Replacing mains water with well water

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Anonymous 5011

(@Anonymous 5011)

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Topic starter 25/07/2024 10:08 am

Following on from a topic on heating @editor asked for some info on our well

We have mains water on the street, but Scottish Water demanded a huge connection fee, which I wasn't prepared to pay, plus water charges are high. So prompted by our ground works team lead, I looked at a borehole / well.

Made contact with a couple of companies, but eventually settled on GRC Aquatec, they insisted a water deviner came first. He arrived and did his thing. 10 to 15mins later, said, we will drill here, then wondered off up our hill and came after another 10 mins. Told we had 4 good underground streams feeding our well. Then got his pocket watch out and it spun over the drill location. He then told me they will hit water at 15m, but that is just a stream, at 34m will be the main water.

A month later the drill team came, water hit at about 14m, final drill depth was 36m. However drilling was mostly through sand, some clay and a bit of sand stone, so we needed 30+m of steel liner, normal is a few meters of steel the rest in plastic, so bigger bill.

Getting the water suitable for consumption, is a turbidity back wash filter, with a added stuff to get rid of iron, a 10 and 5 micron filter and a UV filter. The well has a submersible pump and that feeds a 100L accumulator. Pump is switch on and off via a simple pressure switch on the accumulator.

We service it once a year.

Was it a smart move

For me, yes. Scottish Water add chlorine to water and I hate the taste it leaves. We have pure treated water, tastes great. It's hard compared to the soft water from the normal tap. So we have to descale the kettle once on a while, but that's ok.

We now have a battery and generator, so are fine in a power cut.

Costs (2021)

Drilling and liners £5k

Filter system, 40L/h pump and accumulation vessel, all manhours to install, testing water, almost another £5k.

So £10k, but claimed the vat back so £8k.

This topic was modified 1 year ago by Mars

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Abernyte

(@abernyte)

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Joined: 3 years ago

Posts: 236

25/07/2024 1:24 pm

I too have a well, but this one is a c1500 drystane well around 30 feet deep. It is fed via underground stone drains over a considerable area. It holds around 900 gallons continually and can refill from near empty in around 45 minutes. The water is beautiful and soft and was our main supply until the water main arrived some years ago. Yes, Scottish Water do chlorinate but that I can filter out at point of use. We switched to gain mains pressure as pumping to the tanks in the loft to get sufficient head for a gravity system was too limiting.

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Anonymous 5011

(@Anonymous 5011)

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Topic starter 25/07/2024 2:36 pm

The company that did the borehole were expecting us to have a low volume pump and overhead storage. The accumulator vessel allows us to have a steady supply presssure of 2.5bar or more if we want. So we have invented cylinder and everything in the house is a good flow rate.

This post was modified 1 year ago by Mars

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