Hand Augering a Groundwater Monitoring Well

It’s not often that we have to use hand tools to enable Groundwater Sampling but a couple of weeks ago was one of those times. Our client had purchased a commenced construction of a multiplex and wanted to check for any groundwater contamination. Due to the lack of area to fit a drill rig an innovative solution was found. Using the existing pit dug for a retaining wall (which was about 8 feet deep), we hand augered another 10 feet in depth to reach groundwater. Success for our client with this old school innovative solution on what was a very restricted site. Another solution would have been to drive our split spoons with our gas driven percussion hand operated machine. Depending on soil conditions the split spoon can often be driven to 20ft in depth.