Bore Hole /Well Costs?

[Onoff]

This has come up on the back of my mains water leak. Discussing it with the wife tonight and I mentioned that some on here have had success with dowsing. She's grew up locally all here life and pipes up "There used to be a well on here!" (she's not sure where of course). Now I've known her for 30 years and she never mentioned that before. She then proceeds to tell me about various other smallholdings locally who had wells and a local stable who still have one apparently. So.....it got me thinking!

The single track road next to the house is relatively new, only tarmac'd in the last 50 years. We are btw pretty much the lowest house at the bottom of the valley. Before the road it was a seasonal water course and in fact still resembles a small river when it rains heavy. I'm guessing then the water table here is pretty high? The whole place is damper than a damp thing.

Tentatively thinking well digging or borehole. Wouldn't know where to start. Any pointers?

Edited June 20, 2016 by Onoff

[PeterW]

You can make one ...

all you need is a scaffold pole, a Capri back axle on its end, and an engine ...

You'll be 60ft down by tea time ...

But on a serious note, have a look at Jeremy's blog as it's a mine of info on all things borehole related !

[ProDave]

Are you suggesting you dig a well or borehole as being a cheaper option than fixing the leaking main pipe?

My previous house, a 1930's semi had a well.  It was only a shallow well and it drew water from the water table. It was no longer in use being on mains water by the time we bought it, but local knowledge said the well in our garden fed 4 houses and the pub across the road. Water being drawn up by a hand pump in the scullery. The number of pipes leaving the well bore that out.

It was very interesting to look down it at different times of year and see how the water table had risen or fallen.  I did install a pump down it and used that for watering the garden. Later when I built a garage, I piped the rainwater from the garage into it as a handy soakaway. I wonder if that was SUDS compliant?

If you want to know about dowsing, ask. I found I can do it. Please don't ask me HOW it works, but it does.

[Onoff]

God no! The pipe'll be fixed / replaced shortly. 

The well/borehole seemed like a good idea at some time for watering/flushing at least. Just wondering how on earth you would go about it? Is it a DIY proposition? Could you dig a hole and "sink" concrete rings as you go? How was it done in the "old days"? How do you know how deep it needs to be? Safety when digging and so on.....

I bought a dowsing book at Godshill a couple of years back actually. Now you say it Dave I remember you saying about it on eBuild. 

 

[ProDave]

Our well was about 20 feet deep. I never saw the water lower than 15 feet below the surface. If I dug one here i wouldn't need to go any more than 6 deet deep, even in summer.

I once went down the well to drill the holes for the garage rainwater pipes from the inside. Just lowered my aluminium ladder down and descended it, complete with electric drill and an extension lead and drilled the hole. Someone afterwards told me that was a very stupid thing to do for a number of reaons.

[Nickfromwales]

[PeterW]

45 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Could you dig a hole an "sink" concrete rings as you go? How was it done in the "old days"? How do you know how deep it needs to be? Safety when digging and so on.....

 

 

Watched them do that in India - 3 blokes, one in the hole, one pulling the muck out in a bucket and one with a big hand cranked  fan blowing air down the hole !!

Every couple of hours they would roll a new segment over the top on three wooden scaffold poles, and then keep digging .... 

 I reckon they'd be about 30ft down when I left - and it was about 38c in the shade !!

[Onoff]

2 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Watched them do that in India - 3 blokes, one in the hole, one pulling the muck out in a bucket and one with a big hand cranked  fan blowing air down the hole !!

Every couple of hours they would roll a new segment over the top on three wooden scaffold poles, and then keep digging .... 

 I reckon they'd be about 30ft down when I left - and it was about 38c in the shade !!

Do you still have their number? 

[reddal]

Boreholes aren't cheap - depends on depth etc - but you are talking several £k at a minimum just to create the borehole - and then the real fun starts with extracting the water and making it drinkable.

On dowsing - I don't believe there is anything spooky going on - it's just your mind playing tricks on itself along with the ideomotor effect.

