Borehole Drilling
Erasmuskloof

Erasmuskloof sits south of the Klapperkop ridge, on Pretoria Group rock where scattered Karoo material fills old depressions in the older surface.

That cover is invisible from the surface and it changes how much casing a hole needs, which is the main thing that moves a quote here.

What Is Under Erasmuskloof

Formation	Where it sits	What it means for drilling
Timeball Hill Formation shale and quartzite	The higher ground and low ridges through the southern suburbs	Mixed drilling: soft shale interrupted by hard quartzite. Yield comes from structure, so depth alone does not determine the result.
Malmani dolomite beneath	The compartments below and to the south that feed the Fountains and Rietvlei springs	The dolomite below is the strong aquifer. Whether a hole reaches it, and at what depth, is the question that decides the project.
Karoo outliers and surface deposits	Scattered through old pre-Karoo depressions across the ground south of the city	Buried cover of inconsistent depth. Where present it adds to the casing requirement, and its extent is not predictable from a map.

What That Means for Your Borehole

• Depth is genuinely uncertain here because it depends on where the dolomite contact sits under your stand.
• A survey earns its cost on this ground more clearly than on ground where the target depth is well established.
• Casing requirements vary with the cover and Karoo material where present adds to it.

Where We Work Around Erasmuskloof

• Erasmuskloof and Erasmusrand
• Slopes below the Klapperkop ridge
• Waterkloof Glen boundary
• Monument Park approaches
• Elardus Park side
• Complexes and cluster housing
• Institutional and government-owned properties

What to Watch For Here

Karoo outliers sit in old buried valleys. Patches of tillite, sandstone and clay occur across the ground south of Pretoria, filling depressions in the pre-Karoo landscape. Some of the recorded occurrences are around the airfields in this part of the city, and they do not always crop out at surface, so they are found by drilling rather than predicted from a map.

Proximity to the air force base affects some stands. Properties near Waterkloof Air Force Base can carry access, security or clearance considerations that have nothing to do with geology but everything to do with getting a rig on site. Worth raising early.

What the Water Is Used For

• Watering lawns and beds through the driest months of the year
• Continuity cover during water interruptions
• Common areas across complexes and estate developments
• Reducing a municipal water account that has climbed steeply
• Topping up the pool, subject to what the analysis says

Wellpoint or Borehole?

No. The cover over the rock is thin and clay-rich rather than sandy, and the standing water level is well beyond suction range, so a drilled borehole is the route to take.

Registration and Abstraction

A completed borehole here should be registered with the City of Tshwane, and the responsibility for that sits with the property owner rather than with the driller. Separately, the National Water Act governs how much you may abstract: reasonable domestic use and small-scale gardening generally fall under Schedule 1, while larger, agricultural or commercial abstraction may require registration or a water use authorisation from the Department of Water and Sanitation. The position on domestic registration was being actively revised during 2026, so confirm your obligations before drilling rather than afterwards.

There is an additional step on dolomite. Stability classifications for this land sit with the Council for Geoscience and development on it falls under SANS 1936, so the City may want sight of that before a rig is permitted on the stand. Raise it early; the delay, if there is one, is in the approval rather than in the drilling.

Related Services

For the drilling process itself, the geology across the wider metro and how a quote is put together, see Borehole Drilling Pretoria.

Borehole Prices in This Area

Drilling is charged per metre, so depth drives the total. The ranges below are framed for local ground conditions and access.

Item	Indicative range	What moves it locally
Drilling, per metre	R500 - R1,200 /m	Shale metres are cheap and dolomite metres are not, so the rate for any given hole depends on how much of each it has to pass through.
uPVC casing, installed, per metre	R400 - R700 /m	Driven by how much soft cover sits above competent rock. On this ground that can be weathered shale, Karoo material, or both.
Mobilisation and site establishment	R2,500 - R9,000	Access and site conditions move this; a site visit settles it before quoting.
Water survey	R5,000 - R12,000	Targets structure rather than depth. Worth most where yield is fracture-dependent.
Yield testing	R3,500 - R15,000	Establishes the sustainable rate that pump selection depends on.
Pump, supplied and installed	R15,000 - R45,000	Greater depth means more head, which means a larger pump and heavier cable.
Storage and booster	R12,000 - R35,000	Needed wherever peak demand exceeds the borehole's sustainable rate.
Typical complete project	R70,000 - R200,000+	Everything above, excluding treatment, which depends entirely on the water analysis.

Erasmuskloof Borehole FAQs

Get a Erasmuskloof Borehole Quote