What a borehole really costs
"How much for a borehole?" Every driller hears it. "It depends" is honest, but the man on the phone wants a number.
Transcript
The phone rings before seven. How much for a borehole? You start to say it depends, and you hear him go cold. He wants a number.
Most drilling here is priced by the metre. In Limpopo, often around three hundred rand a metre. More for hard rock, deep water, tough access.
Quote three hundred a metre and stop there. The casing, the gravel pack, the pump: all still coming. He hears one number, and you carry the rest. That rate is the hole in the ground, not the borehole that gives him water.
Two holes the same depth can cost very different money. Depth is the straight lever: go twice as deep, roughly double the bill. Then ground, access, and how deep the water sits.
Buying a rig? More than ninety percent of wells in African towns and cities sit between thirty and two hundred metres. Buy four hundred metres of rig and you've paid for metres you'll almost never drill.
And you pay for that spare capacity every day. Bigger compressor, more fuel, bigger crew, on holes a smaller rig would finish. A truck idling to do a bakkie's job.
The driller who gets this right stops guessing. He knows what a day on site costs, so he quotes straight and holds his price. Every metre is worth more to him.