Spring fed water for property?

[jimmy milnes]

I viewed a property yesterday in Scotland and the place was water fed via a spring, now this is something that ive no experience of so could i as anyone out there with experience of these systems and any pros an cons, costs ?
I should say that the property hadn't been lived in for approximately 2 years and needed a good bit of work to bring it up to "what kay says" is livable.
Cheers Jimmy.

 

[Haggis Hunter]

I was brought up in a farm cottage where the water was fed by a spring, in to a holding tank then down to the house. On the plus side the water tasted great, compared to treated townie water (We never actually had it quality tested). On the flip side it dried up in really hot summers and we were reduced to bathing in the burn and flushing the loo with buckets of water drawn from the burn too.

For 25+ years our spring fed highland stalking cottage had a similar issue, and a nice twist. The feed pipe from the burn to the holding tank ran above ground and froze un during the winter. I saw it had gone on the market recently but the water supply issue was not mentioned in the brochure!

Oh, and things can crawl in to the holding tank over flow pipe and die in the water. Ask me how we found that out…..
I know of yet another estate spring fed supply to a number of houses that’s been overwhelmed by the a developer doubling the number of properties sharing the system, again issues in supply during drier months.

Basically I like the taste of most spring fed water but you need to be confident you’ll actually get water for 12 months of the year. I have no idea if you can ask the buyers to provide something like a water supply survey, but it might be possible. But it’s a sellers market up here at the minute and if one person gets a bit flighty then they’ll be another couple of buyers along shortly who won’t even know to ask the right questions.

We are seeing a lot of folk from the south picking up (cheap to them) properties here in the Borders and many have no clue as to rural issues, like dodgy water supplies. Which obviously won’t be the case with you Jimmy.

Finally, whose property is the spring/holding tank on? I am sure the property will have a legal right to the supply in the deeds but if Mr Farmer wants to run 20 cows in the field with tank and the cows just love milling around it to drink from the overflow that can lead to fun!

How is the waste dealt with from the house? That can be a whole different issue.

Personally it wouldn’t put me off a house if it was spring fed, I’d just try to find out from the locals/previous inhabitants what the crack was re the reliability of the supply.

Hope the above helps, rather than puts you off.

Cheers,

hh

 

[jimmy milnes]

I was brought up in a farm cottage where the water was fed by a spring, in to a holding tank then down to the house. On the plus side the water tasted great, compared to treated townie water (We never actually had it quality tested). On the flip side it dried up in really hot summers and we were reduced to bathing in the burn and flushing the loo with buckets of water drawn from the burn too.

For 25+ years our spring fed highland stalking cottage had a similar issue, and a nice twist. The feed pipe from the burn to the holding tank ran above ground and froze un during the winter. I saw it had gone on the market recently but the water supply issue was not mentioned in the brochure!

Oh, and things can crawl in to the holding tank over flow pipe and die in the water. Ask me how we found that out…..
I know of yet another estate spring fed supply to a number of houses that’s been overwhelmed by the a developer doubling the number of properties sharing the system, again issues in supply during drier months.

Basically I like the taste of most spring fed water but you need to be confident you’ll actually get water for 12 months of the year. I have no idea if you can ask the buyers to provide something like a water supply survey, but it might be possible. But it’s a sellers market up here at the minute and if one person gets a bit flighty then they’ll be another couple of buyers along shortly who won’t even know to ask the right questions.

We are seeing a lot of folk from the south picking up (cheap to them) properties here in the Borders and many have no clue as to rural issues, like dodgy water supplies. Which obviously won’t be the case with you Jimmy.

Finally, whose property is the spring/holding tank on? I am sure the property will have a legal right to the supply in the deeds but if Mr Farmer wants to run 20 cows in the field with tank and the cows just love milling around it to drink from the overflow that can lead to fun!

How is the waste dealt with from the house? That can be a whole different issue.

Personally it wouldn’t put me off a house if it was spring fed, I’d just try to find out from the locals/previous inhabitants what the crack was re the reliability of the supply.

Hope the above helps, rather than puts you off.

Cheers,

hh

Fantastic thanks HH this is just the kind of information im interested in
Best not tell kay about the dead stuff finding its way in though
Cheers Jimmy

 

[jcampbellsmith]

I viewed a property yesterday in Scotland and the place was water fed via a spring, now this is something that ive no experience of so could i as anyone out there with experience of these systems and any pros an cons, costs ?
I should say that the property hadn't been lived in for approximately 2 years and needed a good bit of work to bring it up to "what kay says" is livable.
Cheers Jimmy.

