well drilling and underground voids

kind of weird but i thought id run it by you guys. had the well guy out last week to replace my submersible pump. he was explaining how they drill wells, set casings, sandpoints ect. he was telling me about a well they tried to drill a week before. at about 210 ft the bit broke thru into an under ground void, thats what he called it. it was an air cavern underground. they dropped a line down and they went 300 ft and did not hit bottom. we are in north central illinois, not in cave country. there was talk at our old farm area about some kind of tower being installed and the drill rig putting in the footers broke thru into another void and lost the drill head down the hole. at the time i just thought it was an urban legend type thing. if these caverns are underground, funny they are not full of water. anybody else heard of such a thing?

Limestone caverns are found in many formations. I believe (and have been in several) they are in that area. Limestone is easily eroded by the PH of rain, and voids happen when there is not enough ground water to fill them. Ask Mark Fisher, a geologist at Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, Ill. for information. I have no contact info. Call the school. 815-753-8100 and ask for the number or to be forwarded. Jim
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Whether or not there's air or water in a cavern depends on the elevation of the cavern in relation to the surrounding terrain, and what the water table depth is. I for one would LOVE to have a cave on my property, but not right under my house...
There are a number of Karsts in the area, which is a sunken area where water drains into underground caverns and waterways. So the chances of having voids in the ground around here is fairly good.

Makings of a sink hole.

I have been in some of the caverns in southern Indiana, they are huge,,it makes you wonder about what we are driving over....

It would probably amaze, and scare, us at what all is below our feet. In this case, it soundsnds like a good time to get someone to drop a camera down in the hole, and see what there is to see.

Who knows, it may be a HUGE, unknown cave, or cavern, that could become the next big tourist attraction with some development.

That's how Inner Space Cavern was found.

It's near Austin Tx. The highway dept was drilling for overpass piers, they drilled into air!

Supposedly one of the workers wanted to go down and take a look, so they harnessed him up and lowered him into the hole. He couldn't see the bottom, but told them to keep lowering him.

I guess his light wasn't very good, and they lowered him down into a decaying pile of bat guano!

It was warm, and fuzzy...

Thought something had him! LOL
Inner Space Cavern

In 1980 Texaco was drilling a oil well in Lake Peigneur La.
Because of a mapping mistake they were off on the mark and drilled into the top a working salt mine cavern.
The resulting rush of water going down the drill hole sucked the oil rig; barges; houses; 150 foot tall trees; and everything else down into the cavern.

When they drilled my well the guy went down 15 feet and hit my spring and started to pump the small lake backwards. He kept going and hit 2 caves as he went down.

Story goes there is a big cave in Texas where they where doing core samples for a Hwy and they hit a big cave and it was so big they cut a hole in big enough to lower a man into it and he could not see the cave walls with the lights he was given. If memory serves me right they do tours in it and it is called Mammoth cave.

there is one near me just east of Iowa City used for natural gas storage it is huge

Old I think your talking about Inner Space Cave in Tx
Mammoth Cave is in Ky a little south of me

The underground natural gas storage in Iowa is not caverns, it is stored in sandstone with large voids, they push the water out with the gas.

I know it is not inner space but any how it is big unless they renamed it. I do know it was found when they where doing a interstate Hwy and had to move the Hwy a mile or two to avoid the cave

My grandfather told stories of that near his farm. First story, as a lad he was fox hunting, the fox and dog went in a hole , he could here the dog barking underground. Second story, blind (no eyes) salamanders used to show up in a neighbors spring once in a while. Third story, more modern times, a well driller broke into a void while drilling a well and found an underground pond. All in the same area.

Dont know about voids but do know about Inner Space cave because it was found in Georgetown,Texas where I was born and raised. It was found on our old Pastor Luther Laubachs ranch when I35 was being built. The original drill hole is located on the east side of the highway, it has a small building built over it to secure it. They moved the highway back west a couple hundred yards and drilled the pier holes back south and west of the original hole several hundred yards and then drilled and dug west of the overpass and were able to open and access the cave.

I have heard of that happening in MN drilling water wells, and the void is full of water, so that is good. I can sometimes bend the drill rod if the rock is at a bad angle, and sometimes it's hard to pull the bit out.

