Borehole Drilling
Lyttelton

Lyttelton gives its name to one of the dolomite formations of the Malmani Subgroup, which tells you how thoroughly this ground is dolomitic.

The Lyttelton Formation is chert-poor, which usually drills faster than the chert-rich dolomite nearby, though the cavity behaviour is the same.

What Is Under Lyttelton

Formation	Where it sits	What it means for drilling
Malmani Subgroup dolomite	The bedrock beneath most of the suburb, part of the Chuniespoort Group	A karst aquifer. Water moves through solution cavities and fracture zones rather than sitting evenly in the rock, so a hole that intersects a cavity can be strong and one a short distance away can be poor.
Chert and chert breccia	Bands within the dolomite and residual rubble above it	Punishing on equipment. Chert-rich sections drill far more slowly than clean dolomite, and where they sit is only established once the hole is underway.
Wad and residual soil	The leached mantle between the soil and dolomite bedrock	Low-density residue of unpredictable thickness. It is what makes dolomitic ground compressible, and it usually has to be cased through before the hole is stable.

What That Means for Your Borehole

• Yields are the least predictable in the city high where a solution cavity is intersected, disappointing a stand away.
• Budget for slow metres through chert which is the main reason dolomite quotes carry a wider range than quotes elsewhere.
• Casing through the wad horizon is not optional and its thickness is unknown until drilling starts.

Where We Work Around Lyttelton

• Lyttelton Manor and the older streets
• Clubview boundary
• Doringkloof approaches
• Hennopspark side
• Wierdapark edge
• Smallholdings toward Sunderland Ridge
• Schools and sports grounds in the area

What to Watch For Here

Chert content changes the drilling rate more than depth does. The chert-poor dolomite that takes its name from here is comparatively kind to a rig, but the formations adjacent to it are not, and the boundary does not follow suburb lines. A quote on this ground has to allow for both.

Older infrastructure is part of the picture. Lyttelton Manor and the streets around it are long established, and leaking underground services are a recognised trigger for karst instability. Where a borehole and its headworks sit relative to existing services is worth thinking about at siting stage.

What the Water Is Used For

• Irrigation over the long dry season before the summer rains
• Sports turf and institutional landscaping
• Keeping water on the property through supply outages
• Taking irrigation demand off the municipal meter
• Communal gardens in townhouse and cluster developments

Wellpoint or Borehole?

No. Wellpoints belong in sandy coastal ground, and nothing of that kind exists here. The rubble above the dolomite cannot be driven through, which leaves a drilled hole as the only workable option.

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	The range is wide here for two reasons: chert horizons cut the penetration rate sharply, and a cavity can force a second hole.
uPVC casing, installed, per metre	R400 - R700 /m	Set by diameter and class, and by how much wad has to be cased through. That thickness is found during drilling, not before it.
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.

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