UKC

I'm thinking of going to look at a house for sale which can is not mains connected. I don't know too much about it but it gets its water from a spring on someone else's land (for which there are rights written in the deeds etc). The house has been unoccupied for a while so I don't expect there to be any serviceable filters etc. there is electricity at the property.
1. What are the pitfalls, specifically what do people do when the well dries up,which I assume it must
2. What's the approximate cost of all the gubbins required to make a safe water supply (filter, UV thing, ph what's it)
3. Are utility companies obligated to connect a house up to mains water (at a cost obviously) if requested?
4. Are landowners obligated to allow utility companies to lay pipes etc across land if requested?

I know these are fairly obscure questions but there seems to be no end to UKC knowledge! Especially interested to hear from people who are supplied by a spring or well, there are apparently 600,000 of you in the UK

In reply to Tyler:
I wouldn't touch it without first having a water sample tested.

Next confirm your legal right and possibly any water abstraction permission from local water authority.

The source is it a well, bore hole, spring.. consider the flow rate, pressure and also what it's fed by, would it run dry in a drought or deep winter freeze. Is it on farmers land, could it be polluted easily.

Depending on the quality of the water your costs could be a few hundred quid upto £10k to bring it up to speed.

We had an old well, that couldn't cope with the more modern water supply demands and had a bore hole drilled, 68m down in the end. New piping and pumps. The sample showed it was very hard, had excess iron and radon. With the subsequent filtration system and drilling, the final cost was close to £10k.

Depending on where you live, distance to the mains etc.. it could still cost you more to get connected.

In reply to Tyler:

We are on a bore hole, shared with 2 neighbours (used to be all one property until 3 years ago). They originally had use of a spring in a field behind the property (not sure if they had an easement for it or not, but we certainly have an easement for a septic tank in the field opposite), one year the farmer decided he wanted to keep pigs in the field with the spring, so they had to sort out an alternative water supply, and had the bore hole drilled, 18 months later farmer decided keeping pigs wasn't for him after all!!

From what I've read about bore holes is they are very cost effective over the long term, as you pay no water rates, however it is a substantial set up cost.

If you aren't on mains water, then I assume you have private sewerage too.

This is where we came unstuck. The only checks the solicitor advised us to have on it was for vendor to provide a receipt for when it was last emptied (which they did).

It was a very old septic tank system, which didn't have the capacity for the current housing set up (originally a farmhouse and tiny cottage, now a farmhouse, extended cottage and converted barn), even without that increased use, septic tanks struggle with modern use, the ratio of solids to liquids (sorry) has changed since septic tanks were designed, we now have power showers and electric washing machine putting a lot more grey water in. Also, unknown to us (until much later) we also had a breach in one of our manholes, so our septic tank was taking the run off from Elidir Fawr as well!!

As previously mentioned our septic tank was on someone elses land by right of easement. They kicked off as soon as me moved in, due to concerns for their horses, and NRW got involved (the guy from NRW was ace and really helpful to be fair). £19k (between 3 houses) and we now have an all singing all dancing passive sewage treatment unit!!

If the property you are looking at has a septic tank on it's own land, and far enough away from any other properties that any poor function will be your problem and no one elses, then according to NRW man you would be unlikely to come on to their radar. However, if it is liable to affect other people, then be cautious, maybe get a builder with experience with septic tank systems to inspect it, and talk to NRW/EA for advice.

In reply to summo:

Cheers Summo, why didn't you connect to the mains? Was this in the UK?

Does a bore hole always get to water eventually, if not how do you know it's going to yield success?

Does the bore hole go on the same location as the well (the well is on different land so it would be good to place borehole next to house ~100 meters from well)

In reply to Tyler:

Our borehole is just drilled down from a patch of lawn between the cottage and the barn, and the pump/filtration unit (fairly large) is in an unconverted part of the barn.

They hit solid bedrock when drilling it and had to buy in a new, stronger drill bit, but being in the mountains it is obviously a bit rockier than other areas.

In reply to Tyler:

I was brought up in such a house (and my parents still live there):


No pitfalls; it has never dried up (that's from 40 years personal experience). (Check out the local topology to form an opinion on whether it will be reliable.)


Zero, we just drink it. (A lot of natural spring water is really good quality, and doesn't need any treatment. You could get a sample tested. You should also have a think about the surrounding environs and what might pollute it. What matters is how much earth the water would have to soak through to end up in the spring, if this is quite a lot then there is no problem. Note that mains water treatment is essentially just soaking water through treatment beds.)

