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 😊

Not a spring but a bore hole supplying us and 2 neighbours. A large leak of agricultural diesel in the farm down the road contaminated the water table indefinitely and our bore hole was condemned. We could only use the water for bathing and washing clothes. It took 9 months of negotiations with the water board and 3.8K from each property to get us all on the mains. 9 months of DH bringing water canisters home from work to drink, wash veg, boil potatoes in, clean teeth etc etc. I wouldn't go near a private water supply again.

@RubyViolet

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 .

You could start by having a look on the British Geology Society webpage here @RubyViolet, but be careful it's a rabbit hole !

www2.bgs.ac.uk/groundwater/datainfo/NWRA.html

We have a bore hole. The water is lovely. We test it every couple of years and service the pump regularly. Never had a problem.

Dissapointed ! What have you done ! 😂😂😂😂 l’m going in.

We are on a spring which was fed up to the house via a hydro ram. It fed up to 3 tanks in the roof, one of the tanks had an overflow that ended up in a water butt. A hydro ram just keeps going, regardless of whether the tanks were full, hence the need for the overflow.
When the beast from the east struck, the overflow pipe froze, meaning the tank water had only one way to go and that was over the top and down the walls of a bedroom and snug.
We had a rethink and installed some collection tanks down where the hydro ram was, about 200m from house. There is also an electric pump down there to pump the water up to the house. We also installed a new tank in the old dairy as I could see no good in having so much water stored in the roof. The new arrangement is much better.

The water is lovely and clear and tests show it to be 'clean'. Some cottages further down have a bore hole and they have black sediment in their water.
When it rains a lot, the water can become discoloured due to the iron in the hills, it doesn't affect the taste.
I absolutely love that the water doesn't smell chemically when you run the tap.

There is a legal requirement to have the water tested if you rent the property out or if say you were a B&B, that is, members of the public are drinking it.
We had ours done because we moved in just prior to the floods in 2015 and the water was discoloured, we haven't had it done since.

I'd love to see a link 🤞😁

Is it a bore hole water? If so we have had a bore hole for 22 years and it is fine, can be drunk and has never dried up.

Not sure about spring water as its not a term I'm familiar with.

Oh and FWIW we have no mains anything except electricity and we alternate between saying how lovely it is out in the sticks to saying we would sell a kidney to be on mains.

No drainage, water or oil/gas has its pros and cons. Mostly cons in the winter !

Yes a bore hole is water. We have one as well as the well (put it in as a backup. They’re usually much deeper and therefore don’t dry up). Unfortunately ours hit a level of iron too, so the water comes out a bit orange and we only use it for the stables!

@FunnysInLaJardin

Oh and FWIW we have no mains anything except electricity and we alternate between saying how lovely it is out in the sticks to saying we would sell a kidney to be on mains.

No drainage, water or oil/gas has its pros and cons. Mostly cons in the winter !

Does this mean you have no heating?

Like you, we only had electricity when we moved in.
We installed oil fired central heating, it took the house 3 weeks of the heating being on constantly to reach 18°.
We moved in October, the heating was installed the following March. It was a tough winter

@FunnysInLaJardin

Oh and FWIW we have no mains anything except electricity and we alternate between saying how lovely it is out in the sticks to saying we would sell a kidney to be on mains.

No drainage, water or oil/gas has its pros and cons. Mostly cons in the winter !

We originally had oil heating but now have an air source heat pump. It is great. If you're in the UK look up RHI to see what funding you might be entitled to.

My friend does but she won’t drink it. She’s not had it tested. She uses mineral water for drinking water.

We have oil central heating in a 200 year old house. It’s fine. We upgraded windows to double glazing and it retains its heat really well.

We do have heating thankfully, but no mains fuel supply. We have an oil tank in the garden.

Egon no not in the UK and no grants available for things such as heat pumps. We looked into it when we had a new boiler last year, but it was very expensive!

Bore / well is different from spring-fed supplies.

A spring will have the spring itself, then a large seive, then a box (with finer seives) protecting the pipe. There should also be a release valve that you can undo to get air locks out of the pipes (which happen when you clean out the filter at the spring). Pipes will then run down into a header tank. This will have an outflow at the top (basically, a hole), which should have some sort of a seive on it (to stop frogs, mice, etc from getting in). Nicer if the header tank has a proper lid, too. Water then flies down to the house, where you’ll have a normal stopcock and (hopefully) a UV unit to kill any pathogens.

The one at home never dried up in 50 years, including the 1976 summer. But it did freeze, although there was enough water that a few bursts in the pipe really didn’t matter.
With a spring you do need to be confident in the wayleave for pipes, header tank, and what could contaminate the spring. It depends on land use a bit. I’d be more concern in intensive agricultural areas (run off from arable or cattle), but open hillside or moorland with a few sheep on it should be fine.

Thank you, you have all been really helpful.
We viewed the house on Saturday and it is beautiful. There are a few issues to consider but we are considering an offer!

We have been in touch with the neighbour also who sounds lovely and is happy to have a chat with us if we view again.

The spring feeds all 3 properties, one of which is small hotel/b&b.
There is an agreement in place to pay for testing and regular maintenance that would cost us in the region of £200 per year.

I’d be put off by having to share, especially with a hotel/b&b. I’d look at having a private bore hole on my own property and have a private water supply.

Our well/spring feeds three houses. We owned them all. When we sold one we put a bore hole in for it and am so glad we did. They use so much water they’d have run us dry.

Do the houses also share a septic tank? That’s something else I wouldn’t want to share personally.