It can be extremely convincing - but whenever dowsing is tested under proper double blind conditions the results are no better than chance. Here are some links :

• http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/debunking-dowsing-5028261/?no-ist
• http://web.randi.org/uploads/3/7/3/7/37377621/jref13edmod_dowsing_teacher_print.pdf

 

 

[ProDave]

Fred Dibnah did this. He dug a ventilation shaft the "old way" building a brick wall round it as he went. Dig a bit more out then lay another few rings of bricks underneath what was there, then dig more etc.

Re Dowsing. I beg to differ. Have you tried it?

I was your average skeptic until I tried it when visiting my BIL at his farm. He gave me his dowsing rods and said "walk across that yard" and part way across the two rods swung together. "That's a water pipe" says BIL.

I got to try it in anger for my water conection. The contractor couldn't find the water main, it was further into the field than the plans showed. They were on the point of giving up so I went and got my dowsing rods and walked slowly into the field. About 1 metre further than they had dug the rods swung together and when they extended the trench there was the water main.

If you actually hold a set of rods and try making them come together, you have to tilt them quite a long way, so you can't "trick" it. When they do "detect" something, they come together without you moving them.

Like I say I don't even begin to understand it, I just know it works.

Re the blindfold thing, perhaps you need to see for it to work? A friend of my BIL says he can see underground springs as a green hue on the ground and thought everybody can see the same as him.

[Jeremy Harris]

There's water pretty much everywhere underground, far, far more of it than many realise.  Drill a hole anywhere in Southern England and you will find at least one, probably two or three, aquifers.  The key is knowing how deep it is and whether it's likely to be drinkable without a lot of hassle.

We're far more fussy about drinking water that we used to be, as we've learned about shallow wells being a source of things like e coli, so it's normal now to drill down to a clean aquifer and seal around the borehole to keep surface water out, so that the risk of contamination from faecal coliforms is reduced.

Our cost of getting a mains water connection was around £23k+, so I opted for a borehole.  It was a fair bit of hassle, and delayed our build by probably around 12 months overall,  but still a lot cheaper than a mains connection.  The cost for ours (all price ex-VAT, as this was a zero rated job for a new build) broke down as:

Cost to mobilise drill rig to site: £950

Drilling cost per drilled metre: £47.50

Cost of screen, casing, glass filter media, bentonite grout, per drilled metre: £37.50

Cost of Mud Puppy and tanks (used for wet drilling with mud): £675

On top of that you have to add around £700 for a decent submersible pump, maybe £150 for a well head chamber, around £100 for MDPE pipe and fittings, plus the cost of whatever size pressure vessel you need, plus the pressure switch.  You may also have to include a filtration system to remove stuff like iron, manganese, hydrogen sulphide etc from some ground water and if the water tests positive for even a single e coli per ml then you have to install a disinfection system.  We have a UV tube system to disinfect ours, even though it tested OK, as it is very easy to accidentally contaminate a private supply.

If you just want water for irrigation, then try using the US method for driving a small bore irrigation well.  They use a spiked galvanised pipe with a conical screen on the end and either just impact drive it into the ground our use hydraulic or pneumatic drilling.  The former is easy, you just connect a hose pipe to the drill pipe, fit a tee handle on the top and let the water do the drilling for you.  You push down on the pipe and the water washes out the much as you go.  There are YouTube videos showing how they do this, its a common procedure in some area, usually where there's a sand aquifer (these are sometimes called sand point wells).  Sometimes they just pound these wells in using a hammer, or even road drill, threading extra sections of pipe on as needed.

 

[Gone West]

I dug a 2.5m deep x 1.2m diameter hole down to the running sand and then had a 47m deep borehole drilled. It started off as a deep bore soakaway but when the drill finally hit chalk we found that was water bearing as well so we ended up with a borehole. One day I'll install the pump and  use it to water the garden. It cost me £3000 plus the cost of the pump, controller, etc for something I don't really need.

Edited June 21, 2016 by PeterStarck

[Onoff]

Thanks all. This place truly is the "fountain" of information! 

Going to start trying to pinpoint it tonight using the length of drainpipe "acoustic" method first. If I get anywhere I'll try the spade ended drill. 

