[Wendy@blueborage]

I'm drawn to the idea of a borehole; we can be self-sufficient in water, manage a drought on our smallholding (drought was the last thing on our minds this summer (!) but we were worried back in March and Essex is usually such a dry county (with huge demands on water). I feel it's only a matter of time before we're talking about drought again....).  A borehole could be part of our recycling water/collection of rainwater/environmentally friendly use water approach on our land.

But.....

It's horrendously expensive both in the investigation and drilling etc.  We're always looking to live frugally so this would be a major hit for us, even though it would be a long term investment and we should be looking long term. But should we do this?

If anyone has gone down this route, I'd be grateful for your advice.

Thanks

Wendy@blueborage

blueborage.blogspot.com

[Fleecewife]

What is your current water supply?

[deepinthewoods]

not a borehole but my house came with its own water supply, pumped up from the lake at the bottom of the hill. its purified by uv and filtered, its lovely. no chlorine. its worth it for that alone i reckon.
water bills in cornwall are 700/1000/year.
 The uv system gets a new bulb and filter every  6month so my water costs me about 150/year.

[Victorian Farmer]

iv had a quote £4000 inc the pump not Happy whots happend with the water

[Small Farmer]

A friend is looking at getting a borehole drilled - needs to be 75m round here - and has been told by the contractor that less than 4,000 litres a day needs no licence while Veolia (the water company) says he needs a licence for any extraction.


How do you find out?

[Wendy@blueborage]

Thanks for your replies.

Current water supply: The current water supply in our lane comes across the fields and the pressure is not good.

We've done some basic research on a borehole on our smallholding - we know from a neighbour in the village that the chalk (where the pure water is) is at least 100m down.  We also understand that we would have to register with a water company, but - yes -  if we use less than 4000 litres a day we don't have to pay.  This is just what we've gleaned from a look at the internet.  But that doesn't really help with pros and cons.  I'd like to know much more!

So we'll have to go down quite deep and I wonder if anyone else has experience of doing this?

Wendy@blueborage

blueborage.blogspot.com

[chrismahon]

I've looked into all this. Borehole with pump £10K assuming the spoil is left on site and depth is around 100 metres. The main cost is just getting the equipment on and off the site. You can extract 40,000L per day without licence now apparently, but we'd never use that much. Running costs are just the filters and electric pump, so great if you generate your own electricity. It really depends on how much you use, but Chlorinated water is no good for food crops with delicate flavour unless it stands in open tanks for at least 4 days to release the Chlorine. It wrecks the taste of raspberries and strawberries. Spoils cherries a bit as well.

[MAK]

well I hope that you will not have to go down 300 plus feet Chris. We all have wells here but we have never got around to looking at ours ( sealed up). The neighbour up the hill tells me that her well is 17 meters deep. It comes down to geology I guess. The village's fish pool ( to store fish from the lake) sits below a spring line and the water from the pool feeds our stream. We are on granite extrusions with maybe a shale/sand sub soil that means we have permeable stuff meeting impermeable stuff and hence a lot of springs. So much so that we did not get piped water until 1974 ( no need) but electric in 1933.
Do you think that if you had to drill 300 plus feet then you could hit a high pressure aqufa ( ? spelling) - how would you control such? Expensive?

[oigoi]

It was going to cost me £10K to get a mains supply to my house and I am in cornwall so I didnt want a borehole because of the amount of metals in the rocks around here.

I have gone down the route of rainwater harvesting. I have about 5000 litres of storage capacity and don't get below 50% full.

[FiB]

It was going to cost me £10K to get a mains supply to my house and I am in cornwall so I didnt want a borehole because of the amount of metals in the rocks around here.

I have gone down the route of rainwater harvesting. I have about 5000 litres of storage capacity and don't get below 50% full.

thats interesting - do you treat and drink your rainwater, or just use it for everyinthing and drink something else (a lot to be said for that approach)?  We have a spring which we dont treat (tested twice and perfect results) , but are looking to improve our resiliance with rainwater...  As to boreholes, we also had a quote of around £10K on a different peice of land.  I wouldnt do it unless there was no other choice (you are tapping into whatever aquifer you can find (not nececcarily the best or most resiliant as the water companies are able to) - and may still run dry if the water table drops.

[Plantoid]

Wendy ,
Can you afford a simple weather / frost protected shed with a header tank set up  made with  say three or four inter conncected blue food grade plastic barrels  it and a ball cock so tha the mains suppy fills the tank continously 24/7 . feed the home with 30 mm pipe work or bigger bore and then simpy use an in line brass twin element ( hot and cold lines ) shower pump inside your home to bring the pressure up to a decent pressure every time you turn the taps on ?
 Perhaps set the pump so it can be isolated and removed / replaced easily by using stop valves and ground joints or 19 mm flexible connectors.

[Wendy@blueborage]

Thanks - this is certainly something we're considering for the water pressure.

Wendy




blueborage.blogspot.com

[HesterF]

Not sure I can add much but I think I've picked up the figure that if you're paying more than £1k a year for water (we all have water metres), a borehole is worth considering. I got an outline quote (the sort that they do from afar by looking at the geology in your area) which was similar to the numbers above - about £10k. It's a little ironic because they reckoned we had to go down 100m to the 'Folkestone beds' to get to the water yet we have a well in our kitchen where I can see the water level just a few metres down and our cellar is currently flooded. So the water table is clearly less than 10m down in winter - possibly a little more in summer. Now I know we have to go far enough to be sure it's clean water but surely not a further 90m? Anyhow, I've left it for now - our water bills have so far not been that high but I've got fifty new fruit trees that will probably need water this summer so then the costs might go up.

H

[chrismahon]

Two basic types of borehole. The best utilises underground trapped water below the bedrock which, because of the depth and natural filtering is very clean. The shallow boreholes just reach below the natural water table. They also collect farming runoff and general pollution so need monitoring and treating before drinking -really for watering your plants only. Obviously the deep wells cost more than the shallow. A shallow well in our previous location was half the price and only needed to be 17 metres deep.