Spring fed water for property?

[Sellars]

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

Wow, that's a a bit steep, the local council don't have a monopoly on water tests and it might be worth investigating with a private company next time. Some private companies accept a sample you or a tradesman (plumber) take and get delivered to their lab for analysis. Our council accept private tests but obviously best to check with Highland council 1st.

 

[Sellars]

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.............!

Sorry I have no experience of that type of borehole.

 

[Whitefront]

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.

You can have a compliant septic tank, or a treatment system, providing it meets the regulations. I have two small treatment systems - one each for two separate dwellings. One of them is a German system that works on gravity only. Much better than a septic tank, I reckon - and no need for road access. The outflow is said to be drinkable (not that I am going to try it!)

There are nearly 38k private water supplies in England alone, and also a lot in Wales, I believe. Must be a lot ion Scotland also.

In England, councils have a virtual monopoly on testing and may charge as much as £500. I used to take samples and get them tested myself, but our local council says they have the legal duty to do it nowadays, due to some regulation that originated from the EUSSR.

 

[countrryboy]

If it was me if ur serious about the house i'd go up and have a look at it, which may be a mission in itself finding it with vegetation cover.

Possibly i'm wrong but i wouldn't be overly corncerned about any reports or tests as u can add filtration systems to sort out most things.

When i bought the bit the sellers where absolutley useless and couldn't organise a test, in the end i bought it without a test as it had dragged on so long.

Wot i would do is take a bucket/container with u to measure the flow rate, that u can't change, i know we have had a bit of rain lately but ground still fairly dry.
If u know ur container is say 5l and fills in 'X' amount of time u can atleast guesstimate ur flow rate, and at moment be fairly low ish.
I dunno if there is a 'set' amount u need but if this lowish flow can fill ur holding tank overnight so full to brim inn morning u should be ok.

Althou th plumber that done our work said May was always the driest month for private water supplies, guessing extra demand from trees/grass growing fast as well as often being a good month weather wise.
Amazing how the flow rate can change but if u just look at th water flowing into the tank it just looks much the same

When we had our problems being communal all neighbours had to agree, it was like knocking ur head of a wall trying to convince them we had a decent sized leak..
We sort of bodged the supply problem until a plumber could come out and do the works but still the 6000L tanks were empty 1st thing in morning despite enough flow going in to fill them easily overnight.
I had empty 5L paint tins hanging around all the different tanks so i could measure the flow rate at each in flow pipe to try and figure out where leak was.


They do say with a proper spring u have to be a bit cautious about digging about in it as u can 'lose' them

 

[countrryboy]

Was just going to add i know the hotel just below me is always scrimping on things 'not important' like its private water supply, it obviously passes the tests, but the plumber has moaned for years and years there tank is full of silt and they need to drain it.
And a few times throu summer they have ran out of water.


I have no idea if there system has silt traps or not or just not maintained as quite a distance away?
So might be worth taking a clean stick to to give tank bottom a quick prod

While the principles will be the same and simple be so many variations on them almost every system will be slightly different

 

[Whitefront]

When I first moved to my place, more than 20 years ago, I found that one of the silt tanks had a rusty old tractor door thrown across it as a lid, leaving lots of gaps I pumped the water out in order to clean the bottom, and found a crunchy layer about two feet thick composed of of mud and lamb bones. Nice. Must have been several lambing seasons' years' worth. I wonder how many he lost each year to this pit?

Naturally, I subsequently put a proper lid on the tank.

 

[countrryboy]

I must admit our hold tanks lids were knackered when i moved up here and just had some black plastic over them but sitting in stagnant water/bugs and our drinking water was below.
I think most on our system have filters and UV's now althou 1 old by still doesnae, been up here almost 40 years so he will be well used to any bugs in system

 

[Whitefront]

My neighbours, who use the same spring system even though they are half a mile away from us, never had any purification at all until a few years ago. They and their children must have been drinking the lamb-filtered water for at least a decade. Doesn't seem to have done them any harm.

 

[Alantoo]

I won't recount our complete tale of woe with spring and bore hole experiences, most have been covered above...but we have survived 22 years with particle, nitrate and UV filters.

We have had the locally councill turn up twice in that time to test the water, last time around 10 years ago and I think they said they were no longer doing them. It passed each time.

We did have a private test done when we first moved in...that cost (from memory) £150 basic and then £40 for every particular contamination test we asked for on top. They said it had every known bug and contamination known to man! (I exaggerate) We had it tested again after I installed the filters and it passed easily. Still quite limey though, and even with a 1 micron filter you can see a white lime bloom on a dark background once the water has dried off.

The issue that hasn't been covered in the thread (I haven't noticed if it has) is the willingness of a mortgage company to lend money for a property with a spring fed water supply.

We had 6 weeks to complete after our offer was accepted in 2000....the Cheltenham and Gloucester Building Society wasted 3 and a bit of those weeks to do the survey and then announced that they never lend against houses with out a mains water supply which we had told them about from the outset grrrr......the Ecology Building Society came up trumps and saved our bacon.

If you are looking for a mortgage, get the person you are dealing with to check their company's policy early on.

Alan

 

[countrryboy]

Never knew that about mortgage companies.

To be fair nowadys with rainwater cartchment and grey water systems u could plumb ur house so u needed very little potable water really is supply/flow was an issue