Back in 1967 when the guy drilled my well. he went down about 60 ft. with casing until he hit solid rock. (very unusual around here to pound casing that far) He went another 50 ft. with a dry hole and then the bit plunged about 25ft. and water came up within 60ft. of the top of the casing. I have never had any shortage of water and the well has always supplied our home and adjacent business.
The water is extreamly cold all year long and no hints of sulfur, or surface water in the spring, like most wells around here in limestone bed rock have. There are still a good number of hand dug wells and springs in use and also several arteasian wells that have public access. There is also a spring water bottling facility a few miles from here.-------------------------Loren

Here ya go. Everything went By By!
Drill

Here in the Philadelphia area the expressway dissapeared a few times. They had to fill the hole with load after load of rock and gravel and top it with loads of cement. Took several days.

Yep there are along with under ground rivers as we have the latter running under me . I have been on on oil and gas drilling locations when they have found one and lost circulation . One such deal i was involved in i was called to build the drilling location dig the mud pits and the blow pit , then help with getting the rig and all support in along with DRAGGIN in the water trucks as it was a plum nasty location . I had just finished up the last of the pits when the tool pusher came back and said that he had the rig setting out on the road and needed me to start getting stuff in and wanted the rig in first then the sub and the center tub then the air units as he was going to start on air first then switch to mud once he had surface set as that would give me time to get the water truck back and get the mud pit filled . back then they were poking holes in the ground sometime in as little as four days from start to finish . While i was getting the rest of the stuff pulled back in they had the rig up and were starting to drill before the first water truck arrived they had close to 90 feet on surface pipe in the ground when all of a sudden just after they added a forty foot piece of 13 5/8th pipe and they had started to drill again that pipe just started dropping and they were trying to stop it from going down on it's own . The water trucks started arriving and i got busy dragging them back in while the rig hands were fighting the surface pipe and they would ad another forty foot piece and it kept on sinking and not setting . they usually had four of five joints of 13 5/8ths with them as USUALLY three joints was more then enough to set in a solid rock formation to be cemented into and they like to have a couple feet of surface sticking up out of the ground . They ran out of surface pipe and had to call for more . On that hole they put in over five hundred feet of surface to get it set . I was called onto another drilling location where the rig drilling on air blew out a cavity of sand under the rig and the whole rig started to tip over before they could pull there string and get the rig down . They held the rig upright with the winch lines off two D 6 D Cats and then tried to pull the rig out and she started to go down . The two 6's could not give enough tuggem pull power to move it and they called for help and myself and another guy we took 2 850 Deeres down and before we got that rig out there were two more D 7 F's added and one more D6 D to the mix and i can not even come close to how many feet of winch line was pulled into along with one brand new R 700 Mack . Big Butch and i were hooked to the ft. of that Mack with a double line set to two 70000 lb winches and we pulled that brand new Dickerson set up Mack in two pieces at the firewall. Built anothr location over top of the underground river that flows under me and when the rig broke into it they had water shooting over top of the darrick and had to case off thru it . I still chuckle about that one . The tool pusher Wally told me that he wanted my water truck there first thing in the morning to fill the pits as he was going to run surface on air and have it set before dark and cemented and be ready to start on mud by daylite he had enough water with him to get started but was going to need a lot more water due to the depth of this hole . Tried to tell him but he said on no this is not going to be wet hole look how high up we are setting she will be dry . As i loaded the dozer up and headed for the barn about 27 miles up the road . When i got to the barn i put the feed bag on the dozer and the old Brockway and had just hung up the hoses when the shop phone went off . I ran in and answered it and it was Walley screaming like a mad man yelling get that tractor back down here now i have water shootin fifty feet over top the rig and the big blow pit you built me is filling fast . So the phone is hung up back in the brockway and back down to the location . as i pulled up four rig hands were there to help me get unloaded and back the 1200 feet to the location and start digging a second pit to contain the water . 15 blade widths wide 15 blade withs long and just as deep as i could go and just as fast as i could make it move dirt . As i pushed the last blade up and out the water broke of the dam of the first pit and started filling the second one . On that location it was the first time i had ever hauled fresh water off a location .Two trucks running non stop for two days hauling a 190 Bbl.s between the two each trip .

That kind of thing happens around Sonora Tx drilling oil wells. Drill into cave and lose circulation.