Services

Pacific Drilling Co. delivers specialized geotechnical and environmental drilling services, ensuring accurate data collection and efficient project execution. With experienced operators and advanced equipment, every project receives precise, reliable results for engineering, construction, and environmental applications across California and Utah.

Services Offered

Full-Service Drilling

Truck Mount Drilling

Our team operates four powerful truck-mounted rigs. These rigs handle auger, air percussion, mudring, and CPT soundings. Most are equipped with eSPT™ digital auto hammers, ensuring cost-effective, accurate, and reliable subsurface data collection while remaining CARB and OSHA-compliant.

A compact track-mounted rig drilling on a steep, brush-covered slope.

Limited Access Drilling

Pacific Drilling's crew specializes in drilling confined or hard-to-reach locations using compact, versatile rigs. Our equipment is designed to navigate tight spaces, low overhead clearance, and challenging terrain, delivering precise geotechnical and environmental data without compromising safety or efficiency.

Close-up of a diamond core bit on the end of a core barrel.

Rock Coring

Pacific Drilling Co. provides high-quality rock core samples using advanced coring techniques, including NQ and HQ core sizes. Our experienced crews extract continuous, intact cores for dependable geological, geotechnical, and environmental analysis, ensuring your project has the precise subsurface data it requires.

DTH Cased Air Percussion

We deliver fast, efficient drilling in hard rock and challenging ground conditions. Using high-powered air-driven hammers and protective casing, this method ensures clean, stable boreholes while minimizing collapse risks—ideal for projects requiring precision, durability, and performance in the toughest terrains.

A driller in high-visibility gear working a rig on wet, muddy ground.

Mud Rotary

We provide mud rotary drilling utilizing both limited-access and truck-mounted rigs, delivering efficient borehole advancement in unconsolidated or water-bearing soils. This method excels in sandy, loose, or water-bearing conditions where casing or other methods may be less effective.

Packer Testing

Pacific Drilling provides packer testing to evaluate rock mass permeability, hydraulic conductivity, and groundwater movement within specific borehole intervals. By isolating sections of a borehole and measuring water flow under controlled pressure, packer testing provides valuable data on fractures, joints, seepage conditions, and potential groundwater pathways to support geotechnical design and groundwater control decisions.

Soil Sampling

For over 35+ years, Pacific Drilling Co. has provided accurate and reliable soil sampling across the Southwestern U.S.

A driller handling a split-tube soil sampler on site.

All rigs are equipped with auto hammers, safety hammers, and custom-built donut hammers for extremely limited-access sites. Now featuring the eSPT™ auto hammer from MARL Technologies, our digitally verified, ASTM-compliant SPT testing ensures consistent, operator-independent data delivered straight to your desktop.

Call 619-294-3682 for more details on geotechnical sampling and the eSPT™ auto hammer.

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Sampling Capabilities

All of our rigs carry:

Cal Modified Sampler
SPT
2 in. Split Spoon (Environmental Standard)

Additionally, most rigs have the equipment to collect samples using:

Shelby Tubes
Pitcher Barrel
Continuous Soil Coring
Direct Push

A white truck-mounted drill rig set up on an open hillside site.

Cone Penetration Testing (CPT)

The SaberCat MTXD and Yeti M10 truck-mounted rigs are equipped for CPT testing, delivering raw and interpreted data on tip stress, sleeve stress, pore pressure, friction ratio, and shear wave velocity readings.

A rig working a waterfront site beside a marina.

Water & Vapor Sampling

Pacific Drilling Co. offers a variety of methods to collect water and vapor samples, including:

Reusable Bailers
Disposable Bailers
HydroPunch
Vapor Probes

A crew member kneeling beside a finished flush-mount monitoring well head set in fresh concrete.

Monitoring Well Installation

Pacific Drilling Co. installs monitoring wells in limited-access and open-field locations, following San Diego County D.E.H. SAM Manual standards. Services include piezometers, slope inclinometers, vapor probes, MPBX, flush mount, and monument well heads. With extensive experience in backfill methods, well development, and abandonment, our team ensures compliance and reliability.

Support Services – San Diego

A pressure washer spraying a backlit jet of water across paving.

Steam Cleaning & Equipment Decontamination

Steam cleaning and pressure washing prevent cross-contamination during environmental drilling projects. Our system includes a steam cleaner, wash bin, and triple-rinsing station with deionized water for equipment decontamination. Deionized water available upon request.

Two workers running a core drill through asphalt pavement.

Concrete Coring

Pacific Drilling Co. provides concrete coring services to support geotechnical investigations. Using core sizes of 4", 8", and 10", our crews perform accurate coring through slabs and pavement to access soils beneath for drilling and sampling. We also extract and deliver intact concrete cores, which are provided to our clients for their own laboratory testing and analysis.