Buying a house with a private spring as its water source

[ItsStartingToMakeSense]

We are viewing a house in a few days.
It is very rural, a semi detached with only one other close neighbour (within around half a mile).
On the property description it states "water from its own natural spring supply".
I know I have lots of questions to ask about this, and have researched to a point but does anyone have any experience of this? Anything would be helpful.
I don't know at this point whether the spring feeds to just 'our' property, next door too, or us and the close neighbour.
We absolutely love the house from the virtual viewing so really hope this isn't going to cause too many issues.
Thanks 😊

I would love this personally! We had spring water for years and loved it and also no water bills. So much nicer to drink, too.

Also I sometimes wonder if mains water still contains chemicals eg from people on the pill or whether these are fully filtered out. Hopefully it is but spring water wind hands down from our experience

It’s lovely to drink! Things to check: who lives there now and what sort of demand do they make on the spring? There’s a big difference between a single person and a family of 5. Has it ever dried up? Think about what you would do if it did dry up, would it be possible to put a reserve tank in somewhere to collect rainwater for toilet flushing etc. Can you convert the existing system to do grey water recycling, this really helps reduce demand for things like toilet flushing and can also be used in the garden. Who owns the land with the spring and how is your water supply protected from contamination? Do the pipes which supply you cross anyone else’s land and how might that affect you?

Not us but other family members. The biggest problem has been a shortage of water in periods of dry weather. Has been a recurrent issue during summers - east side of Scotland, so think about where you are in relation to watershed of hills etc.
I think they also had an issue where someone up the hill tapped into the same source.

I would love this personally! We had spring water for years and loved it and also no water bills. So much nicer to drink, too

Me too, it sounds great but want to be armed with as much knowledge as possible so we don't run into issues

VirtualLearning I hope so

Thanks BadgerTheBodger and Happytentoes that's really helpful

I'm used to living out in the sticks as I grew up on a farm a few miles from this house but want to go in with all the necessary questions to ask

@VirtualLearning

Also I sometimes wonder if mains water still contains chemicals eg from people on the pill or whether these are fully filtered out. Hopefully it is but spring water wind hands down from our experience

I have a berkey to filter our drinking water for that very reason...

We have a well.

Up to about 4 years ago water was pumped up the hill from about 3 mile's away.

Problematic with power cuts... When the pump restarted we would have sediment and gunk and filters in washing machines etc would need unbunging.
The water had too much sodium in into use for bottles/weaning so we had to bulk buy water in boxes, back then it was problematic as most bottled water had too much salt... Used Harrogate spa water in the end which I couldn't get in a shop and had to go to a catering supplier for ! (It's only about 12 years ago).

Local authority tested it to make sure it was fit for human consumption.

We now have a well about 6' from our boundary which is basically a small green box about 2' square.

It then goes to a pump/filtration 'house' in an out building and is then pumped to two properties one of which has livestock.

The water tastes so much better than mains water. It's very hard though.

The electricity for the pump is solar powered.

The well is on our neighbours land. Servicing bills are split 50:50. We didn't get the supplies metred when it went in, but we are next time it gets serviced. Cost to us last time was £120. They come every 6 months or so.

It's not our property but there is a legal document between the two owners of the properties to make sure they cant cut us off. This was the problem with the old supply - our neighbour was selling up and the owner of the supply didn't want to continue supplying to us once the property was sold (we paid £20 per annum). Cost about £20k to drill and install the pump.

I had this.

Find out if gravity fed or pumped. I’m only familiar with gravity fed ones.
Find out if it has a header tank.
Make sure you go see the spring (there won’t be much to look at but at least you know where& how far away), and header tank - this is probably more a second viewing thing!
Do they have an accurate map of the pipes? What are the pipes made of (hopefully nice new blue plastic buried nice and deep!).
Ask when they last had shortage of supply, or other issue.
Who else uses same spring or draws off the same water system? What if they (or you) want to increase usage (eg if all the people who use the spring decide to take in lodgers and have 18 children and a swimming pool....).
If it’s a shared system, who has to maintain it?
Check if/when it was tested last and get the results & if there is a UV steriliser (that’s basically a filter then a UV light bulb that the water runs through, usually beside the stopcock).
There used to be grants available to make sure water to the house was potable, there probably still is. Google to find how these work and if there are limits on when / how often / who can claim.

You need to pay to have it tested regularly. The council offer the service but you dont have to use them. Call out is around £100 plus lab fees plus VAT. You may need more testing if problems arise. Sometimes with shared sources neighbours argue about who is liable to pay. It is quite common in the country.

It needs to be tested.
It can run out (especially if neighbours use a lot).
It can mean water rationing for periods of the year.
It can become contaminated (ours did with effluent from the neighbouring farm - it gave me chronic stomach problems)

Bonus is it tastes like Evian 😂

If it’s a semidetached, ask your potential next door neighbour?

a farm we stayed at had this - because it was on moor land/gorse? the water was a delicate early grey shade of light brown. Which was unnerving the first time I ran a bath! But it tasted great & our landlady washed our clothes for us in her washing machine (service!)& they didn't come out stained!

What happens in a drought ? Or the opposite with flooding. Global warming ? I am fascinated by this.
How could you go about finding out about the water table and scientifically testing the water .

