"I run Ground Research together with my brother and his brother-in-law. We have been drilling for 20 years now; it started by hand and after 10 years the customers asked us, can you drill a little deeper? That's why we bought our first sonic machine from Royal Eijkelkamp. Twenty years later we now have three sonic drilling machines up and running."

One of those rigs, a Royal Eijkelkamp SRS ML SmallRotoSonic crawler is currently being used on a project in Noord-Scharwoude [the northern part of the Netherlands] next to a church. Groot and his team are drilling eight holes to a depth of 50m, with a diameter of 88mm in preparation for a geothermal energy installation. "Together with my family, I am going to live in this church," explains Groot.

Groot then goes on to explain what other types of projects Ground Research uses its sonic drill rigs on: "We do a few things with sonic rigs, like environmental research, monitoring wells for plants that have a lot of pollution; we make well systems around the plant. We also drill through concrete for monitoring wells to build a new basement. The main benefits of sonic drilling are that it is compact, really, really strong and super fast. So we can offer a good price for the customers. Why do we use sonic? Because it's a clean way of drilling. We only need one rig, a few pipes and then we can make a beautiful system.

"Together with the customer we formulate the required end-result (undisturbed samples at depth, monitoring wells, installation of closed heating systems, etc.) and carry out the required activities. Contact with the customer is very important to us. Working together makes a job easier and more enjoyable!

"The world around you is your living environment. Logical that you would treat it with due care!

Ground Research incorporates this same care into the activities it carries out for its customers. Whether this involves taking manual soil samples or mechanical drilling for geo-energy systems, the right results are always obtained through sound preparation and excellent knowledge of the business at hand," concludes Groot.