Tulsa Pier Drilling

03/27/2026

Send us your young Sequoyah Eagles seeking careers in construction or who don't want to sit behind a desk and love being outdoors!

Stop by our Tulsa Pier Drilling booth and visit with Kali today at Sequoyah Claremore Public Schools!

Great to see our friend Nancy Phelps from Light of Hope .

Email your resume to jobs .com or call 918-732-9678 to make an appointment for an interview.

Beginning Laborers (Laborer 1) are now being considered.

03/16/2026

🛠️ The Hardest Part of Drilling Isn’t Soil… or Rock — It’s the Moment Between

If you’ve ever been on a drill site, you already know:

Everything can be going smooth…
until you hit that transition.

That exact point where soft soil turns into rock is one of the highest-risk moments in drilling.

⚠️ Why it gets so dangerous:

The ground isn’t clean or predictable.

Instead of a flat rock layer, you get:

🪨 Broken, fractured rock
🧱 Boulders mixed in soil
📉 Uneven, sloping surfaces

👉 That means your drill suddenly hits different resistance on each side

🌀 What happens next?

• One side of the tool hits rock
• The other is still in soil

That imbalance creates:

⚠️ Tool deflection (you go off line)
⚠️ Sudden torque spikes
⚠️ Vibration and heat
⚠️ Broken teeth, cracked welds, or full tool failure

🚫 Why standard tools struggle:

🪛 Soil augers = great in dirt, useless on rock
🪨 Rock bits = too aggressive in soil

Result?

❌ Refusal
❌ Damage
❌ Bad borehole geometry

📉 The real risk: alignment

Even a small deviation at that transition point can:

🏗️ Throw off an entire foundation
🌉 Miss tolerances on bridges or structures
💸 Lead to expensive rework or rejection

🧠 How experienced crews handle it:

✔ Detailed subsurface investigation (know what’s coming)
✔ Adjust speed, pressure, and technique near transitions
✔ Swap tooling at the right moment
✔ Use controlled underreaming to stabilize the hole

💡 Big takeaway:

That soil-to-rock transition might only be a few feet…

…but it can determine whether the entire job succeeds or fails.

💬 Drillers — what’s the worst transition you’ve ever hit? Sand to ledge? Boulders? Something weird?

Deep Foundations Why Mixed Soil-to-Rock Transitions Are the Most Difficult Phase of Overburden Drilling February 7, 2026 Soil-to-rock transitions often involve weathered or fractured rock rather than intact bedrock, creating uneven resistance across the borehole. This variability is a primary cause....

03/13/2026

Another engineering bridge marvel to consider as you ponder deep foundation construction and the heavy civil projects that make our lives possible and better each day!

The Menai Strait Bridge in Wales was the world’s longest suspension bridge when it opened in 1826. It’s still going strong today, thanks to the revolutionary engineering behind it.

03/11/2026

Tulsa Pier Drilling is a proud sponsor of the Seminole County Show Barn, where CEO & Managing Member, Cara Cowan Watts, grew up, and TPD continues to do work throughout the area on commercial and industrial jobs drilling large, deep holes.

03/11/2026

You pay us not just to drill your deep foundation holes, but also to know our industry and have the right tools.

One of the many things we follow at Tulsa Pier Drilling is the engineering side of design. We look for disruptors or just new expectations.

Check out this article in the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) technical magazine.

Tulsa Pier Drilling CEO and Managing Member, Cara Cowan Watts, PhD, is an individual technical member of DFI. Trained as an engineer with multiple degrees, Cara follows all engineering concerns with deep foundation specifications and possibly industry changes to anticipate new equipment needed to make your foundation dreams a reality!

https://www.nxtbook.com/dfi/DEEP-FOUNDATIONS/november-december-2025/index.php #/p/44

🧱 What if we’ve been designing buildings backwards this whole time?

Most buildings are designed like this:

1️⃣ Architect designs the building
2️⃣ Engineers design the structure
3️⃣ THEN someone figures out the foundation

But what if we started with the ground itself?

A fascinating engineering concept called “foundation-based architecture” flips the process:

✔ Start with soil conditions
✔ Design the foundation first
✔ Then design the building around it

Why?

Because the ground determines everything — stability, resilience, cost, and how a building survives earthquakes, floods, and extreme weather.

Some wild examples:

🏨 The InterContinental Shanghai Wonderland Hotel was built inside a quarry using a hybrid foundation system.
🌊 Some buildings use buoyant foundations that let them float during floods.
🌎 Others use seismic isolation systems so earthquakes barely shake them.

Engineers are realizing that foundations can do much more than hold weight — they can improve sustainability, adaptability, and disaster resilience.

And it raises a funny question…

👉 If engineers had designed from the foundation up 800 years ago…

Would the Leaning Tower of Pisa still be leaning?

03/11/2026

At Tulsa Pier Drilling, we love all heavy construction and are fascinated by learning old and new techniques. This article in National Geographic HISTORY magazine caught our eye. Learn more about Roman engineering and construction techniques! Many of their public works are still standing today. Roman concrete especially has our attention!! - TPD Team

The expansion of one of the Mediterranean’s strongest powers wasn’t only driven by conquest, but also infrastructure. By borrowing techniques from the Greeks and the Etruscans, Romans engineered massive bridges, aqueducts, and roads—some of which still stand proud.

02/25/2026

Tulsa Pier Drilling is ready to talk to folks looking for work in construction that don't want to be stuck behind a desk!

Stop by and visit with Kali at the Mayes County Career Expo going on TODAY in Pryor.

02/23/2026

Now THIS is the kind of drilling story Tulsa Pier Drilling can appreciate. 😎

Who goes 1.5 miles deep? Apparently… particle physicists at the South Pole.

