water storage chelmsford essex

Water Well (Borehole) Drilling

Water is a very precious resource and it is becoming a more expensive commodity year on year. By drilling your own water well you can reduce your monthly outgoings dramatically, the larger the volume of water that you use the quicker the payback period on your investment.

Both Commercial Sites and Private Households are turning to Boreholes as a Reliable, Cost-effective Water Source.

Now, for the first time industries are finding that their water bills are now twice as expensive as electricity, a growing number of medium to high users of water are turning to sourcing their own water supply as a means of reducing costs.

Boreholes – Maximum Allowed Extraction

Currently the environment agency allow a extraction of 20,000 litres per day without an extraction licence. Visit the Environment Agency’s website for further information.

The drilling of a water well can be broken down into six stages

  • Initial enquiry
  • The commissioning and completion of a hydrological survey (which we can organise for you) at this stage TND Drilling will be able to offer budget figures of drilling costs
  • Obtain an extraction licence from the Environment Agency (only if more than 20 cubic meters per day is required)
  • Install bore hole and test pump well
  • Water analysis
  • Install necessary water treatment if any is needed

As with all of TND Drilling services we work with hydrologists to install water wells, we tailor each water well package to suite the clients requirements, this can range from just simply drilling the water well, or supplying the complete package from drilling the bore hole to having drinking water coming through the tap.

The drilling of the water well

There are primarily two different methods of drilling that we use at TND Drilling whilst there are lots of variations of techniques for different geologies within these methods.

  • Mud drilling
  • Air drilling

We are one of the few drilling companies that don’t use plastic liners in clay, due to the clay moving (heaving) and shattering the plastic deeming the well useless. We install a steel liner that is welded together as one complete tube, straight through the clay and into the underlying strata (chalk in London and the south east).

On completion of the borehole, it will be test pumped, this is when we install one of our own submersible pumps on a temporary basis so that we can establish the performance of the Bore hole, test pumping will give us data on the pump rate and the draw down level of the water in the well.

This information then enables us to decide on suitable sized pump that works with both the client and the amount of water available in the well. We use a viarity of borehole pumps and pumping systems such as Grundfos and ITT Lowara with either plastic or steel riser main as required. The finished borehole header works are installed at ground level in a sealed chamber.

Factors to be considered when sizing bore hole pumps

Sizing a bore hole pump correctly is one of the most important factors in the whole process.

There are hundreds of large expensive pumps dotted around the UK that run dry and just don’t pump there capabilities so end up being a waste of money because a pump with greater capacity than the water yield of the well can provide has been installed. The key point to remember is that you can only pump water that is in the ground to be pumped!!!!!! That is why the following are very important during the sizing process.

  • The quantity of water required?
  • Can the ground provide that quantity?
  • Pump installation depth
  • Pump rate
  • Riser pipe size (pressure loss)
  • Control system on the surface
  • Possible filtration required

The diagram illustrates factors to be considered when sizing a pump.

Storage of water

Storage tanks if required ranging from 1000 litres to a reservoir can also be installed to suit client requirements, water storage tanks can be installed with various control systems including float switches and pressure switches which control the bore hole pump.

Testing water quality

On completion of the borehole and once the well has been test pumped sufficiently, the water will be sampled and then will then return to the client with the lab results and a proposal of water treatment required results dependent.

Most common types of water filtration needed

Once the water sample test results are returned as a bare minimum we recommend that a UV light and a water filter are installed, and hopefully that is all the treatment that is required, but it is completely dependent on the test results as to what treatment that is required, some of the other common treatment are iron removal and installing a reverse osmosis unit (under the kitchen sink) if its only a domestic unit.

Filters for water wells

UV Filters are able to kill the majority of bacteria and viruses in the water which passes through them. However, they won’t remove chemical pollutants from the water. Also you should note that the treatment is ineffective outside of the treatment area, so water should be used immediately after it is treated. The UV light works by passing water through a chamber which is flooded with Ultra Violet light.

The UV light shines powerfully through water passing along the unit, destroys the cell’s DNA thereby neutralising it.

Maintaining your borehole

We offer a water borehole maintenance service so that you can ensure that your water well doesn’t fall into disrepair. For more information on this please contact us via our contact form or by calling 01277 841 333

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If you've got any questions, or would like more information about our services, please contact us

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