laying the pipe in the trench before covering it over again. This method will be perfectly fine when you are working in open country, but it can present a serious problem when the area where you want to dig the trench is already occupied by something. You might find that you need to lay a pipe through an area already filled by housing, a sports ground or even a natural feature such as a river. If you find that you are unable to dig a trench, then there is a solution — you can employ directional drilling instead.

What is directional drilling?

Instead of digging down and creating a trench, directional drilling allows you to drill horizontally through the ground, allowing you to drill a hole from point to point without the need to disturb anything on the surface of the ground. When the hole has been cut, the drill can then pull the pipe or duct through the length of the hole, quickly completing the pipe laying work. This approach to pipe laying has numerous advantages; here are just two of them.  

Much less mess

No matter how tidy you may try to be while you are digging trenches and laying pipes, it is inevitable that there will be some mess. You must dig out all of the rock and soil and store it somewhere while you are working. You will need to open up the whole length of the pipe, which means that you can't avoid disruption over the whole length of the run. By contrast, directional drilling involves only a comparatively small amount of disruption at either end of the section you are laying.  

Much less disruption

Whether you are trying to lay a utility pipe under a housing estate or an electricity cable across an important site for wildlife, you often don't want to disturb things at ground level. Instead of managing without an important utility or planning a lengthy and expensive route around the blockage, you can now use directional drilling to go below it, leaving everything on the surface entirely undisturbed. Directional drilling is both quicker and better for the environment than many of the alternatives.  

To find out more about how you can use directional drilling to make your project proceed more quickly, talk to your local directional drilling company today.