🧊 1.5 Miles Down in Antarctic Ice

Scientists working on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory just drilled six new holes more than a mile and a half deep into Antarctic ice.

Let that sink in.

It takes:

🕒 About 30 hours to drill down
🕒 18 hours to bring the drill back up
🌡️ In -30°C conditions
💧 Using the most powerful hot-water drill of its kind on Earth

And once the hole is drilled? The clock starts ticking because the ice begins refreezing almost immediately. If they don’t get the instrument strings lowered fast enough… they can literally freeze in place.

Every driller reading this just felt that stress.

🔭 What Are They Installing?

Long cables strung with hundreds of light sensors are being lowered into each borehole. These sensors detect Cherenkov radiation — a faint blue glow created when neutrinos (so-called “ghost particles”) interact with matter.

Neutrinos are generated by: The sun - Supernova explosions - Black holes - Even the Big Bang

The IceCube array already contains more than 5,000 sensors embedded in a gigaton of ice. This upgrade increases sensitivity to lower-energy neutrinos — helping scientists study how they change “flavors” and possibly unlocking clues about why the universe is made of matter instead of antimatter.

Yes. We’re talking cosmology-level answers… from a drilling project.

🛠️ Respect to the Drill Crew

This is heavy-equipment precision work under extreme conditions. No margin for delay. No warm-up truck cab. No easy fixes.

Just: Engineering - Timing - Calculations - Ex*****on

At Tulsa Pier Drilling, we love seeing drilling applied in unexpected ways — from foundations to physics.

Deep foundations? Sure.
Deep earth energy wells? Absolutely.
Deep Antarctic neutrino telescope holes? That’s next-level cool.

If your job involves going 7,920 feet down into ice to help answer questions about the universe… we’re officially impressed.

Who knew drilling could help explain the Big Bang?

A dense network of sensors is looking for the fleeting footprints of neutrinos, the most mysterious in the pantheon of known particles.

02/08/2026

Tulsa Pier Drilling had the honor and privilege of drilling the 60-inch diameter piers for our new Air Traffic Control Tower at THE Tulsa International Airport. Yes, you read that right. Five-foot diameter shafts were drilled deep to support this structure.

WADO (Thank you in Cherokee) Tulsa World for the article and great photos!!

The first section of the tower cab, or the observation level, was lifted into place Friday at the Senator James M. Inhofe Air Traffic Control Tower Complex.

01/01/2026

We LOVE to read about anything to do with drilling, even if it is not foundation drilling! Check this ancient Egyptian drilling tech.

The Team at Tulsa Pier Drilling

Ancient Egyptian Drill Core 7, made from solid pink granite, was discovered by the famous archaeologist William Flinders Petrie in 1881 near the Great Pyramid of Giza.

This remarkable artifact, now housed in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London, has amazed researchers for generations. The drill core’s precision and craftsmanship show a level of skill that seems almost impossible given the hardness of granite compared to the copper tools traditionally used by the ancient Egyptians.

The core displays a subtle taper and intricate lines along its surface, sparking debates among historians and archaeologists about the exact methods used to create it. Some suggest highly advanced stone-working techniques that we still do not fully understand, while others theorize tools or methods that have long been lost to history.

A finger pointing into a corresponding drill hole in a massive stone block illustrates the result of this ancient drilling technique, showing the precision that was possible thousands of years ago.

Artifacts like Drill Core 7 continue to inspire curiosity and admiration, reminding us how much there is still to learn about ancient civilizations.

Every detail invites us to imagine the hands and minds that made it, leaving a mystery that continues to captivate the modern world.

01/01/2026

🏗️ Pompeii just gave concrete crews a reality check.

Scientists uncovered an unfinished Roman job site—tools, materials, half-built walls…the whole thing. And the lesson isn’t “ancient magic.” It’s mixing and ex*****on.

Romans often mixed dry ingredients first, then added water, creating a hot reaction that helped their concrete resist cracking and even “self-seal” over time.

That hits home for Tulsa Pier Drilling because drilled shafts don’t live in a nice environment:

💧 groundwater
🧂 salts/sulfates
🌡️ heat + cold swings
⏱️ time-to-place pressures

In the field, mix control + temperature + placement method can matter as much as the spec strength. Long-term durability is built (or lost) right there at the rig.

👇 What do you see wrecking placements most often—heat, haul time, slump loss, or groundwater conditions?

Here the authors combine microstructural and chemical analysis of building materials collected from an active construction site in Pompeii prior to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Through these analyses, they identify the  key raw materials and processes used i...

01/01/2026

🛠️ Drillers would appreciate this. Engineers should pay attention.

A newly uncovered active construction site in Pompeii just revealed how Roman concrete was really made — and it turns out the builders on the ground knew more than the famous architects writing the manuals.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, crews were mid-build. Half-finished walls, raw materials, and tools were frozen in time — giving modern engineers a rare look at ancient construction in progress.

🔍 The key takeaway?
Romans used a hot-mixing method — combining dry lime and volcanic ash before adding water. That process created lime clasts inside the concrete, giving it self-healing properties that let structures crack… then seal themselves.

📚 That directly contradicts the writings of Vitruvius, whose theories dominated architecture textbooks for centuries. Turns out: the people actually doing the work — skilled laborers, builders, and crews — were innovating far beyond what was written down.

🏗️ At Tulsa Pier Drilling, this hits home. Whether it’s drilled shafts, foundations, or ground improvement, ex*****on matters. Materials, sequencing, and field expertise make or break long-term performance — then and now.

💡 The Romans built infrastructure that’s still standing 2,000 years later. It’s a reminder that durable construction starts from the ground up.

👇 What modern construction practice do you think we’ve forgotten — or need to relearn?

About one-third of Pompeii remains to be excavated, enabling scientists to continue making new discoveries about the ancient Roman way of life.