The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Equipment => Topic started by: Gordon M on March 18, 2010, 07:35:06 am
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My ditches normally run dry around May - June which can be problematic and I thought that a water well would be a good idea. Does anyone know anything about driving boreholes or drilling water wells, companies, costs, surveys etc?
Gordon M.
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Find yourself a water diviner. Mine found water fo my new house at 12 feet, but there was a huge slab of granite bedrock over it, so he then tried out in the field and found it at 14 feet. A lot cheaper than a bore hole - £150 for his time and the pipe, £250 for the digger. I was told 5 years ago minimum for a borehole was £2000. Google for both.
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This is just something to check, but for houses you need to get a permit from the local water company before you can supply your house with water from a well or borehole. You then have to pay a small sum annually for the use of the well.
Obviously, if you take surface water off your land for watering plants/pigs/horses etc. there shouldn't be any need for permission but as soon as you take water from a well/borehole or - I think - a stream or river, the water company wants to know.
NN
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This is just something to check, but for houses you need to get a permit from the local water company before you can supply your house with water from a well or borehole. You then have to pay a small sum annually for the use of the well.
Obviously, if you take surface water off your land for watering plants/pigs/horses etc. there shouldn't be any need for permission but as soon as you take water from a well/borehole or - I think - a stream or river, the water company wants to know.
NN
If you sink a well in Scotland you pay nothing to the Council at all, no water charges! But you must prove that the water is potable (safe for humans to drink) The water test costs about £120 and will be retested free if it fails. The answer in most cases is a fail if it is rural so filters are normally required. A full filter system cost me just short of £500. For my new house I also had to do porosity tests to ensure the foul water could drain away from the septic tank overflow, and from the rain water drainage. That cost £300. Foul water is not permitted to go into a stream or any other watercourse, and a well takes water from below the surface so it is virtually impossible to say it comes from a specific river or underground stream. I should have thought England and Wales and NI were the same but your local Council planning department will be able to help you. Hope that helps.
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We looked into it in some detail last year and got onto an excellent company based in Yorkshire who looked into the geological records for us (can give you their details if you fancy). Turned out it would have been too much of a risk (drill down to 110m at cost of 8K with no guarentee of finding water) so decided too much of a risk.
But now wondering about getting a water dowser along to see what they reckon.
Be careful though as had dealings with another company who reckoned water was a certainty and nearly signed up for.
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Main problem is water is a certainty in all ground conditions as the rock holds aquifers- it just a prt of the sub-surface make-up. Problem is the depth and therefore cost to get the water to the surface. It also depends on the bedrock type with granite being of low permeability and limestones being of high permeability. Therefore the timie taken to recharge your well can vary enormously depending on the ground types. Whereabouts are you? I have got geological maps here that cover parts of Scotland and the North East- I could look up your area and see what type of rock you've got under you.
Declan
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We bought our build project with a borehole already drilled so I am not sure of the costs on that but the process of setting up the pump and all the stuff that goes along with is wasn't too difficult or expensive - pump is 60m down and cost us around £550. The down side is when we have a power cut we have no water as the water comes directly into the house with no storage - but a waterbut for emergencies is good. My parents went through the whole process several years ago after my Mum was ill from a sheep dying in the communal well! They got a water diviner and the whole thing went very well.
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Thanks for all the replies folks, for the meantime, a quick and cheap fix is being made. 4 x 1000 litre cubes linked in series with alcathene pipe which will fill from the ditch, hopefully before it runs dry.
Declan, a very kind offer indeed, I'm in Clackmannanshire near Dollar.
Another problem is that the land is off grid so an electrical submersible pump may not be an option unless I also get a wind turbine. This could be a costly idea!!
