We are looking at buying a house some way out of town, and have come across one of the issues being water supply and sewerage.

None of the houses we have looked at are on mains water, and either involve tanked in water or the use of a "dugout" for supply. Furthermore, all the sewerage goes to a "lagoon".

Some questions that immediately come to mind; how clean is the water from a dugout? Is it safe to drink? I would worry about contamination and giardiasis, in which case is it safe enough to bath and shower with? Can you exhaust a dugout, particularly in dry country?

I understand the concept of a lagoon, and the ones we have seen don't seem to smell or cause any problems. Has anyone come across any issues with these? What about during winter with frozen pipes?

Any info gratefully received
Matt

Hi

We have had 2 houses here and neither of those were on mains either. We have a septic tank which is fine. I know our water comes from the lake and we drink that.

We did look at a house with a well and decided not to go for it because they can dry up. It costs about 30K for them to redrill for a new well and will all the water shortages here and more and more houses being built decided not to go ahead with this particular property due to the well. We have heard of cases where a property may be on its 3rd well!

Water from a well is fine as it is treated before it gets to your tap. Not sure what a dug out is exactly but must be similar I persume.

I know lots and lots of people do drink bottled water here and have it delivered to their houses, in some cases it is probably needed but mostly I think they are being abit over cautious.

JJ

We also have a septic system and a drilled well. They both work perfectly. The drilled well only cost us $6000. and that included everything. It is 285 ft deep and it is very good water. As for taking water out of the lake, well you would have to have some kind of filter system to clean it to make it drinkable and safe. Some of those sytems can be quite costly and have to be maintained regularly
We had a dug well one time in Ontario and it ran dry once and we had to have water trucked in. I am not sure what a lagoon is but it doesn't sound nice.

..... that is a good point about the depth of the well as they charge to drill per foot don't they? The area we looked in was on top of a mountain so I guess they had to drill down a long way! So something else to consider too as well, how far down might they have to go if you need a new one ever.

JJ