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Springs, Wells and Boreholes

Getting water out of the ground, legally

A spring is worth protecting properly

A spring is groundwater surfacing under its own pressure, which makes it the cheapest water you will ever own and the easiest to spoil. Protect it by digging back to the point where water leaves rock or firm clay, setting a small chamber or perforated pipe there, and sealing the top with a lid and a clay or concrete collar so surface run-off cannot enter. Fence livestock out for at least 10 metres uphill. Then pipe it downhill by gravity into a covered storage tank. Fit an overflow and a screened vent, and never let the outlet pipe sit in a puddle.

Hand-dug wells versus boreholes

A hand-dug well is wide, shallow, typically 5 to 15 metres, and taps the near-surface water table. It is cheap, repairable and can be emptied by a dry summer, and being shallow it is the most easily contaminated source there is. A borehole is narrow, drilled by rig, often 60 to 150 metres, reaches deeper and steadier water and costs real money: in Portugal expect roughly 40 to 90 euros per metre drilled plus casing, plus the pump and wiring, so a typical job lands in the thousands and can come up dry. Ask the driller for a written yield test.

Licensing is not optional

In Portugal any abstraction of groundwater must be registered or licensed with the regional water authority under APA, and drilling a new borehole generally needs authorisation before the rig arrives. Older wells often need a title of use obtained retroactively. It is cheap compared with the drilling and it protects you: unlicensed abstraction can be fined and ordered sealed, and it will block any future legal connection or planning application. Keep the drilling log, the coordinates and the licence together in one folder. Every other country has an equivalent regime; find out which office holds it before you dig.

Pumps, hand pumps and ram pumps

Match the pump to the depth and the yield. A surface pump can only suck water up about 7 metres, so anything deeper needs a submersible pump sitting in the water. Size it to the borehole yield, not to your desire: a pump that draws faster than the well refills will run dry and burn out, which is why a float switch or dry-run protection is essential. Keep a hand pump or a rope-and-bucket option for shallow wells so a power cut is an inconvenience, not a crisis. A hydraulic ram pump uses the energy of falling water to lift a fraction of it uphill with no electricity at all.

Test before you drink it

Clear, cold and tasteless is not the same as safe. Before using any new source for drinking, send a sample to an accredited laboratory for at least E. coli and coliform bacteria, nitrate, and pH, plus arsenic or other metals where local geology warrants it. Collect in the sterile bottle the lab supplies, keep it cold and deliver it the same day. Repeat annually and after any heavy rain, flooding, or work near the source. Boil water at a rolling boil for one minute, three minutes above 2000 metres, whenever a result is pending or a source has been disturbed.

Next lesson: Making a Household Supply Safe →

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