Bore holes

RumbleTheTumble

RumbleTheTumble

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I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or knowledge of using water from bore holes? We are needing to move our ponies next year and one of the options only has a bore hole water supply and no mains water. I am concerned about it, mainly because I have no experience of using bore holes. My main worry is quality and variability. Plus, as I understand it, if you have no electricity you cannot get water out? Two years ago we had no electricity for nearly two weeks and I wonder what would happen if that were repeated if we moved to a bore hole water supply.
Many thanks 😊
 
We have a bore hole for water. It is electrically operated. I think this pump has been installed for over 30 years.
We don't have a water supply when there is a power failure but we have a stream in the garden which we use for the horse's water. We purchase bottled water for food use. The longest power failure we have had was 4 days.

There are many homes here with water supplied from underground. People help each other and those on mains water offer to supply the more rural homes.

I suppose there will be windmill operated pumps. I don't know if there are hand operated ones. I would imagine you would have to work pretty hard

Lots of fields have no water source. Farmers seem to use bowsers or the big polythene tanks on a trailer.
 
RumbleTheTumble said:
I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or knowledge of using water from bore holes? We are needing to move our ponies next year and one of the options only has a bore hole water supply and no mains water. I am concerned about it, mainly because I have no experience of using bore holes. My main worry is quality and variability. Plus, as I understand it, if you have no electricity you cannot get water out? Two years ago we had no electricity for nearly two weeks and I wonder what would happen if that were repeated if we moved to a bore hole water supply.
Many thanks 😊
Click to expand...
Is it a proper borehole for drinking water? Or just a home-made ‘well’ into a watercourse, that you drop a bucket and rope into?
We have a borehole which feeds the farm house, farm, livestock in winter and the dairy (a dairy farm!); which can be switched back to mains (for which we pay standing mains charges, with metered charges for any mains water we do use).
It definitely requires electricity to work, thus we have a tractor-driven generator in event of electricity power cuts.
It was VERY expensive to survey, drill for and install, is regularly serviced and sampled for water quality, and was only viable for the quantities of clean water and hygiene necessary in the dairy - versus astronomical and rising water bills from Utility provider.
It is reliable, at least as reliable as mains round here, because mains was put in in 1953 and the ageing mains pipe work not infrequently leaks or bursts! (supposed to have all been ‘relined’, but that’s another tall tale....)
Before mains arrived, my in-laws used a spring / well for household water, and livestock drank from stream / pond in winter (from field streams and troughs in summer).
A friend’s fields always had a natural spring, lovely and reliable with ancient stone troughs etc, until Council highways excavation on the nearby road totally bug*ered that. So she sank a ‘borehole’ into her field, and now has to draw buckets of water from what is essentially the same watercourse. Her partner sorted out some sort of motorised winding gear that is rechargeable, but a lot more faff than before.
Hope this helps
 
Our house and yard water supply is from a bore hole in the farm next door it's operated by a pump run on electricity, so yes effectively if you have no electric the water supply stops we have quite a large tank so it's only ever drained once completely, the electricity board then supplied us with water while they got the electricity on again.

I'm sure if you had a generator you could run it from that we have just never felt the need for one.
 
MereChristmas said:
We have a bore hole for water. It is electrically operated. I think this pump has been installed for over 30 years.
We don't have a water supply when there is a power failure but we have a stream in the garden which we use for the horse's water. We purchase bottled water for food use. The longest power failure we have had was 4 days.

There are many homes here with water supplied from underground. People help each other and those on mains water offer to supply the more rural homes.

I suppose there will be windmill operated pumps. I don't know if there are hand operated ones. I would imagine you would have to work pretty hard

Lots of fields have no water source. Farmers seem to use bowsers or the big polythene tanks on a trailer.
Click to expand...
Thank you. That is interesting and helpful. It is concerning when it is to do with the horses. Probably because I've never had to think about their water supply in that way before.
 