Ask to see the water test certificate. As HH says the water may freeze in the winter and dry up in the summer. Drilling for water may be an option if there's enough ground with the property or nearby? Ask your Scottish rural proprty lawyer to inspect the deeds to see what they say about water. Also look at who owns and who maintains access to the property?
Regards
JCS

 

[Haggis Hunter]

It’s the dead stuff that adds flavour! The odd morsel of deceased frog plopping into your glass of water from the tap never did me much harm!
Should have added that the actual water pressure is as important as continuity of supply, so low pressure leads to issues with having to add a pump to get a decent shower going, for instance. Also, these days, you can go soft and fit filters and UV light (?) purifiers into the pipework, but where’s the fun in that!
if you are going back to view again you can at least get an idea of pressure and mooch about to look at logistics of supply.
Where we stayed in the highlands we had very peaty water and a bath full looked pretty grotty before you even got in it, but there were no real issue from that.
JCS adds some very good points too.
hh

 

[Whitefront]

We have a system that can switch between a spring and a borehole. Either way, it goes through a purification system - filter, UV lamp. Nobody has mains water around here. You have to assume all surface water is contaminated, at certain times, by bugs originating from mammals, but the UV deals with that. You have to change the filters according to the water conditions; if there are too many particles in the water, they can shield the bugs from the UV. On the whole however, our system works well. And we never run out of water.

Every five years or so the council come round and test the water at the kitchen tap. It invariably passes. These tests are pretty meaningless anyway, as water can be contaminated one day, after a storm, and clean the next. What counts is the purity that comes out of your tap, not the source. To repeat, you have to treat all spring water in a livestock area as potentially contaminated and pass it through a purification system anyway. This is what the water companies do with your mains supply as well - although they tend to use chlorine.

The only thing tests are useful for is showing the presence of any heavy metals (such as lead). Excessive levels of iron can also be problematic, as it tends to stain clothes etc red. But lead is much more serious; some of the old Victorian sporting lodges had problems with lead poisoning if they were in acidic water areas. In one case, the local doctor diagnosed rheumatism - until somebody checked the water pipe and found it was lead. In hard water areas, the inner surfaces of lead pipes tend to become coated with limescale, which obviates the problem. The Victorians sometimes put crushed limestone in spring water collecting tanks for this very reason.

 

[slider]

Private water supplies should be tested by the local authority.
Make sure you know where the source is ,- is it somewhere that could be distributed in the future? Such as in Forestry.
If it is still running ok after such a dry summer you are pretty safe from it drying up.
You MAY initial get stomach upsets but your body will soon build up immunity.
Not difficult to install inline filters - both for solids and ylto kill bugs

 

[del.gue]

Im glad this subject has come up. I was considering a property in wales that had a borehole supply it shared with 4 other properties.

 

[Whitefront]

A friend of mine lives in rural southern France. He has a well, but it tends to run dry in a hot summer. However, he has installed a fairly simple roof water collection system and this works brilliantly. It is astonishing how much water can be collected from a house or shed roof during even a short rain shower. He has some outbuildings uphill from his house, so it all works by gravity. The key is the storage; a big enough storage tank (s) you can see you through for a heck of a long time. In countries with dry summers and most of their rain concentrated in the winter, ie some of the med islands, they use tanks (cisterns) to get them right through four or five months of dry season.

 

[countrryboy]

Plenty of really good advice already.

Really a lot will depend on that exact system, could be no probelms at all or could be a nightmare depending on how old or how badly maintained the system is.
But there not rocket science either any tanks piwork are fairly easily replaced if ur quite handy and get a digger hired in.

Really the main thing who owns the ground both where the collecting/silt tanks are and the holding tanks ( ours are 1-200m away from each other) and the ground the pipework is on.
Is there any maps any idea when system was last updated?
Just watch with the maps as many tend to be schematic and just give u a general idea of where pipes actually go.

Best way to find pipes is get a digger and do something completey unrelated the places i've put a bucket throu a water pipe u wouldnae believe, my nieghbours all claimed they ran 1 way i found they don't

I'm on a communal private system shared with another 8 houses, at 1 point where al FC owned workers houses and all tanks pipework up the hill behind on FC ground.
Luckily the FC replaced a lot of pipes 20-30 years ago when the wood was felled and replaced with more modern alkyethene and tanks were replaced with plastic/firbre glass.
Got maps but as much use as a chocolate fireguard really

We had some issues a few years ago collecting pipes were silted up, wot we thought was a 'spring' is possibly more like a clay tile been tapped into but it seems to work
Also had a decent leak, just a joint pushe dloose with a tree root, take a bit of finding esp in wet areas, just got to wait for dry spells and try and find wet bits that shouldnae be there.

I set up my on 2nd 'hilly billy' system just to provide me with outside water for kennels, washing stuff etc, simply feeding water out a drain to fillsome IBC's on the hill behind.
Works well and i don't need to worry about using water in the summer time.

