Areas We Cover

We drill boreholes and build the water systems that go with them across Pretoria and the wider City of Tshwane. The pages below are organised by what is actually under the ground, because that is what determines how a borehole is drilled, what it is likely to yield and what it costs.

Pretoria sits across six broadly distinct settings. Suburbs within one of them share the same rock and the same drilling behaviour, so the honest thing to do is group them rather than invent differences that do not exist.

On the dolomite: Centurion and the south

Malmani dolomite is the strongest aquifer in the region and the most demanding ground in the metro to drill. Yields depend on intersecting solution cavities, chert bands slow the rig, and development on dolomitic land carries requirements that ordinary ground does not.

Where the Pretoria Group meets the dolomite

South of the city the shale and quartzite cover sits over the dolomite compartments that feed the Fountains and Rietvlei springs. Depth to that contact is the largest unknown in a quote, and it varies across short distances.

The shale valley ground, central and east

Silverton and Timeball Hill shale underlies much of the central and eastern suburbs. It drills quickly but holds water only where it is fractured, so the targets are dyke contacts and fracture zones rather than a particular depth.

The Moot and the Daspoort ridge

The valley running between the Magaliesberg and the Daspoort ridge is softer shale ground bracketed by hard quartzite. Where a stand sits relative to the ridge changes the drilling rate and the realistic depth.

The Magaliesberg and Bronberg quartzite

The ridge running east through the city is the hardest and slowest ground to drill in Pretoria, and yields on it are entirely fracture-dependent. Access on steep terraced stands is frequently the harder constraint of the two.

North of the ridge: Bushveld Complex ground

Beyond the Magaliesberg the rock changes to the norite and gabbro of the Bushveld Complex. Water sits in the weathered mantle above fresh rock, so depth of weathering matters more than total depth does.

Not Listed?

The list above is not the limit of where we work. If your suburb is not on it, send your street and we will tell you what the ground is likely to be and what a borehole there would involve.

Get a Borehole Quote