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Annie, how has yours coped with the frost? We get our water from next door and we all run out today as the borehole pipe is frozen solid. Thank goodcness they also have a spring feed to the tank but it was nearly a whole day without.. :&>
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I am following this thread with great interest, especially to those of you who have employed water diviners with successful results. Where do you find a reputable one? Is there such a thing as a diviners directory or Which? diviner?, perhaps they advertise in "Well There's A Surprise Weekly" publication. Awaiting divine inspiration......
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http://www.britishdowsers.org/advice/registered_dowsing_practitioners.shtml (http://www.britishdowsers.org/advice/registered_dowsing_practitioners.shtml)
all the best
Sue
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bright raven i take it you are a non believer in water divining
it does work to find drains and water pipes and have seen it
cant comment on finding water at the depths quoted
you should have seen my nieces face when the rods crossed when we tried it with her
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we have temps of -20 and our private well and pipe up to underground tank and then down to house by gravity system has not frozen up (helped by there being underfloor heating in the house I reckon!). We also used a diviner, more to avoid our septic tank run of polluting natural springs as the well was in situ tho derelict.
Up here (NE Scotland), water divining seems completely accepted and normal. our water diviner is also the water engineer and has 40 years of experience in both.
I would say its worth a shot, they dont often fail.
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I've not seen water divining first hand but I know my Mum and Dad had one out to find where to sink their borehole in North Perthshire and it worked great for them!!
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Annie, how has yours coped with the frost? We get our water from next door and we all run out today as the borehole pipe is frozen solid. Thank goodcness they also have a spring feed to the tank but it was nearly a whole day without.. :&>
Hi Kerstin, I'm on mains water down here and it has been frozen, along with my only neighbour this side of the railway bridge, for 5 days. The house I built in Aberdeenshire was without water at the very height of the big freeze for about a day and a half, so they have fared better than me. I just hope our water restarts before the next freeze begins or we will have big problems!
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We have our own well but it's ancient and was dug by hand. I don't know how the diggers had offended, but they had to dig it on top of a hill - revenge for something bad no doubt!! The pipes have never frozen, but the well has once run dry when we had too many French people staying and running masses of water straight down the drain. As we raise the water by electric pump, it does go off in a power cut - longest without was 4 1/2 days, so the livestock are all watered from gravity-fed drinkers using collected rainwater, and we now have an emergency generator as we get a lot of power cuts.
A filter system with UV is standard as doganjo says - there's always E Coli somewhere close to hand in the country ;D
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Call me capricious, I am not an unbeliever at all. I would employ a diviner like a shot if I could find a reputable local. Years ago when the Rollright stones (somewhere by Chipping Norton) were guarded by an eccentric lady called Pauline, she showed me how to divine for ley lines. She gave me some metal rods in plastic holders and had me pacing up and down and around the Kings Stone and The Crone. Well this is over 25 years ago, but I enjoyed the experience and thought the rods moved for me at the time.
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A filter system with UV is standard as doganjo says - there's always E Coli somewhere close to hand in the country ;D
Where did you get the UV system? We've got 10000 litres of rainwater storage but only use it for loos and washing machines
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One of our sons has a plumbing etc business so he bought and installed it - 'them' in fact as the granny flat has its own too. I think you can get them through Screwfix or other workies supply places. The whole system costs around £500 - physical filter and UV. I can ask my son if you wish.
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Call me capricious, I am not an unbeliever at all. I would employ a diviner like a shot if I could find a reputable local. Years ago when the Rollright stones (somewhere by Chipping Norton) were guarded by an eccentric lady called Pauline, she showed me how to divine for ley lines. She gave me some metal rods in plastic holders and had me pacing up and down and around the Kings Stone and The Crone. Well this is over 25 years ago, but I enjoyed the experience and thought the rods moved for me at the time.
To be honest if you relax enough anyone can do it. Ian used hazel twigs, but he first of all gave me them to try it myself and I found water with them, then he just cut of a couple of twigs off my own trees - beech I think, and we both did it with them and found field drains. It's great fun and you can actually buy metal diving rods very cheaply - about £5 I think.