Managing the private water supply

[Penners]

The breadth, depth and variety of knowledge and expertise we find on this forum never ceases to amaze me.

 

[skier-hughes]

I agree penners, thoroughly enjoying this thread. Makes me want to go and explore our well, but far too much to do, why bother witha well with water when you don't even have a bathroom in your house

 

[Schoolmarm]

I thought now that all private water supplies are legally required to be tested by the local council/water board with the power to shut them down or require remedial filtration for their continued use.

This is correct. Even single dwellings.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I'm surprised Clifford Pope hasn't received the sort of council letter I received last Spring " we are duty bound to test your private water". That was free, but of course the filtration wasn't - I think it was around £600. I felt pretty much as Clifford feels about it but the thought that little children come here with unbelievably hyper-fussy parents was enough to make me see the sense of it. What an adult can tolerate a child might not.

I've now got 20 chickens pooing into grass pretty close to that well so I'm glad it's filtered.

The breadth, depth and variety of knowledge and expertise we find on this forum never ceases to amaze me.

Absolutely! Miles better than Wiki!

The area of land behind our house used to be very wet/boggy until the ponds were dug about 30 years ago. They are a lovely addition - much nicer than a boggy mess of weeds.

Just to second that they really are so lovely, and combine tomake your property the astonishing place it is. I'm not expecting anything on that scale- home to a few geese would suffice. I like your analogy of the earth filling the pond too, very helpful!

So it may be advisable to order it and have it delivered a few days before you need it, give it time to settle before being pumped out!

A very good point Feltwell- we'd do that!

A true artesian well is where you dig down and break through the impervious layer to a highly pressurised acquifier below, water then shoots up the shaft and pours out at ground level - with no way of stopping it

Thankyou for explaining the difference, how interesting! And all your other observations and insights too - I'm very grateful for your expertise.It is as you say, a line of springs on the side of the hill, and in winter it becomes a proper stream all the way to the river in town. The location is Halls Hill, Grantham, if you want to see the map.

So I'm going to sit on the fence on this one......but I'd err on the side of caution as digging 'n excavations could indeed affect the well.

In that case I'll go for small muddy duck pond rather than lake!

 

[CliffordPope]

This from Gloucestershire council website:

"Single Private Dwellings

Risk assessment and sampling only undertaken if requested by owner of the supply".

 

[Penners]

This from Gloucestershire council website:

"Single Private Dwellings

Risk assessment and sampling only undertaken if requested by owner of the supply".

I think that's because all the water in Gloucestershire has been passed by the inspector.

 

[d49xc]

But I wouldn't go so far as to say polluted water is good for you! I lived for a while as a child on a farm where all visitors became sick if they drank the water. Surface water from the farmyard was running straight into the well.

A classic case of well pollution through runoff of surface water entering into the aquifier, Excess nitrates and nitrites from the farm fertilizer are usually found in any water analysis....this is why sealing the well head as I've mentioned sometime ago is so important and is emphasised when building them in Africa.

Shallow wells on the hillside are much more suspectible to pollution than deeper ones at the ridge of the hill even though they tap the same aquifier. The strata that the rainwater/pollution seeps through downwards acts as a filter and 'cleans' the water. Deeper wells means more ft of sand/chalk/limestone whatever to seep through = cleaner water.

If your interested in this sort of thing re geology...
Geological maps - being effectively overprinted/coloured 1:50000 OS maps are available for all the UK from the BGS. They show the strata at the surface, you need to study them in some detail to understand the successive layers downward at any one point. There is usally a x-section drawn at a particular line across the chart to help you....of course some stuff is still unknown. The Oxfordshire coal field is one (Google it). Proved by core drillings, it's a long way down and in multiple thin seams making it v.difficult to mine - in situ coal gasification has been postulated as a way of extracting the energy from it once things re energy in the UK get really dire.
Then there the oil shale type deposits in Kimmeridge clay. On the south coast where the clay is very thick some pockets have had enough oil in them to catch fire (google oil shale cliff fires dorset - the paper from Southampton uni is a good ref). Again some serious technical papers postulate whether we could ever in dire needs extract any oil from excavating whole hills. Probably not viable - ever - was the conclusion.

Some areas have larger scale 6" map overprinted with geo data but these are very expensive (as in around £90) as they are aimed at the professionals
Most of the UK geology was sorted in the 1930's.
A series of "Memoirs" as they were called were published by the BGS at that time covering areas of "interest" - some (geologically uninteresting) areas still haven't been done. The areas limits chosen for each memoir could be a bit bizarre: Oxford area for instance was covered in a "Memoir of Witney and surrounding district"
http://shop.bgs.ac.uk/Bookshop/ is a starting point for what's currently available

Very recently SOME (not All!) of the national well and borehole database - the actual scanned records of the drillings/diggings where reported have been uploaded and available free of charge to download. Previously it was a high cost professional enquiry only type of availability.
I'll do a specific post on this in the next week or so for those interested
Regards to all......

 

[Gareth Hughes]

This from Gloucestershire council website:

"Single Private Dwellings

Risk assessment and sampling only undertaken if requested by owner of the supply".

I think that's because all the water in Gloucestershire has been passed by the inspector.

Groan...

 

[CliffordPope]

I don't see the sense behind that. I thought the point of having a test was to ascertain amongst other things the integrity of your own particular set-up. So just because all the water in Gloucestershire is drinkable, it doesn't follow that one particular well might not have a crack in its upper brickwork and be letting in contaminated water.

Or the well might be fine, but the attic storage tank cover be damaged and have rats nesting by it. Or the particular kitchen tap they use to draw off the sample have a run of old lead piping.

 

[Penners]

Groan...

An entirely appropriate response, GH.

 

[worms]

the attic storage tank cover be damaged and have rats nesting by it. Or the particular kitchen tap they use to draw off the sample have a run of old lead piping.

I guess the same could be said of many houses on mains supply!

FWIW, our well rises and falls by about 5m, but we are on old moraine deposits, with a mix of shingle and boulder clay, so the concept of an aquifer perhaps doesn't apply and the groundwater is literally just that - recent rain seeping away off the hill, rather than old water from years gone by. During really wet spells the water table is about 6 inches below ground level and after long dry spells it must be about 8m down.