The missus can't see why I can't "just start digging at the stopcock by the fence and carry on towards the house"! Bless her. 

I'm aiming for a localised repair now, then when the BIL is back from holiday I'll get him to do a trench at his convenience. It will I'm sure, given the pipe age, be one of those that'll come back top haunt me repeatedly if not done properly and replaced along it's entire length. 

 

Edited June 21, 2016 by Onoff

[Ferdinand]

Fascinating.

Our old house had at least 3 wells and a vaulted underground cistern.

Are these things regulated, or can I just install a sand point well in the garden if I have the right type of ground? COuld be most useful if one wanted eg an outdoor swimming pond.

When I see those great flailing water jets in fields in East Anglia or Lincs, would those be fed by boreholes?

Ferdinand

 

Edited June 21, 2016 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

Provided you don't abstract more than 20,000 litres per 24 hours period then no, they are not regulated at all.  Anyone can drill one and draw up to that amount of water per day out without needing to get any permission from anyone.  There is a requirement for the driller to notify the British Geological Survey and provide them with a drilling log, but our driller failed to do this so I sent the BGS the data myself, only recently as I was browsing the BGS borehole map and noted ours wasn't on it yet.

You can browse the borehole map here: http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain/home.html and select "borehole scans" at the top left.  You have to zoom in to see borehole positions and each will have a number and a reference that if you click on it will bring up whatever historical records the BGS holds for that borehole.

I've just checked at it looks like the borehole record I sent them a couple of months ago is now on line as borehole reference SU02NW24

[Onoff]

18 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

Provided you don't abstract more than 20,000 litres per 24 hours period then no, they are not regulated at all.  Anyone can drill one and draw up to that amount of water per day out without needing to get any permission from anyone.  There is a requirement for the driller to notify the British Geological Survey and provide them with a drilling log, but our driller failed to do this so I sent the BGS the data myself, only recently as I was browsing the BGS borehole map and noted ours wasn't on it yet.

You can browse the borehole map here: http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain/home.html and select "borehole scans" at the top left.  You have to zoom in to see borehole positions and each will have a number and a reference that if you click on it will bring up whatever historical records the BGS holds for that borehole.

I've just checked at it looks like the borehole record I sent them a couple of months ago is now on line as borehole reference SU02NW24

Fantastic! Turns out there's on on a farm at about 40m deep and a Mid Kent Water one at circa 95m deep. Basically one either side of my plot. Both done in the 60's.

[Ferdinand]

S if I drill two 10m apart can I have 40,000 litres?

                                                         

So a 15m x 5m x 1.5m swimming pool = 112.5 cubic metres which can be filled in under a week to save about £160 here or twice that amount in the South West.

Plus garden watering.

Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

 

13 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

S if I drill two 10m apart can I have 40,000 litres?

                                                         

So a 15m x 5m x 1.5m swimming pool = 112.5 cubic metres which can be filled in under a week to save about £160 here or twice that amount in the South West.

Plus garden watering.

Ferdinand

I have a feeling that the ruling may be per location, rather than per borehole, but it'll be buried away somewhere in the EA stuff, I'm sure.  You could get lucky and find they allow 40,000 litres per 24 hours from a pair of closely spaced wells, but I suspect not, as the rule was intended to prevent commercial users from abstracting large volumes of water without an abstraction licence.

 

17 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Fantastic! Turns out there's on on a farm at about 40m deep and a Mid Kent Water one at circa 95m deep. Basically one either side of my plot. Both done in the 60's.

There are thousands of boreholes around, many now disused.  Our village has around a dozen, many drilled during WWI when there was a large army training camp just outside the village.  People forget that in rural areas wells and boreholes were the primary water supply until around the 1930's, when mains water started to be run out of towns and cities and into rural areas.  Mains water arrived in our village in 1934, but the old village borehole and standpipe still exists.  The standpipe is down by the brook, around 4 or 5 metres below the water table and the old borehole is artesian, i.e. it is under pressure at the surface, so it was capped with a cast iron plate and a pipe run down to the standpipe - no pump needed.

