[Blacksheep]

I would check what your annual charge for using the well water would be before investing too much further.

[MikeM]

I will. Was not aware there was a charge for using water from our own well (I already use it for watering the garden). Love to see them try and collect it.

[MelRice]

My 'well' is an old underground slurry tank...now collecting just rain water as all the animal shed run offs have been infilled. And the animals are now in a different place.  We are on a water meter and the sewerage based on the in water meter. Using the water in our well just for the plants and animals cut our bill by 1/3rd from the first year when the animals and seedlings were watered from the house. The 'well' has been emptied twice by us and even the first time did not have much in the way of nasties in it. I dip a bucket on a line to fill animal buckets. I have a drop in pond pump fixed to a hose pipe that plugs in to water the veg patch.


There is a ground water well under the house that I suppose we COULD do something with re flushing the loo etc.....but I dont know if the instalation cost of a second system would outway any saving.

[Blacksheep]

I will. Was not aware there was a charge for using water from our own well (I already use it for watering the garden). Love to see them try and collect it.

Yes they claim that it is abstraction from the aquifers which fill the well.  If you have a spring rising on your land they you are ok to take water from that up to a certain number of litres not sure how you measure how much is being used though!
They need police reinforcements when they come checking some of the farms round here for wells and boreholes in order to be able to charge them a water abstraction fee so I imagine it is not too cheap! Anyway not worthwhile finding you have a nasty surprise with an annual bill you were not expecting once you have installed a pump and other infrastructure.

[MikeM]

the well is about 7 foot deep, so I would guess it's not filled from an aquifer, it's pretty much at the foot of a hill and I would say it fills from the water table (as I understand these things). Certainly when I was digging the footings for an outbuilding on the same spot I hit water after digging down about a foot. My understanding is that an aquifer is somewhat deeper than that (could be wrong, my O level geography was an awful long time ago).

[nicandem]

£380 a year for water 


makes me glad i have no meter and no mains drainage under a 100 a year here.

[UPoneacre]

MikeM
I think I've mentioned before WB+AD Morgan borehole drillers - according to their website, for domestic consumption you are permitted to extract up to 20m3 water per day without an abstraction licence, also confirmed by Powys Drilling when I was talking to them about a new borehole recently. PD told me that we wouldn't pay any fee for water abstraction if we keep below that limit (and I can't see us using 20000 litres a day!)does that help?

[chrismahon]

When I looked into having a well it was 20,000 litres a day could be extracted without licence or any payment and I was told it was rising to 40,000 litres. The problem in my area was that the water table was rising up to meet toxic waste dumps from the previous century. They were trying to encourage people to use more water to keep the level down.

[MikeM]

think we'd struggle to use that amount a month let alone a day. Could have extra long showers I guess.

[Penninehillbilly]

We are on spring water, don't know where it originates, but old pipe to a brick storage tank which feeds the house by gravity. We don't have to have it tested and never have. Though a friend on spring water was telling me a visitor was ill after drinking her (my friends) spring water, my friend had built up a resistance to the bugs so was OK with it.
 last year we put a UV filteration system in, but we've been OK for years.
Is it possible to just use the well water for garden, animals, washing and flushing loo etc? Have another header tank for that and just use mains for drinking water and if well water gets low and muddy?

[MikeM]

I was thinking of doing something like that. Certainly using well water for flushing would be easy enough and I could do that now without having a permanent pump installed, just use the portable pump to fill up a tank of some description whenever it runs dry. Would be more tricky for washing water, as that goes through the boiler (combi boiler, so no header tank), would need a bit more thought.

[Blacksheep]

MikeM
I think I've mentioned before WB+AD Morgan borehole drillers - according to their website, for domestic consumption you are permitted to extract up to 20m3 water per day without an abstraction licence, also confirmed by Powys Drilling when I was talking to them about a new borehole recently. PD told me that we wouldn't pay any fee for water abstraction if we keep below that limit (and I can't see us using 20000 litres a day!)does that help?

That sounds fine then, it was a few years ago I spoke to someone from the Environment Agency who told me that it was only springs that were exempt from a licence subject to amount of water used, which was certainly a lot less than 20000 litres/day. I also had a friend whose water supply was only from a well, no land apart from a large garden, who was constantly being sent letters from the water board, in the end they had to have mains installed as the water table was lowered by water board abstraction which adversely affected their water supply. It looks like things have changed, I wonder if the regulations have been challenged at some point.

[Blacksheep]

We are on spring water, don't know where it originates, but old pipe to a brick storage tank which feeds the house by gravity. We don't have to have it tested and never have. Though a friend on spring water was telling me a visitor was ill after drinking her (my friends) spring water, my friend had built up a resistance to the bugs so was OK with it.
 last year we put a UV filteration system in, but we've been OK for years.
Is it possible to just use the well water for garden, animals, washing and flushing loo etc? Have another header tank for that and just use mains for drinking water and if well water gets low and muddy?

We didn't have to have ours tested until last year, if we were the only property taking water from the spring on our land then we wouldn't be required too, however as the neighbouring property has a right to take our water we are now required to pay the council for regular testing and an annual administration charge, so that they can tell us to treat the water and boil it which we already do!

[waddy]

We have a spring fed well supplying our house and a neighbour. It has only the most basic filtration and uv and tests safe to drink both before and after the treatment. We do find however that it is slightly acidic and tends to strip a bit of the copper from the pipes giving it an unpleasant metallic after taste (it tastes great straight from the source). We therefore need to put in a new filtration system with a ph balancing unit; something else you may need to consider. We also needed someone from the environment agency to check the position of our septic tank as it was less than 50m from the well (although downhill from it) in order to get the proper certification for the septic tank. Would have worked out very expensive if we had to move it.


Helen

[Penninehillbilly]

We do find however that it is slightly acidic and tends to strip a bit of the copper from the pipes giving it an unpleasant metallic after taste (it tastes great straight from the source). We therefore need to put in a new filtration system with a ph balancing unit; something else you may need to consider.
Helen

The water round here eats through copper, after a disaster one christmas (where I was left to manouvre round removed kitchen units and no worktop for about 2 weeks), we are now all HEP20, (plastic pipe and fittings).