Soil Sampling Drills

The best drill is capable of completing the required tests at the specified depth while accommodating any site access constraints. Lone Star Drills offers several portable options for limited-access soil sampling projects, including:

• The LST1A+ and LST1A+HD: Highly mobile and mounted on a single-axle trailer for transport with a small truck, UTV or ATV, these drills are powerful enough to bore to depths of 50 or 100 feet, depending on the model.
• LST1G+: Offers the same portability with a single-axle trailer and optional cathead kit and manual hammer for projects that require standard penetration testing (SPT).
• Big Beaver auger drill rig: A practical option for uniquely challenging locations or enclosed areas with the option to locate the power source outside the work area.

Read our blog for more tips on choosing the right soil sampling drill, and contact us to discuss the best equipment for your operation.

It depends on the operator’s experience level and your local requirements. Skilled operators can use a manual hammer with a cathead kit to take accurate samples, but automatic hammers transfer more energy — and more consistent energy — to the drill rod for standard penetration testing. Many states and cities have begun requiring automatic hammers to improve consistency and accuracy. Read more in our blog.

Most of our soil sampling rigs are compatible with safety hammers for standard penetration testing.

• Optional SSK-1 cathead kit with manual safety hammer: Big Beaver
• Cathead kit and manual safety hammer included: LST1G+, LST1G+HD
• Automatic hammer included: LST1G+HDA, LSGT+HDA

Location, vehicle availability and a number of other factors come into play when choosing between a truck-, track- or trailer-mounted soil sampling drill. Here’s an overview:

• Track-mounted rig: Best for collecting samples in areas where you can’t drive a vehicle or areas with delicate turf. The tracks spread out the drill’s weight to reduce ground pressure and the risk of turf damage.
• Trailer-mounted rig: Ideal for contractors who don’t have a dedicated vehicle for the drill and for areas that are more easily accessible with a smaller truck, UTV or ATV.
• Truck-mounted rig: Speeds up the setup process when a dedicated vehicle is available. Some contractors report being able to have the drill ready to go within 10 minutes of arriving at a jobsite.

Lone Star Drills and our parent company, Little Beaver, offer a range of soil sampling rigs that are capable of drilling in sand, clay and soft rock formations. Additionally, we offer a selection of auger points and blades to match the soil conditions and improve drilling efficiency. These components do the cutting as the auger rotates. While standard points and blades are sufficient for softer soil, heavy-duty points and blades cut quickly through rocky soil, and carbide blades are recommended for drilling in hard clay and hard pan soils.

Solid-stem augers can be used with a split spoon sampler to collect a soil sample from cohesive soil, which is soil with a high clay content that stays intact when it’s disturbed. Hollow-stem augers are ideal for non-cohesive soil such as sand and gravel. The hollow stem acts like a casing to keep the borehole from caving in, creating a clear path for inserting a split spoon sampler on drill rods through the open end. You can learn more about both types of augers in our blog.

Lone Star Drills soil sampling drills are all compact and highly portable. Where large truck-mounted units can have difficulty accessing undeveloped areas and may take longer to transport, Lone Star Drills drill rigs are compact, which allows them to be mounted on a small trailer that can be pulled by a small truck or ATV or on a light- to medium-duty truck. They provide more transportability and maneuverability than larger models while offering comprehensive capabilities to conduct standard penetration testing, geotechnical testing, split-spoon sampling and hollow-stem sampling in various soil types across multiple test locations.

Choosing the correct auger points and blades for the soil conditions can improve your drilling productivity for soil sampling applications. Additional soil sampling accessories will depend on your soil testing requirements and could include an SSK-1 cathead kit, AWJ drilling rod, hollow-stem augers, split spoon samplers, manual or automatic safety hammers and hand sampling tools.