Queenswood sits in the Moot valley on shale ground, with the Daspoort quartzite ridge to the south.
Drilling is comparatively quick on the valley floor and considerably slower where the ground rises toward the ridge.
What Is Under Queenswood
| Formation | Where it sits | What it means for drilling |
|---|---|---|
| Daspoort Formation quartzite | The ridge line running east to west through this part of the city | Resistant rock that drills slowly. Only joints and fractures carry water, so position matters more than depth. |
| Timeball Hill Formation shale | The valley floor between the Daspoort and Magaliesberg ridges | Quicker going than the ridge rock, with water in bedding planes and the weathered horizon rather than in the rock mass. |
| Diabase dykes and syenite sills | Cutting the sequence across the Pretoria area | It is the margins that matter. Fresh intrusive rock is effectively barren; the fractured contact beside it is not. |
Send your street and what the water is for, and get an itemised quote for Queenswood.
Get a Queenswood Borehole QuoteWhat That Means for Your Borehole
- Where you are relative to the ridge changes everything including target depth, drilling rate and realistic yield.
- Older suburbs mean tighter access and the rig needs a route as well as a working position.
- Fracture zones and dyke contacts are the targets rather than a particular depth.
Where We Work Around Queenswood
- Queenswood and its extensions
- Waverley boundary
- Villieria approaches
- Colbyn and Menlo Park side
- Moot valley stands
- Schools and church grounds
- Subdivided and complex developments
What to Watch For Here
Established gardens and modest stands. Queenswood is a long-settled suburb with grown-in planting on stands that are generous by modern standards but not large. The irrigation demand is real and concentrated in the dry season, and storage is usually what makes a moderate borehole cover it.
Position relative to the ridge matters more than the street address. Two stands a few hundred metres apart, one on the flat and one on the rise, can face different drilling rates and different depths. It is worth being specific about location when asking for a quote.
What the Water Is Used For
- Irrigation over the long dry season before the summer rains
- Standby supply when the municipal mains go down
- Reducing a municipal water account that has climbed steeply
- Pool filling where the water quality allows it
- Communal gardens in townhouse and cluster developments
Wellpoint or Borehole?
Ruled out on this ground. A driven point cannot penetrate quartzite or competent shale, and the thin soil over them is not deep enough to hold a usable shallow supply.
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 | R500 - R1,200 /m | Where the stand sits between valley and ridge decides the rate. Shale is quick; the quartzite above it is some of the slowest drilling in the metro. |
| uPVC casing, installed, per metre | R400 - R700 /m | Diameter and class, with the quantity following the depth of weathering. That is greater on the valley floor than on the ridge above. |
| 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.
Queenswood Borehole FAQs
How deep will I need to drill in Queenswood?
It depends on where a fracture zone or dyke contact is intersected rather than on a target horizon, so no honest figure can be given before drilling.
Drilling is charged per metre for exactly that reason, and a quote structured that way is more transparent than a fixed price for an assumed depth.
Is the water likely to need treatment?
That is what the analysis tells you, and it cannot be predicted from the yield or from how clear the water looks.
Treatment should be specified from a laboratory result rather than fitted speculatively, because unnecessary treatment is expensive and the wrong treatment is useless.
Can I water the garden from a borehole during restrictions?
Restrictions apply to municipal supply, and borehole water is generally treated differently, but the position varies and can change during a severe shortage.
Confirm the current position with the City of Tshwane rather than assuming, and note that a registered borehole is a much easier conversation than an unregistered one.
How long does a borehole last?
A properly constructed and maintained borehole can serve for decades. Pumps have a much shorter life than the hole itself.
What shortens a borehole's life is usually neglect: silting up, corrosion and screen blockage, all of which are slower and cheaper to address early.
DRILLING IN QUEENSWOOD?
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