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Steps of rehabilitation: Assessment of damaged the above ground or below ground parts of the borehole. This may have lead to contamination of the borehole. The first step must be to assess the extent of the damage to the borehole and pump. The following actions should help you to make your assessment. Assess the type and extent of damage to the top of the well. Remove the mechanised pump from the borehole. Estimate the amount of silt and debris in the borehole using a steel pipe the length of whole depth of the well. Check if borehole casing is damaged or out of line. Do this by inserting the steel pipe. If it is out of line the pipe will catch against the side of the borehole. Test the pump (and motor) to see if they are still working or what repairs are necessary.

Can the pump installer provide you with proper yield, drawdown and step tests? This is required to select the correct pump for your needs. If the installer does not know what this means, do not use this installer. If your property has a borehole as its primary source of water, financial institutions will require a yield test certificate from a reputable contractor before a bond is approved. Does a qualified electrician sign the installation off? If ANY electrical work is done on the installation, it is best to get a qualified electrician to complete the installation. Companies or individuals who carry out electrical work, for which they have no certification, will be held liable for any damages or injuries that result. Does the installer select the correct pump for your application? Remember, a more powerful pump does not equate to a better pump. A pump that is over-specified often results in premature system failure. If the pump is too small, it won't meet your needs. Sizing a pump is a match between what is NEEDED and what the borehole can DELIVER.

Borehole yield is the volume of water that can be abstracted from a borehole.

This is the maximum rate of abstraction from the borehole and can be expressed as l/s, m3/hr, m3/d or m3/a.

Why is borehole yield important? It is important not to over pump the borehole in order not to induce saline intrusion, encrustation, excess lowering of the water table or piezometric surface or borehole failure.

Definition: Safe yield is defined as the maximum rate of withdrawal that can be sustained by an aquifer without causing an unacceptable decline in the hydraulic head or deterioration in water quality in the aquifer.

This is a concept or objective embracing the sustainable volume of water that can be abstracted from an aquifer over the long term. At present there is debate in the literature regarding the quantification of this concept, factors influencing safe yield and time frames that should be considered.

Why is safe yield important? When setting the safe yield of an aquifer an attempt is being made to guide water resource managers regarding the volume of groundwater that can be abstracted sustainably over the long-term.

Borehole testing

Safe yield is defined as the maximum rate of withdrawal that can be sustained by an aquifer without causing an unacceptable decline in the hydraulic head or deterioration in water quality in the aquifer.

This is a concept or objective embracing the sustainable volume of water that can be abstracted from an aquifer over the long term. At present there is debate in the literature regarding the quantification of this concept, factors influencing safe yield and time frames that should be considered.

Why is safe yield important?

When setting the safe yield of an aquifer an attempt is being made to guide water resource managers regarding the volume of groundwater that can be abstracted sustainably over the long-term.

Testing the Quality your Drinking Water : Why should I get my water tested?

The quality of the water available in Southern Africa is greatly affected by the large amounts of pollution and diseases that contaminate the water, making it unsafe to drink in many areas. It is, therefore, vital that non-municipal water sources be tested for harmful bacteria and viruses.

It is especially important to have tests done if you are looking to consume water from a river or dam. The river can easily become contaminated with waste, sewage or decomposing animals at an upstream location, polluting the entire river.

No natural water source is free from contaminants. It will contain minerals and organic materials, and often also some dirt particles from coming into contact with air and soil. If your water has an unpleasant smell, it may be a sign of high levels of contaminants in the water.

Take note that it may take years for the serious health consequences of drinking contaminated water to become noticeable, and not experiencing health problems is not an indication that your drinking water is safe.

Where can I get my water tested?

There are many institutions with the expertise and resource required to accurately test your water. We are able to do this for you.

How to take a water sample.

Take a clean plastic or glass bottle (500ml or more) and fill it all the way to the top leaving no room for air. Write your details on a sticker on the bottle. When testing a borehole let the water run for 5 to 10 minutes to allow stagnant water to be flushed out. Keep the sample cool and away from direct sunlight and refrigerate if possible. Deliver to the lab as soon as possible. Request a Comprehensive Drinking Water Analysis with Microbiological.

