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Comacchios Used for Large Commercial Office Project in Cupertino, CA

Comacchio MC 20 and MC 22With today’s flourishing tech sector, there is plenty of commercial construction work in California’s Silicon Valley.  For such a task, Case Pacific, a well-established West Coast foundation contractor, recently purchased two drill rigs, a Comacchio MC 20 (F04.1) and an MC 22 with revolver, and rented two others from Hammer and Steel to install tiebacks required for a portion of the foundation work at a large construction project located in Cupertino, CA.

Throughout the work, Case Pacific experienced varying degrees of drilling difficulty in regards to soil conditions.  Once drilling commenced, the work was accomplished by open-hole drilling with drag bits and 90 mm rods in sandy/clay material, flushing with air.  However, as the project developed, more clay was encountered, and Case Pacific was forced to switch to drilling with augers.  Further on, more gravel was encountered and they switch to cased holes.  However, the gravel is intermittent through several layers (as they go down in rows), creating somewhat challenging conditions to operate within.

The MC 22A with dual revolver is capable of handling drill rods inside of casing, and was brought in to allow Case Pacific to drill cased holes with only one operator.  This setup can provide advantages over other rigs in that others often require 3 personnel to do the same work when utilizing casing.  In addition to the operator advantages, the rig allowed the contractor to achieve production levels up to 1,200 ft. drill depth per day, which was critical for a job of this scale as some walls have tiebacks 13 rows tall.

The rigs were also selected for their environmental characteristics.  Since this project is being certified LEED, the most widely used green building rating system, all equipment used on this job site are required to utilize Tier 4i engines.  With the Cummins QSB 6.7 tier 4i engines powering these rigs, the Comacchios have been a perfect match for this type of job.

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