In reply to SAF:

Thank you

Same question really, do bore holes always get to water? Also how much did it cost (approx), presumably there is a correlation between depth and cost.



I'm guessing, given your location you were never worried about the spring drying up!

Is that £19k for a sceptic tank? That seems a lot even for three houses

Did you look at connecting to mains water? Was the bore hole chosen because it was the cheapest option?

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Thank you, maybe the 600,000 figure was accurate!



are they/you not worried about contamination from livestock, fertiliser or rodents? Is the well on their own land, surrounded by their own land?

In reply to SAF:



Do you mind giving an approx cost of bore hole and filtration system? Also, how did you know the bore hole would reach water, do they always?

In reply to Tyler:


The well is on their own land, a quarter of an acre garden surrounded by fields often containing livestock.

No, they don't worry about the livestock. Any rain water falling on cow poo would then have to soak through many metres of earth to get into the well. (There's a big difference here between rain run-off water, and well water.) The well water is likely filtered to a much higher level than waste water in the Thames Valley gets before being pumped back into London taps.

In reply to Tyler:


Sorry don't know answer to that, as previous owners had it drilled


The borehole hopefully won't dry up, however you do have to be careful of leaks or accidentally leaving taps running for long periods, as it drains down to the murky sediment at the bottom and starts pulling this into the system. Had it happen twice, once when neighbours had some kids round and one of them played with the outside tape and left it running (not discovered until next morning), and once when our toilet system jammed and kept refilling.


So NRW don't recommend Septic tank systems anymore (for the reasons previously stated), preferring a move towards sewage treatment units. We had our own unique set of problems that pushed the costs up. Sewage treatment requires power to aerate the waste. We had no financially viable way of getting power across the road to the site of the previous tank (which obviously has to be down hill of the property so couldn't be anywhere else) which limited our options on systems available. The one we used uses wind to drive the aeration. So the basic unit big enough to serve 3 properties (8 bedrooms in total) was £6359 +VAT before fitting. The ground works were expensive due to the rocky land, and the tank requires a lot of concrete to encase it and counteract the pressure form the water inside it (not cheap), we then had to have a second emergency order of concrete when the primary tank filled over night before things were complete, due to the as yet undiscovered manhole breech and Storm Eve (i think!!). The cost of the manhole being fixed also added to it a bit.

But do not be fooled there are no cheap options...we researched them all!!!


Previous owner did, it's not an option, we are not near the mains and are uphill (1100ft elevation) of any water mains in the area, so even if it was possible it would require a pumping station as well as a lot of digging and pipework. Annoyingly the pipe for the untreated water from the reservoir runs right in front of the house (like 15ft from the front door).

In reply to Tyler:
With regards connecting to a water main, unless there is a main right outside your house it will cost you a lot of money. You also may have to pay for any upgrade works to get the water to your house, even though you aren't taking much water, if you happen to live at the top of a hill that could be tricky.

I may be wrong (I normally am), but I'm sure I was told/read years ago that legally all water has to be treated to some degree before drinking. Even perfectly clean water from boreholes/springs. May be worth doing some more research on that.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


Having just spent 3 months working on control systems for united utilities water treatment works, I'd say there was a teeny bit more to water treatment than filtering.

However they do have rather more at stake since any non-compliant water entering a service reservoir will reach most of the local population and take ages to be flushed out of the system.

In reply to Tyler:


No. The one we put in was in Sweden. I've had one in UK but it was all in place and fully functional.


Skill, experience and knowledge of the driller, locating aquifers from maps and hydrology charts etc


Ours are close but into completely different sources.

In reply to Tyler:

Ask the current owners for thesupply's risk assessment, which should have been done by the local EH, and a few year's sample results.

Spring water is more liable to contamination than water from boreholes, and that contamination might be seasonal (linked to local farming practices)

I think the main question is sufficiency, as the cost of source protection, treatment and sampling is pretty low in the long term compared to water rates.

They can also be very 'useful' tools in neighbour disputes, where the source is over a property boundary, so be careful of that.

In reply to Coel Hellier:



Unless is just runs straight over the cover and into the well. Protection of the source is quite important. In my experience, a lot of spring supplies don't meet drinking water requirements unless treated.

In reply to Tyler:

It's also worth noting that running costs for private water/ sewerage are low compared to annual average water/ sewerage bill of £400.

We spend maybe £200 on maintenance and running (electric) costs a year between 3 houses for the bore hole, and the sewage treatment plant only needs emptying every 3-4 years and maintenance (media changed) every 10 years.