Choosing The Right System For Your Home

With the recent unreliability in our water supply situation, many people have been looking at options to have a backup supply or augmenting their houses supply with borehole water. Depending on your water supply some of the problems in the water should be addressed before storing the water.

Sediment Filtration

The first is Turbidity measured in NTU on water tests, this is a measure of water clarity. (Basically how dirty is your water?) You don't want to store dirty water as it will deposit in the tank. If you have had the water tested it is nice and easy. If your turbidity is less than 0.5 NTU you don't have to do anything before the tank. If it is over 2 NTU then we definitely would recommend a Disc Filter or an AFM Glass Media Vessel. If it is over 5 NTU we recommend adding an Auto Flushing Deep Bed Sand Filter as a pre-filter to the Disc Filter or an AFM Vessel.

Water Softening

Once you have decided on what to do in terms of sediment filtration the next thing to decide on is hardness. (Kalk) This is a white scaling that is left on glass after washing and leaving the water to dry (white specks or streaks, this is also often seen in showers) but it also dramatically shortens the life of geysers and kettles.

If you have a water analysis you are looking for ether a reading of Total Hardness or CaCO3. If this is over 50 ppm then you will have a reduced lifespan on items such as a geyser. There are two options for addressing this, the right way is to use a Water Softener that will chemically remove the hardness from the water and will just use normal coarse salt to regenerate.

If your hardness is between 50 ppm and 500 ppm you can use one of our off the shelf softeners that range from 25L to 100L of resin. Choosing the right size for you is a little bit more complicated though. The more resin you have the less frequently you need to run the regeneration cycle. So any of the units would typically work for a household but keep in mind depending on the water quality trying to cut cost by going for a smaller softener might mean that you would have to add salt and set the regeneration cycle daily instead of weekly or weekly instead of monthly. A 25L Water Softener will have to be regenerated 4 times as often as a 100L Water Softener. If you have a water analysis it is possible to calculate the regeneration frequency if you know your monthly water usage. Another thing to keep in mind with the Water Softeners is that it does take a bit of trial and error to get the regeneration cycles set to their most efficient point.

Chlorine Dosing

The last thing that you might want to do before the tank is Chlorine dosing. This would be used if you have ether high bacteria counts or high iron content in the water. If you are looking to use chlorine you will require storage tanks that are large enough to keep more than a day's water usage as it requires a long contact time to be effective. If you have had the water tested there are two main things to look for to see if chlorine dosing is an option for your water. The first is for every 1 ppm of nitrate in the water it will neutralise 1 ppm of chlorine, so if you want to have 3 ppm of chlorine in the water to kill the bacteria but you have 20ppm of nitrate you will need to dose 23 ppm of chlorine to maintain the level. This will make the running cost of the system very high and as such it is not recommended. The other thing to look at is PH, the chlorine won't be effective enough if your pH isn't between 6 and 8.

So when should you use Chlorine Dosing? If you have high bacteria levels such as a total plate count of over 1000 or coliform or E.coli is present in the water. If you haven't had the water tested but you sometimes note a smell in the water or sliminess on filters or in a tank. If you suspect you have a lot of bacteria in your source water it is normally a good first step to reduce the levels of bacteria. The other great use for chlorine is to remove dissolved iron, in effect chlorine rusts iron and then the iron clumps together and then it can be removed by using a1um sediment filter after the tank.

Post Tank Filtration

This is the final step before the water enters the house. At this point you need to decide to what degree you want to filter the whole houses water.

The Ideal filters for a basic final filtration after a tank would be a filter with a 1 um Sediment Filter (this blocks visible dirt and is a low cost filter to replace) followed by a KDF Cartridge (removes smells and chlorine from the water) and then a 0.2 um Filter to block bacteria. If this is in place you have got a water that should be fairly safe but it isn't a 100% solution. If you want to make the water drinkable in the house we would highly recommend getting a system with ether a UV light or an Ultra Filtration Membrane to block or kill any remaining bacteria. UV kills Bacteria by damaging their DNA while Ultra Filtration (UF) physically filters to 0.02 um thus it removes the bacteria.