Borehole Drilling
The Reeds

The Reeds sits on the southern Tshwane dolomite, sharing the karst behaviour of the rest of Centurion.

Yield depends on what the hole intersects, and the chert content of the dolomite governs how long it takes to get there.

What Is Under The Reeds

Formation	Where it sits	What it means for drilling
Malmani Subgroup dolomite	The bedrock beneath most of the suburb, part of the Chuniespoort Group	Productive but erratic. The water is in the voids and fracture zones, so results depend on what the hole intersects rather than on how far down it goes.
Chert and chert breccia	Bands within the dolomite and residual rubble above it	Among the hardest material drilled anywhere in the metro. Chert-rich horizons cost time and consumables, and their position is only established once drilling starts.
Wad and residual soil	The leached mantle between the soil and dolomite bedrock	A leached, compressible horizon whose depth varies across a single stand. Casing through it is a requirement rather than an option.

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 The Reeds

• The Reeds and The Reeds Extension
• Rooihuiskraal North boundary
• Amberfield approaches
• Wierdapark side
• Olievenhoutbosch edge
• Complexes and estate developments
• Schools and community facilities

What to Watch For Here

Reservoir-supplied suburbs feel interruptions quickly. The Reeds is one of the areas identified as a heavy consumer on the Tshwane network, and suburbs at the end of a stressed reticulation system are the ones that lose pressure first when supply is constrained. That is a large part of why borehole enquiries here run ahead of the metro average.

Storage matters as much as yield. A borehole with a moderate sustainable yield plus a well-sized tank outperforms a stronger borehole with no storage, because household and irrigation demand arrives in short peaks rather than evenly through the day.

What the Water Is Used For

• Continuity cover during water interruptions
• Keeping established gardens alive from June to October
• Communal gardens in townhouse and cluster developments
• Cutting the volume bought from the metro each month
• Keeping the pool level up, depending on the water analysis

Wellpoint or Borehole?

Ruled out. A wellpoint needs unconsolidated ground and a shallow water table, and dolomitic terrain offers neither. There is no primary sand aquifer under Pretoria comparable to a coastal sand plain, so a drilled borehole is the only 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.

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	Expect slow metres through chert and the possibility of having to move and redrill if a cavity is struck. Both push this figure toward the upper end.
uPVC casing, installed, per metre	R400 - R700 /m	Diameter and class, plus the thickness of the wad horizon, which is not known before drilling starts.
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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