slide show

Discover the benefits of a private water supply Today!
Find your water

If you dont already have a known water supply, then your first job will be to find it. Dowsing and geological surveys provide the most accurate means to do this.. Read more...

Pump it up

Once you have found your water supply, the next task is to bring it to the surface, establish your yield, and have it tested to establish its chemistry.
Read more...

Filter it

When you have the results of your composition test, you will need to think about filtration. The type you may need depands on your water content.
Read more...


FAQs > Water Flow Rates (flow tests)


  Q What is flow testing?
   
A flow test is a test performed to determine the maximum rate at which a borehole or well fills with water under typical conditions.

  Q Why do I need to know this?
   
You need to know this because the maximum rate at which your bore or well fills, is equal to the amount of water which you can draw in any period of time.For example, if your well or bore is filling at a rate of 24 tonnes per day, or 1 tonne per hour, then the maximum rate at which you can remove water is also 1 tonne per hour.

Attempts to draw more than 1 tonne per hour will result in you pumping the borehole or well dry.
This needs to be avoided as damage can occur to your pump. Whilst many of today's pumps come with dry run protection, so as to avoid potential damage in the event of such a scenario, pumps nevertheless don't like it.
Therefore continuous 'dry runs' may eventually lead your pump to fail despite dry run protection electronics.

Example:
If your well or borehole is producing 24 tonnes per day, and you use only 20 tonnes per day, then all seems fine because your daily maximum yield is less than your requirements.
BUT, if you have a peak usage time say mid morning, where you need 3 tonnes in one hour, you're going to run into trouble because your bore can only produce 1.
The solution is simple - water storage, and you may view our storage FAQs page for more information about that.
info
  Q How is a flow test conducted?
   
We need to know how quickly, or how slowly, your bore or well takes on water, its yield, the rate at which water flows into it.
Seasonal changes may be expected of course. Prolonged dry periods may lower your bore or well's water surface.
Natural aquifers feeding into your bore or well may slow down. Equally, during wet periods, the water line may come further up and your bore or well may have an increased yield. By performing a single flow test , we are able to glean some idea - albeit calculated on a random day of the year, the sort of volumes generated on that day.
This is generally good enough for most situations and doesn't usually require a re-test at other times.

Firstly we attempt to pump the bore or well dry, to empty it. This is easier done with a bore than a well but not always possible. Then using a combination of a split timer and an electronic dip line, we measure the water level's increase against some fixed time interval. This test generally takes the better part of a whole day.
During the test we also pump measured volumes of water in very specific time intervals and throttle the pump back accordingly until we are able to pump water at the same rate as the well or bore is filling. Using a combination of a timer, throttled pump, flow meter and electronic dip meter, we can then state that this well or bore yields volumes equal to X.

This a very accurate means of determining a flow rate and from this calculation, the entire system will be run.
   
   
  < Back to FAQs
   
FAQs Have a Question?
Click Me or use our contact form, or call us on: 023 92 592 319