Why is Soil Boring or Sampling Required?
At some point, a land owner (or prospective buyer) may be faced with the need to investigate a parcel of land. A common example requiring soil boring/sampling that land owners may be faced with is when buying/selling land. Most state laws require sellers to disclose environmental conditions to prospective buyers. Before a buyer commits to a purchase, a minimal level of “due diligence” can be done to gain information about environmental conditions so that a buyer can avoid liability for existing conditions. The most direct way to show that a property is free of contamination is to run chemical analyses on soil. First, however, soil samples must be collected.
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How are Soils Borings Done?
Soil boring is a technique used to survey soil by taking several shallow cores out of the sediment. It is done by supporting a drilling jacket or jack-up rig on the soil and drilling into that soil. Conventional soil boring is used to determine the subsurface soil profile and static soil properties. At least one soil boring is essential for any offshore platform investigation to determine soil conditions.

Soil samples are typically collected from specific depths below the surface of the ground which usually requires use of drilling equipment. Borings are drilled to specific depths and special sampling tools are used to collect soil samples. The sampling tools are brought up to the surface where samples are taken and placed in appropriate containers for testing at an analytical laboratory. Soil samples provide data about potential contamination in surface soil (0 to 3 feet) that may affect animals and people in residences, and in subsurface soil (3 to 15 feet) that may affect utility, construction, or excavation workers.