Many Paarl Households Using Borehole Water Lack Required Meters and Testing

Many households that switched to borehole and well-point water after the 2017-18 drought are missing the meter that the Drakenstein by-law requires, and have never had their water tested, local plumbers say.

PAARL, Western Cape – 18 July 2026

The Paarl Plumbers (https://plumberpaarl.co.za) are warning that many Paarl and Drakenstein homeowners who moved onto borehole or well-point water after the Day Zero drought may be unknowingly non-compliant with municipal by-laws, and may be drinking or bathing in water that has never been tested.

Boreholes and well-points have always been part of life on the wine farms and smallholdings around Paarl.

The 2017-18 drought pushed a large number of ordinary town households onto the same idea, and many of those connections were installed quickly, without every legal step being followed.

The Most Commonly Missed Requirement

The most commonly missed requirement is the meter.

The Drakenstein Local Municipality by-law requires a meter on any borehole or well-point connection.

It is a legal requirement rather than an optional extra, and a connection installed without one is not compliant.

Understanding Local Groundwater

The second issue is the water itself.

Paarl sits at the foot of a large granite dome, and groundwater from granite country is typically hard and often carries iron and manganese.

That is why so many local boreholes leave rust-brown staining on basins, baths and laundry, while the hardness bakes scale into geysers, kettles and pipes.

"Borehole water is not automatically safe or unsafe to drink. It depends entirely on what is in your particular borehole," said the owner of The Paarl Plumbers.

"A lab water test is the only way to know, and it is also what tells you which filtration you actually need. The right answer is never a single off-the-shelf cartridge bought on a guess."

Recommended Steps

The company urged borehole and well-point owners to take three steps:

have a compliant meter fitted where one is missing,

have the water lab-tested before treating it as drinking water,

and match any filtration or softening to the results of that test rather than to a generic product.

About The Paarl Plumbers

The Paarl Plumbers are a local, owner-run plumbing team serving Paarl and the Cape Winelands, offering repairs, geyser work, leak detection, drain clearing, installations, and borehole and well-point plumbing with upfront pricing agreed before any work starts.

More on borehole water treatment and compliance at https://plumberpaarl.co.za/borehole-water-paarl

Media Contact

The Paarl Plumbers

Phone: 068 890 3548

Web: https://plumberpaarl.co.za

Area served: Paarl and the Cape Winelands