Water
Deepset Flexible Riser 400m installation
at Prieska Copper Mine
H
ose Manufacturers, a manufacturer of lay flat hoses
and Boreline flexible riser for boreholes, was recently
approached by a customer looking for a flexible
hose that would be able to dewater an old mine shaft just
outside the town of Copperton in the Northern Cape and
was familiar with our Boreline flexible hose for boreholes of
standard depths up to 200m.
The shaft in question (1000m
depth) held much water that
needed to be pumped into
holding tanks from a depth of
400m for processing and analysis.
The outcome of this processing
would determine whether the
water could be re-used, and mine
activity restarted.
many questions were asked and
answered about how the pump
and hose were to be installed.
Once
preparations
were
complete, the installation began
in earnest. Energy levels were
high and the teams were eager to
make progress.
While our standard Boreline is
designed to function at an instal-
lation depth of 200m from 3” to
6”, we had a new hose named
Deepset under development for
3” installations up to 400m. The
Prieska mine shaft challenge
was a golden opportunity to test
this new concept hose, as not
many boreholes are ever drilled
to these depths.
Challenges met
Depth wasn’t the only chal-
lenge we faced on site, however.
The disused mine still had its
old concrete headworks with
a 500mm thick slab cast over
the shaft to prevent accidents.
This proved cumbersome to drill
through to create a large enough
hole, but the team succeeded,
and we were able to move ahead
with the Deepset installation.
Our arrival on site was met with
much excitement, and tasks
were quickly allocated to teams
to speed up the process. While
everyone present was familiar with
steel pipes, none had worked with
a flexible riser of this nature and
especially this length before, and
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SABI | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2019