We have a well. I love it. You don’t have to have it tested legally if it’s just serving one household. It will have a lot more bugs than mains water, but I truly believe it gives you antibodies and makes you robust!

Things to ask- does it ever dry up in very hot weather? (Ours has twice in my 50 years). Is there a backup for the pump if the electric goes off. When was the pump last serviced/replaced? (our pumps always seem to break in mega snow/ice storms!). Have you established rights to the water (my family had to go to court to prevent a farmer diverting the water as it crossed his field. It now also ensures we can access his land for maintenance of pipes etc if need be).

Be aware that it’s you guys responsible for all maintenance. We have to actually get in our first chamber for our well once a year and dig all the silt out that has washed in during heavy rain. We’ve also had to replace all the pipes once, as they silted up. So no you don’t have water bills, but other costs! But I love our well.

Ps, I grew up trained to not waste water and turn taps off while brushing teeth etc. I’ve also been a long haul stewardess for decades and my guts have seemed to cope better than a lot of my colleagues with the foreign foods. I put that down to antibodies from our water!

thejunctionbaby I hadn’t heard of Berkeys and grateful to know about them - I might save up for one! Our DD’s friends all hit puberty so much younger than my generation and she was the only one not to and I did wonder if it was progesterone in water or how much medication contaminates mains water

We are on a private bore hole and a private sewerage system (both shared with two neighbouring properties, all 3 properties used to be under the same owner until 6 years ago).

Before the property was on a borehole (before we bought it), they were getting water from a spring, the sheep farmer who owned the field behind decided one year to try rearing pigs making the water supply unsafe and that was when the borehole was drilled.

It is totally okay to drink the borehole water as it comes out of the ground, but as the property was previously used as a b&b it had to meet different regs and therefore is filtered, UV filtered and has some "salts" added to balance out the maganese content. Not sure if the same rules apply with spring fed supplies.

Some of our neighbours on springfed supplies have had it dry up in the summer recently. Our borehole, which isn't particularly deep at 25m due to the granite rocks they had to drill it through, was getting very dodgy in summer 2018.

Basically it's fine, until it's not!

We had a problem with the pump over the xmas period a few years ago and couldn't get anyone to come and look at it for about a month (so had 3 houses running on 1/2 bar of pressure, so no washing machines, no showers etc) and obviously the cost of repairs are all ours.

Also worth looking into the sewerage system and if it is working well. If it is all well within your own boundary and not at risk of effecting anyone elses land, then you are unlikely to get pulled up on any problems (according the lovely man from Natural resources wales), but if it needs fixing or replacing the authorites prefer it is replaced with a modern sewage treatment plant, although this is not a legal requirement in the UK yet. These modern systems require a small source of power (there is one that doesn't - biorock) so can take a bit of figuring out when replacing a septic tank &soakaway system.

The cost of this is all on you too. We now have an issue with the drains (leaking rain water, which is overfilling the new sewage treatment plant, so that is going to cost us too (fortunatly shared 3 ways).

Having said all that, I love where we live and wouldn't move.

We get our water from a well in the garden. It's delicious. It's pumped up to the loft with an electric pump where is goes through a filter and runs past a UV lamp. So I'd ask
What the system is and how well maintained it has been. Once a year we change the UV lamp and clean the filters. It has never dried up to my knowledge.

My granny’s house had a pump in the garden, shared with the cottage next door, water came from some vague underground source, we always said no water tasted as fresh as granny’s . Then the council sent a man out to test it. Turned out it had practically every bug and pathogen known to mankind and some not known to science. Water supply immediately condemned and the property joined to the mains within days! Not really surprising when we thought about it, the area flooded every year, probably explains our very healthy immune systems though.

Just to make it clear the pump was one with a handle, very romantic until you have to go out on a frosty morning to pump a bucket of freezing water. Oh and no mains water means no flush toilet........

We had this in our house when I was growing up. I was just a kid so I don’t know the technical details but I don’t remember it ever being a problem. I assume (hope!) it was tested regularly etc.

Our only experience was a holiday cottage in Devon that had a spring supply.

We all had sickness and diarrhoea for the entire week........... and got involved in a huge spat with the holiday company. Thankfully we had the sense to have taken some samples of the water away with us and had privately tested.

I think it's the sort of thing that is fine IF it's done properly and well maintained, tbh. I'd investigate it very thoroughly.

From personal experience of having lived in a house that had its own well as a water supply, I’d recommend that you be wary, and check it out. Our well was on National Trust property (a hill) behind the house, on which sheep were freely grazing - and until the well entrance was encased in concrete and stone with a padlocked door several years after I was born, the well was completely open to the elements - and the sheep. The water could not be drunk for obvious reasons, and we therefore had a filter installed in the house throughout that period for any drinking water we needed.

Some years later, the well became unusable anyway on account of pollution from a leaking heating oil tank at the nearby golf club, and we were obliged to switch to a more reliable (and drinkable) source from a farm further down the hill, to which several other more modern houses in the immediate vicinity were already connected. Had the pipes for that alternative supply not already been laid, our enforced changeover would certainly have been a lot more expensive than it actually was.

I hasten to add that of this was many years ago (1950s to 1970s), so for all I know modern Health and Safety regulations might have made such situations a thing of the past now - but I’d certainly recommend making enquiries.