[Ferdinand]

Cheers.

[Declan52]

51 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

I have a feeling that the ruling may be per location, rather than per borehole, but it'll be buried away somewhere in the EA stuff, I'm sure.  You could get lucky and find they allow 40,000 litres per 24 hours from a pair of closely spaced wells, but I suspect not, as the rule was intended to prevent commercial users from abstracting large volumes of water without an abstraction licence.

 

There are thousands of boreholes around, many now disused.  Our village has around a dozen, many drilled during WWI when there was a large army training camp just outside the village.  People forget that in rural areas wells and boreholes were the primary water supply until around the 1930's, when mains water started to be run out of towns and cities and into rural areas.  Mains water arrived in our village in 1934, but the old village borehole and standpipe still exists.  The standpipe is down by the brook, around 4 or 5 metres below the water table and the old borehole is artesian, i.e. it is under pressure at the surface, so it was capped with a cast iron plate and a pipe run down to the standpipe - no pump needed.

Seen an underground car park in Belfast city center nearly filled up due to a badly fitted top plate. Was only about a couple of feet of running out on to the main road, that would have been fun to watch!!! Ended up putting a very large pump that ran for days into the drains till it got cleared enough to fix it.

[Nickfromwales]

Am I the only one thinking "Peckham Spring" right now ? 

[SteamyTea]

What a great map, all the boreholes near to me are no more than 30m deep, with the majority being 0-10m.

That could save a bit on water charges (I would not tell them that I am discharging to their sewage system).

[Jeremy Harris]

What's surprising is taking a walk around and finding them.  I've found about 2/3rds of the boreholes within half a mile of so of our new build and only one is still in use, by a local farmer to supply his cattle drinking troughs.  One of the local ones is now underneath the kitchen floor of a new bungalow......................

The old village artesian borehole is now a nuisance, as the cast iron pipe has broken somewhere and water now runs across the lane at the junction about 50m in front of our new house.  The result is that the road surface is constantly breaking up and the water running over the road freezes in very cold weather.  No one seems to own it any more, so no one will take responsibility for fixing it.  I've been up and looked at it (the borehole is maybe 100m away from us) and it's clear that it's the source of the water.  I don't think the fix would be that expensive, it'd just be a matter of digging up around 40m of bridleway, taking out the old cast iron pipe and laying a new bit of MDPE, either to the old standpipe or as an underground drain to the brook.

Cornwall had loads of working private water supplies not that long ago, as mains water was really only available in the towns.  The pumps on some of them are works of art.  Mother's has a large (around 3ft diameter) cast iron wheel at the top, that was once driven by a flat belt, possibly by a wind turbine (Amos Pumps in Wendron used to manufacture them, US-style, and there were still loads around down there 40 years ago).  The big cast iron wheel has a crank on it that is connected to a load of articulated iron bars, connected to a series on lift pumps, to get the necessary lift from however deep the thing is (it's pretty deep, as her farm's on top of the moor).  The whole thing looks more like mining engineering that normal well stuff, but that's probably because of the strong mining engineering heritage in that part of the world.

[Onoff]

6 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

Am I the only one thinking "Peckham Spring" right now ? 

I was going to use that to title the thread but seeing as there's no sign of a leak.....

Just come in from playing trying to find it. Lopped a few lilac shoots, small ashes and got the scythe out on the grass & weeds as that's a "wild" bit (missus not impressed by my suggestion that  if I "did a Poldark would there be a wet patch" ).

Anyway, no obvious wet patches on the ground. Tried the stethoscope atop the styrofoam cup on a bit of 3" plastic down pipe like in the video above. Could hear the rushing water with the pipe end directly on the pipe down the pit but 2' up down through the clay, not a peep. Tried the stethoscope then on a bit of thick wall steel tube and tbh MUCH sharper than the plastic pipe but again no good 2' from it. Quite a lot of ambient noise so I might try later when it's dark (& quiet). Even stuck a 4' length of M10 studding in the cordless and punched a few holes in the ground along what may be the pipe route - no geysers yet.

[Nickfromwales]

Your neighbours must think you've lost the plot