Exasperated said:
Is it a proper borehole for drinking water? Or just a home-made ‘well’ into a watercourse, that you drop a bucket and rope into?
We have a borehole which feeds the farm house, farm, livestock in winter and the dairy (a dairy farm!); which can be switched back to mains (for which we pay standing mains charges, with metered charges for any mains water we do use).
It definitely requires electricity to work, thus we have a tractor-driven generator in event of electricity power cuts.
It was VERY expensive to survey, drill for and install, is regularly serviced and sampled for water quality, and was only viable for the quantities of clean water and hygiene necessary in the dairy - versus astronomical and rising water bills from Utility provider.
It is reliable, at least as reliable as mains round here, because mains was put in in 1953 and the ageing mains pipe work not infrequently leaks or bursts! (supposed to have all been ‘relined’, but that’s another tall tale....)
Before mains arrived, my in-laws used a spring / well for household water, and livestock drank from stream / pond in winter (from field streams and troughs in summer).
A friend’s fields always had a natural spring, lovely and reliable with ancient stone troughs etc, until Council highways excavation on the nearby road totally bug*ered that. So she sank a ‘borehole’ into her field, and now has to draw buckets of water from what is essentially the same watercourse. Her partner sorted out some sort of motorised winding gear that is rechargeable, but a lot more faff than before.
Hope this helps
Click to expand...
Wow! You've had a lot of experience and aggravation. As you run a farm it is a big responsibility to get enough I expect. It sounded a lot easier in days gone by and now everything is so expensive! Thank you for writing such an interesting account. It would be a bore hole that was for a farm. Since split up to three properties. I don't think I would last long pulling buckets up for my lot!
 
PinkvSantaboots said:
Our house and yard water supply is from a bore hole in the farm next door it's operated by a pump run on electricity, so yes effectively if you have no electric the water supply stops we have quite a large tank so it's only ever drained once completely, the electricity board then supplied us with water while they got the electricity on again.

I'm sure if you had a generator you could run it from that we have just never felt the need for one.
Click to expand...
So, for you, it works okay? Do you have to get the water quality checked regularly and do you worry about it changing quality between checks?
 
we have a borehole for the horses (and a spring for the house) and no problem with water quality. Water in our area is very acidic so we treat it to correct the PH.
We also have a small petrol generator as a standby for power cuts. If there is a power cut we just disconnect the mains and start the generator to pump up water as we need it.
I soak baths (human size) of hay. I have a holding tank (about 40 gallons) above the bath so I always have a bathload of water ready.
We use the generator to pump up a tank of water or however much we need for the hay soaking and bucket filling and at t he same time it gives the freezer etc a boost during the power cut.

If there is an established bore hole I expect the owner has some means of dealing with power cuts.
 
We have a borehole for home and supplies the fields.

We pump water through a filter (we had the water tested and it was pretty good), water then goes to two big holding tanks, they probably hold 4 tonnes of water if not more. They are higher than the borehole and the house, and when we use water in the house electricity provides energy ie pressures the system. With no electric we would still have water, albeit slowly as it would be gravity fed.

Fwiw our previous field only had water which was collected of the barn roof, it went into various tanks and baths, we only ran low once in about five years. We had between two and five horses, plus a few sheep.
 
We have a well for all our water. It is acidic so it goes through a ph corrector and then a uv light.
It is such lovely water I would just drink it without all that.

We just had a 5 day power cut and the stored rainwater lasted about 2 days, I then used water from a handy waterfall that comes down into the yard.

You could use a rainwater collector - which is essentially a panel set at an angle with a gutter and downspout into a storage tank. Easy to make yourself and collects loads of water.
 
RumbleTheTumble said:
So, for you, it works okay? Do you have to get the water quality checked regularly and do you worry about it changing quality between checks?
Click to expand...
We are informed about council checks but have had a couple done privately.They have all been fine. We don't have any correctors . We have been here over 40 years and haven't quite gone doolally, well no more than normal I guess. We are the highest house on our hill. Above us there are 2 or 3 streams rising and only sheepgrazing. Our borehole is 200 feet down.
 
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