Silverton gives its name to the Silverton Formation, the thick shale unit that underlies much of eastern Pretoria, and the suburb sits against the slopes of the Magaliesberg.
It carries a substantial industrial component alongside the residential stands, and those two need different things from a borehole.
What Is Under Silverton
| 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 | The hard rock that forms the ridge. Yields depend entirely on intersecting open structures within it. |
| Timeball Hill Formation shale | The valley floor between the Daspoort and Magaliesberg ridges | The valley-forming rock. Easier drilling, but the water is still confined to weathered and fractured zones. |
| Diabase dykes and syenite sills | Cutting the sequence across the Pretoria area | Worth targeting at the contact rather than the body. Intrusions concentrate fracturing along their edges. |
Send your street and what the water is for, and get an itemised quote for Silverton.
Get a Silverton Borehole QuoteWhat That Means for Your Borehole
- Where you are relative to the ridge changes everything including target depth, drilling rate and realistic yield.
- Quartzite metres are slow metres so a hole that has to pass through the ridge rock costs more than a valley hole of the same depth.
- Fracture zones and dyke contacts are the targets rather than a particular depth.
Where We Work Around Silverton
- Silverton industrial area
- Silverton residential stands
- Meyerspark boundary
- Newlands and Die Wilgers approaches
- Magaliesberg slopes above the suburb
- Warehousing and commercial premises
- Schools and community grounds
What to Watch For Here
This is the type area for the Silverton shale. The formation named after this suburb is the thickest shale unit in the Pretoria Group, and it underlies a large part of the eastern suburbs. It drills readily and holds water only in fractures, which is the defining characteristic of borehole work across the whole eastern belt.
Industrial neighbours affect the water quality question. Silverton's manufacturing and industrial land means water quality testing here should be more thorough than a basic screen, and repeated rather than done once. Clear water is not necessarily clean water.
What the Water Is Used For
- Industrial wash-down, process and dust suppression
- Standby supply when the municipal mains go down
- Garden irrigation through the dry Highveld winter
- Cutting the volume bought from the metro each month
- Estate common property and verge irrigation
Wellpoint or Borehole?
No. Apart from narrow alluvial strips beside the watercourses, there is no unconsolidated material here for a point to work in, and even those strips are too thin to rely on.
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 | The valley floor and the ridge behave very differently under a rig, so two stands a few streets apart can quote differently. |
| uPVC casing, installed, per metre | R400 - R700 /m | Weathering depth governs the length needed, and it increases as you move off the ridge into the valley. |
| 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.
Silverton Borehole FAQs
Is the Silverton Formation named after this suburb?
Yes. The Silverton Formation is the thick shale unit of the Pretoria Group, and this is its type area.
Practically, it means the ground here is representative of the shale that underlies much of eastern Pretoria: quick to drill, and water-bearing only where fractured.
What extra testing should an industrial site do?
A full analysis rather than a basic screen, and a schedule of repeat testing rather than a single result at commissioning.
The intended use sets the standard. Water for dust suppression has very different requirements from water entering a process or reaching people.
Does the Magaliesberg above Silverton help recharge?
The quartzite ridge is the recharge ground for the valley below it, so the setting is reasonable.
It does not translate into a predictable yield on a specific stand, because the water still has to reach the borehole through fractures in the shale.
Can a factory run its process water off a borehole?
Sometimes, but it needs a rigorous yield test because industrial demand is continuous rather than intermittent, and it needs treatment matched to the process.
Volume at that scale generally falls outside Schedule 1 of the National Water Act and requires registration or a water use authorisation.
DRILLING IN SILVERTON?
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