So the savings do add up.

It's also cool to be (nearly) off grid

In reply to Tyler:

I used to live in a house with private water and a septic tank (still live in one with a septic tank but mains water).

Private water - pros, it was free
cons - we have various problems with it containing too much faecal coli - this was owing to the combination of cow poo and heavy rain washing the poo into the cistern which held the water supply. Consequently we had spells of having to boil our water before use/use bottled water for drinking. We also had a situation where flooding cause our supply pipe to be washed away, had to wait for the water to retreat so we could find the pipe and re-attach it. This meant no water for about a week, and of course, we had to sort it ourselves.

Septic tank - Have had a septic tank for about 25 years all told. Have had to have it emptied twice in that time, otherwise it runs away just fine with little maintenance by ourselves. I believe there had been legal problems with our outflow prior to us buying our current house but it was sorted out between the previous owners and Scottish Water.

In reply to Andy Hardy:



And it depends on the level of contamination in the first place.
At its most basic level its just adding a floculation agent, skimming off the floating crap and bungling the rest through a sand filter.

But depending on the quality there can be many many more processes before it hits the taps.

On to bore holes, a mate of mine is a manager at a water company and his house and street are fed by a well spring so he got free water.
Yorkshire water adopted the spring though and the street new gets a water bill but no extra treatment is done to the water.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

I guses that is why wells sometimes have little walls.

In reply to marsbar:


Indeed, but they're normally just the ornamental ones. The real ones often don't, or the brickwork is poor and allows surface and subsoil water to enter.

In reply to Tyler:

3. Are utility companies obligated to connect a house up to mains water (at a cost obviously) if requested?
As I understand it they are not. In the past you could trench your way to the nearest main, perhaps a neighbouring property, but recently this has changed and all new meters need to accessed from the public highway. Not sure if this is a national policy or just SWW. It meant we needed to change are plans and trench for 167m rather than 13m!
Your local utility will offer you a price to do the work trench, lay pipe, new connection, meter and make good or you can just get them to install the meter. Obviously more work for you but normally a lower price. Costs will be higher if you need to cross agricultural land that take a plough.
4. Are landowners obligated to allow utility companies to lay pipes etc across land if requested?
In the case of major works perhaps. In the case of servicing an individual property I doubt it.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:


True. At my parents' property there is a ditch running round the boundary on the uphill side, so no direct run-off will flow towards the well.

In reply to Tyler:

I'm building a rainwater supply for an outbuilding. Filters down to 1 micron, activated carbon and a UV steriliser - all WRAS approved or the US EPA equivalent, worked out at about £200, and £40/year for a new UV bulb and £10/year for filter cartridges. We are on the cusp of much longer life LED UV systems being affordable.

I don't plan to drink this but in theory it'd be safe. You can get reverse osmosis and remineralisation filter systems for a few hundred quid, they filter at a low rate but enough for a household to drink.


I don't believe so. You and/or the utility have to negotiate with the landowner for a "wayleave" which is then ireovocably written into their property deeds and may or may not damage their property value. We have a water mains under such conditions on our land and it's a bloody eyesore where it crosses the beck at height, wrapped ininsulation and black plastic...

In reply to wintertree:

Any recommendations for where to buy this sort of kit? We're buying a house on a private supply which currently doesn't have any filter/UV treatment in place. There are lots of people out there offering "treatment systems", but usually much more expensive than £200!

In reply to the OP: The place we're buying is in the Dales, where many houses have private supplies with very few problems. One of the neighbours said his supply dried up in a particularly hot and dry spell last year, but was running again within a couple of days. The place we're buying has a storage tank just below the spring outlet, which (to my untrained eye) looks big enough to outlast a fair spell of dry weather.

OM

In reply to Tyler:

There are few budget option comments, but unless it's a little holiday cabin where you might only drink the odd brew, it needs doing properly. A test will show you the way forward.

Heavy lime scale can wreck elements in heaters quicker and reduce efficiency, iron can discolour clothing, do you want to shower daily in water with radon, even the taste is impacted by different minerals etc..

If a well can start refilling within a day or so of rain after being dry, that would suggest there is limited reserve and also poor filtration. It's potentially a costly and complex area, but once solved more than worth it for the joy of living remotely.

In reply to Tyler:
We are on a bore hole, the source is next door - down the road. we pay £200 a year which we pay in January and use as an excuse to go round and drink wine.

The only restriction is we cannot use it for commercial purposes.

