Newlands sits on shale ground in eastern Pretoria, below the ridge line that runs through this part of the city.
Drilling is comparatively quick, and the useful targets are the fracture zones and intrusive contacts rather than any particular depth.
What Is Under Newlands
| Formation | Where it sits | What it means for drilling |
|---|---|---|
| Silverton Formation shale | The broad valley ground between the northern and eastern quartzite ridges | The rock beneath most of these streets. Easy drilling, but it stores almost nothing except where it has been fractured. |
| Diabase dykes and sills | Cutting across the shale throughout the Pretoria valley | Usually the productive structure here. The fractured margin where an intrusion meets the shale is where water accumulates; the intrusion itself does not. |
| Weathered shale and residual clay | The upper section on most stands | Clay-rich and unstable. Casing through to sound rock is a requirement, not a refinement. |
Send your street and what the water is for, and get an itemised quote for Newlands.
Get a Newlands Borehole QuoteWhat That Means for Your Borehole
- Siting is about finding structure, not depth because the shale itself carries little water between fractures.
- Dyke contacts are the targets worth locating and they are exactly what a survey is looking for on this ground.
- Drilling is comparatively quick so the per-metre rate tends to sit at the lower end of the range.
Where We Work Around Newlands
- Newlands and its older streets
- Lynnwood and Meyerspark boundaries
- Silverton approaches
- Die Wilgers side
- Equestria edge
- Complexes and cluster developments
- Schools and sports grounds
What to Watch For Here
Not to be confused with Newlands in Cape Town. The name is shared but nothing else is. This Newlands sits in a summer-rainfall region on Pretoria Group shale, with a long dry winter and no mountain recharge behind it, which is a completely different groundwater setting.
Older established stands mean older services. Newlands has been settled a long time and the underground infrastructure reflects that. Locating existing lines before drilling avoids the most common and most expensive kind of surprise.
What the Water Is Used For
- Keeping established gardens alive from June to October
- Standby supply when the municipal mains go down
- Lowering a water bill driven mostly by outdoor use
- Shared landscaping in sectional-title schemes
- Keeping the pool level up, depending on the water analysis
Wellpoint or Borehole?
Not an option. The residual clay over the shale is not the unconsolidated, permeable material a driven point needs, and the water table sits well below suction range. A drilled borehole is the route to groundwater here.
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.
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 | R450 - R1,000 /m | Softer rock means faster progress, so holes here generally sit at the lower end of the metro-wide range. |
| uPVC casing, installed, per metre | R400 - R700 /m | Diameter and class. The weathered clay horizon over the shale governs how much is needed. |
| 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. |
These are indicative ranges, not a quotation. They are compiled from published South African supplier and contractor pricing to give you a starting point for budgeting. They are not our rate card, and no figure here is a commitment.
Treat them as a broad guide only. Published borehole pricing in South Africa varies enormously - 2026 guides quote per-metre drilling rates for Gauteng ranging from under R300/m to R1,500/m, a spread of more than five to one - because depth, geology, access, specification, distance and fuel costs all move the number. Depth in particular is not known until the hole is finished. Figures generally exclude VAT unless noted, and change over time. Only an itemised written quote against your actual site means anything.
Newlands Borehole FAQs
Is this the same as Newlands in Cape Town?
Only the name. This Newlands is an eastern Pretoria suburb on Pretoria Group shale, in a summer-rainfall region with a long dry winter.
The groundwater setting has nothing in common with the Cape Peninsula, so advice written for one is not useful for the other.
When is the best time of year to drill in Newlands?
A borehole can be drilled at any time. The practical consideration is that demand peaks in the dry months, so drilling before winter means the system is ready when it is needed.
Contractor availability also tends to tighten as the dry season approaches, which is a reason not to leave it to September.
Will the water table drop in the dry season?
Some seasonal variation is normal on the Highveld, since recharge happens almost entirely during the summer rains.
A yield test is designed to establish a sustainable rate rather than a best-case one, which is what keeps a system working through the dry months.
What does a full installation include here?
Siting, drilling, casing, development, yield testing, pump and control gear, storage where needed, and connection to the point of use.
Water testing and any treatment sit alongside that and depend on what the analysis finds, so they cannot honestly be priced before it is done.
DRILLING IN NEWLANDS?
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