In the vast majority of cases (Domestic water supply) the answer is No.
You are entitled to abstract up to 20,000 Litres of water per day without an Abstraction Licence from the Environment Agency. This equates – conservatively – to enough water per day for 100 people.
In Scotland, abstractions over 10m per day must be registered with SEPA. Abstractions over 50m per day require an abstraction licence.
Hydroserve always notify the BGS (British Geological Survey) of intention to drill a borehole, and submit a Borehole record on completion of works. This is a statutory requirement for Borehole water suppliers under the Water Act.
Obviously, the answer to this question is very much dependent on several key factors :
– How much water is required
– Depth to Rock
– Depth to Water
– Water Quality encountered
For Domestic Borehole Water Supplies a Hydroserve installed Borehole water supply system start from around £15,000 plus VAT.
Hydroserve always advise existing and prospective clients to do a Borehole Water Prognosis prier to commencing with any drilling works.
These reports can give a good indication of the likely outcome, not just in terms of volume of water but also Water Quality.
Hydroserve have drilled hundreds of Boreholes over a very long period of time, and in that time we have only drilled 1 completely dry borehole!.
In order to ‘construct’ a Borehole Water Supply, Drilling Machinery needs to be mobilised to your site and set-up.
Hydroserve select the drilling rig and associated machinery they use for a specific job, based on the anticipated drilling requirements and the access conditions to the site / space available on site for the set-up of machinery.
From a large truck mounted drilling Rig to small, compact, track mounted rigs and compressors, Hydroserve has the right solution for your water supply requirements whatever your space availability constraints are.
Please read more on our specialist Restricted Access Drilling services.
This is a Question that we- understandably- get asked a lot. And like with a lot of Answers, it is very difficult (well, it’s impossible) to categorically say that this couldn’t, theoretically, happen.However, and here is the good news, in our 30 plus years experience this has not happened to us. Yes we have had problems with flow into and out of boreholes but typically these are caused by build up of naturally occurring metals such as Iron and Manganese restricting flow of water into the Borehole, or sometimes they can clog in the submersible borehole pump or pipe which has the same effect of restricting flow.
For domestic supplies (and most commercial and agricultural supplies too) the answer is no, there you won’t have chlorine in tap water or in your supply.
The quality problems in your Borehole Water depends primarily on where in the UK you are. Iron, Manganese and hardness (calcium and magnesium content) are issues that we regularly encounter in Borehole water supplies.
We would love to say you will never need anything other than planned maintenance for your domestic, agricultural or commercial water supply system (and for most of the systems we install this is largely true) but with the best will in the world, there is the potential for something unexpected that causes interruption to your water supply.
As a general guide, we advise that a Borehole Pump, when selected to the correct specification/duty and installed in accordance with best practice, will have an average longevity of around seven years.
