- Many people in South Africa strive to secure their country's water supply by installing wells and water tank systems.
- This comes in response to the increasing problem of water outages due to the collapse of water infrastructure.
- Water tank systems can be much cheaper than boreholes, but extended outages can still be a threat.
- For more financial news, visit: News24 Business top page.
Aging water infrastructure is causing increasingly frequent and prolonged water outages in many parts of the country, prompting residents to take steps to secure their own water supplies. As of this writing, thousands of Johannesburg residents are in their second week without water to their homes, with outages caused by sputtering pump stations and burst pipes.
Speaking at his military post in Mpumalanga last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged the scale of the water supply problem affecting many parts of the country and pledged to resolve it.
“Water is a challenge in many parts of our country, in many places due to aging infrastructure and in others due to water scarcity. We are a water-scarce country,” he said.
Two main options
However, residents are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and securing their own water supplies wherever possible. There are two main options: drilling a borehole or purchasing a tank for emergency storage.
Although the installation of tank systems can be significantly cheaper than boreholes, it is difficult to store enough water in residential areas to ensure long-term security of supply.
News24 spoke to several company representatives providing alternative water solutions to municipal supplies to understand the costs and considerations of different systems.
First option: tank
Llewelyn Tait, owner of Create Mechanical, a company that installs backup water tanks for residents in north Johannesburg, said he started the company as a “joke” to keep himself busy, but the demand was huge.
He said the company essentially connects a water tank of any capacity the customer wants to the home's regular municipal water supply and adds a water pump. This creates an emergency reserve in case of a power outage.
Read | Ramaphosa says we're not doing nothing, we're going to solve the water problem
He said the product was a “grudge buy” and the demand was “100% driven by frustration over not having running water.”
According to Tait, the most basic system with a 1,000-litre plastic tank and an ideally placed power supply costs about R16,000, including labor and pumps.
The 1,000-litre JoJo tank is listed on the Builders Warehouse website for R2 499.
He said this would be a fairly standard installation, but if a larger tank or three connected tanks were needed, for example, the price would approach R28,000.
He said he had three tanks installed at his home and estimated that this had increased the value of his property by R45,000.
Read | A wasteland without water: Joburg's water supply runs dry for second straight week after system failure
Mr Tait says tank depletion will vary depending on usage, but if people don't take special steps to reduce their usage, he thinks tank depletion will be around 250 liters per day per adult. He said it was reasonable. It is possible to reduce this to less than 100 liters per day.
This point was supported by Graham Hale, owner of Rain Queen Tanks, which makes corrugated iron products such as aquariums.
He explained that in normal residential areas, it is difficult to store sufficient quantities in tanks completely independent of municipal supply, even if they are filled with rainfall.
“It's difficult to replace city water and rainfall because the amount of water you need if you go into a drought, it's impossible to store that amount of water,” he said.
He said a typical housing estate household of a family of four, using around 600 liters of water per day from a 5,000 liter tank, would have less than 10 days of supply.
Mr Hale added:
Given the current situation in Joburg, I don't think 10 days is enough.
The company charges R13,750 for a 5,000-litre corrugated steel tank.
Mr Hale said given the difficulty in ensuring the security of tank supplies, the company is focusing more on designing products that ensure water is used effectively.
“With electricity, there are many ways to create an energy source. There is no way to create water. The way you create water has to be completely different.”
Zahid Hussain, director of Aquatank, which manufactures around 36,000 plastic tanks a year, says the main motivation for installing rainwater harvesting tanks remains the potential water cost reduction, followed by security of supply. He said concerns about security and rainwater continue. Safety of the city's drinking water.
Second option: Borehole
Anthony Whitfield, director of residential borehole drilling service provider Blue Dot Drilling, explained that the costs associated with installing a borehole system depend on a variety of factors.
Once a borehole is drilled and access to water, a series of tests will be conducted to assess things such as the chemical composition of the water and how much water the hole can pump, Whitfield explained.
These results, and the borehole owner's desired water use case, will drive the system owner's hardware requirements.
He said the typical expected total cost of an off-grid residential borehole system is between R100,000 and R110,000, including all labor and equipment.
Gauteng Boreholes estimates in a blog post that drilling costs will be between R500 and R1,500 per metre. This means that for a domestic borehole, drilling costs can range from R20,000 to R60,000.
Mr Whitfield explained:
For boreholes, this is very difficult because a filtration system can cost R3,000 or R20,000. You can buy a variable speed drive pump for R20,000 or a pump that will do the same job for R4. 000.
Whitfield said the return on investment is typically very quick because the savings on municipal water bills typically occur quickly.
Whitfield said cost savings over several years and the fact that municipal water outages can go largely unnoticed by well owners are the main factors driving demand.
Luann Naude of Stark Boreholes said the amount of boreholes the company has drilled has steadily increased since 2007.
Naude said Stark is currently drilling 18 to 22 boreholes a month.
Most of the company's business comes from the area between Hammanskraal and Bapsfontein in “water-scarce municipalities like Johannesburg,” Naude said.
Alex Patrick contributed to this article.