We have a small filtration system under the sink with a basic baffle filter and UV. The main reason fort he filter is it is quite mineral heavy. The biggest pain is the unfiltered water can fur taps etc, but it's a fine rather than hard deposit and easily rinses or flushes through.

I am told it has never dried up in the 500 years it's been here, and we live on a road which has numerous wells fed by the hill springs and used by pilgrims in ye olden days so it's unlikely to.

In reply to Tyler:

We lived in our last house with private water supply for 25 years, not a great supply from a couple of fields up the hill. 3 cottages shared it and during dry spells we all had to be pretty carefull not to run out, but managed fine.

Regards quality, if you have it tested don't panic if it fails (bacteria etc), with an empty house and the water not being used it may be basically stagnant when tested. Our water showed some horrendous results and we always had the odd dead slug or worms in the garden holding tank but never got around to installing filters. I've been drinking water when running on the hills for 25 years so reckoned this no worse!

In reply to Owen Meany:


You might google the Citropur Trio-UV which is particles, carbon and UV, for about £350. Plenty of suppliers related to water filtration have them.

Or you can buy filter housings and filters from various suppliers and get a less well packaged drinking grade UV water unit from somewhere like Amazon for about half the price. Although then there's more plumbing bits and mounting brackets to buy.

Edit: noting Summo's comments, this is for rainwater for me so I don't have to worry about problems with mineral content.

In reply to wintertree:

Thank you!

OM

In reply to Tyler:

We get our water supply from a spring. The nearest mains supply is 2 miles away. Ours is filtered but that's it. It tastes fantastic, far better than any treated water and is always very cold. We live on the side of a mountain on the Welsh border and ours has never run dry. It will occasionally (once a year) go cloudy in torrential rain when the catchment tank gets inundated but it clears very quickly. We keep some cheap bottled water to hand just in case. I wouldn't be concerned but do a bit of research.

In reply to Tyler:

Thanks for all the responses, they've been useful. I think the best thing would be to put a new bore hole on the actual property and hope i hit water!

In reply to Tyler:

I lived in a house in rural Eire with private bore hole and own septic tank. Every rural Irish home had similar set ups.

Reliability?

Bore hole/deep well = Ours never ran dry. I never heard of anyone else's dry up either.

Spring/shallow well = However, if you get water from a spring it may dry up but you'd need to ask the previous owner. Even then my experience was that such owners would always have a bigger header tank to cope for a while. (People generally don't attempt to connect themselves to a well that dries up - for obvious reasons)

Germs and nasties =

Make sure the hole has a cover on it. Ours hadn't been used for several years when we moved in. The water was a little discoloured at first (sediment accumulation), but it cleared. When I asked the local water man if he'd test it he simply asked me if I'd been sick or had anyone else been sick after drinking the water. No, I told him, to which he replied that there was no need to test it then was there?

However wells can be disinfected quite easily, although its a bit of a fag. http://davidwperry.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Rats%20in%20the%20Well I've done it!!

Treatment =
We lived in an area with high (ish) copper. Some folk had expensive filters to remove the copper, others had no filters. The only filter we had was a simple cotton one in a tube, which removed any solid grit/dust etc., (£10) It needed cleaning out once in a while.

We had power showers, and all the modern stuff a normal 4 bedroomed house had.

Problems =
If we accidentally left a tap on for more than a couple of hours at a time we'd end up using the water from the bottom of the deep well - and that got cloudy. Left overnight it would clear up as the sediment settled. - but we never ran dry!!

What could go wrong?? You have a pump down the well. Ours was there for over ten years. They are pretty reliable. You also have a pressurised header tank (every header tank I saw in ireland was red and came from Italy). Ours once got a tiny bit of grit stuck on a/in a solenoid switch and the pump stopped. However I was soon shown how to free it.

Having your own water supply is = cheap (it comes free from the sky). Should be clean and potable. I'd not even worry about buying a house again with its own well/water supply.



Septic Tanks.. Ours was at the bottom of our garden. A simple one large homemade concrete tank just below the ground and an out pipe at one end to the soil.

Sewerage.
No real difference in my view.
If the sewerage system hasn't been used for a year or two, it may well smell for the first few weeks until the bacteria gets going. We were also careful about chucking too much bleach and other nasty chemicals down the loo, etc.,.

In the 10 years we lived in the house it never needed emptying.

In reply to Tyler:

You really need to be speaking to a hydrogeologist with experience in your locality. Anything else and you are working on guesses and supposition which could work out very expensive.