 

[Tf223]

I’m no drinking water expert however having a controlled supply free of contamination is key.

Some good advice on sampling requirements, costs and risks are at -

Private Water Supplies | Torfaen County Borough Council

 

[jimmy milnes]

Thanks for all the helpful advice, I should have the local council phoning me today about it so maybe they can give me a heads up on tests done and the source etc.
Cheers Jimmy

 

[Klenchblaize]

Good thread. Going to do some research into a suitably sized UV filtration system. The ones I have experience of use 4ft fragile fluorescent lighting-like tubes.

K

 

[Wills]

We get our water from a bore hole. The same water we supply to our caravan site and cottages. The rules are quite straight forward in that if you want to drink it, crack on. However, supplying it to the public is a different matter and need to have it tested every year by the local health. As our water has high iron and magnesium, we have a treatment unit which consists of 3 large (6 ft) tubes full of sand, a smaller unit which oxygenates the water therefore the iron and magnesium so it is in particulate form and can be filtered out. We also have a separate UV tube to nuke bugs.

 

[Sellars]

All the above is good advice. Haggis Hunter was spot on & JCS. I'd add that in Scotland as part of the sale of property I'd expect your lawyers to require a satisfactory water test on a private system, and to do a check on legal rights to the water and access to the source and pipes for maintenance, if it is off the properties land.

HH mentioned waste drainage. In Scotland septic tanks should be registered with SEPA and evidence of registration should be produced for the sale. Septic tank registration does not mean all is in order with the septic tank, only that someone has registered it and SEPA know where it is and who is responsible and should pollution occur and be brought to their attention, SEPA know where to start proceedings.

A private water test only proves that the system tested ok at the time of the test. Short term dosing of the holding tank helps water to pass the test for a sale. Most private supplies now include sediment and UV filters which can be arranged to treat one tap at the kitchen sink or be larger units to treat the whole house. Filters and UV tubes need to be changed regularly, depending on the water, but at least annually. Good systems don't need UV but most advice is to get one. At present local authorities in Scotland do not require to test private supplies, unless they are for business use and serving the public. So a supply for a private house may never have been tested but supplies for e.g., B&B or self catering holiday properties should have been.

I've been living with a private supply for 36 years, I do not have UV or sediment filters. The local authority have never tested our supply and I quite like that I'm responsible for the water I drink. The charge is around £100 a time for self catering property.

The trend at present is for boreholes to replace spring supplies. I think if there is an adequate spring or water course then use it and let gravity supply your water rather than paying for the bore hole, then electricity required for pumps (no water in a power cut) and potentially re-boring in as little as 10 years.

 

[jcampbellsmith]

Water testing costs will vary by Council. I paid Highland Council £250.73 on 23 July 2018 for a private water supply test (bore hole) that had been previously tested. I would expect it to cost more now.
Regards
JCS

 

[JTO]

The trend at present is for boreholes to replace spring supplies. I think if there is an adequate spring or water course then use it and let gravity supply your water rather than paying for the bore hole, then electricity required for pumps (no water in a power cut) and potentially re-boring in as little as 10 years.

Are horizontal/slightly inclined boreholes successful? I need a better supply to feed fishing lakes. Coarse fishing, so no-one eats the fish! If the Polish steal them to eat.............!

 

[Apthorpe]

In England, I believe you now have to be sure that your drainage system complies with regulations in order to sell a house. For example, the soakaway I have is completely unacceptable, and would need a new compliant septic tank system installed with road access to pump it out. Apparently, only water companies discharging industrial quantities are allowed to emit raw sewage into the environment these days.
I don't the regulations in Scotland are, but I'd be more worried about the drainage than the water supply. You may well be able to supplement water supply with a borehole which is not all that expensive.

 

[VSS]

A few sensible comments above to the effect that, while it's OK to use an untested / unfiltered supply in your own private dwelling, you can't do that if you've got B&B, campsite, etc etc. I'd just like to add to that that you can't use an untested supply to your larder if you're selling carcasses or processing venison for sale.

 

[Marcher]

I sold my old Family Home in 2003 ,where we had lived for the previous 120 years. The water supply came from a spring on the hill above the house, by gravity, into a tank in the roof. The spring was surrounded by a low stone wall, with a slab roof, and was quite fast flowing. The over flow was piped away to feed a pond
When I sold up, the Agent said that the water supply would have to be tested. To be on the safe side I dug up the old lead pipe from the well, and replaced it with a large bore polythene pipe. Incidentally, the old lead pipe had no sediment in it !
The new supply was taken to a small brick built shed, where the water went through a filter, and then a U/V tube, which kills any bugs. I had the water tested before the work was done, and again when all was completed. Both results were clear.
So, just because a supply is old, it doesn't have to be bad.