Borehole Installers Camps Bay | Boorgate Camps Bay

Camps Bay sits below Table Mountain on granite and Table Mountain Group sandstone, with steep terrain across most of the suburb.

Access and slope determine feasibility here at least as often as geology does.

What Is Under Camps Bay

The formations below are what a rig actually meets on a Camps Bay property, and between them they govern the depth, the casing requirement and what the hole will realistically give you.

Formation	Where it sits	What it means for drilling
Cape Granite Suite	The lower slopes and the well-known granite-shale contact along the seaboard	Water in the weathered mantle and in jointing. Depth to fresh rock changes quickly across a single stand.
Malmesbury Group shale	Intruded by the granite, exposed in places along the shore	A tight formation where water comes from fracture zones rather than the rock mass. Moderate yields at best.
Table Mountain Group sandstone	The mountain and buttresses above the suburbs	Hard fractured quartzite. Deeper, fracture-dependent, and the recharge for everything below it.

Send your street and what the water is for, and get an itemised quote for Camps Bay.

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What That Means for Your Borehole

Access is the first constraint, not the geology. Tight erven, steep driveways and shared walls rule out more positions here than ground conditions do.
Saline intrusion is a real risk this close to the sea, so the sustainable rate matters more than the peak rate.
Yields are typically modest. Storage paired with a moderate hole is the normal working answer on the seaboard.

Where We Work Around Camps Bay

Camps Bay central and the beachfront
Bakoven and the Victoria Road side
The Glen and the upper slopes
Clifton approaches
Steep stands below the Twelve Apostles
Older erven off Kloof Road

What to Watch For Here

Steep, terraced stands constrain rig positions severely. Level working space at the drilling point is the binding constraint, and it is often scarcer than access to the property itself.

Yields are fracture-dependent and variable, so this is not ground where a specific number can be promised before drilling.

What the Water Is Used For

Irrigation for large gardens and estate grounds
Entrance landscaping and common-area planting
Keeping the pool level up, subject to the water analysis
Standby supply for larger properties
Washing down driveways, paving and vehicles

Wellpoint or Borehole?

Almost never. There is no meaningful sand aquifer under most of the seaboard, and hard rock close to surface leaves a driven point nothing to draw from.

Water Quality in Camps Bay

Proximity to the sea makes salinity the parameter to watch, and it can climb if a hole is pumped harder than the ground recharges. Otherwise the water off granite and sandstone here is typically soft and low in dissolved solids.

A water analysis is what turns that from a general expectation into a number for your specific hole, and treatment should be specified against the result rather than against the area's reputation.

Registration and Abstraction

Boreholes and wellpoints inside the City of Cape Town must be registered with the City. Separately, the National Water Act governs how much you may abstract: reasonable domestic use and small-scale garden watering generally fall under Schedule 1, while larger abstraction may require registration or a water use authorisation from the Department of Water and Sanitation. Requirements change, so confirm your position before drilling rather than after. Requirements change, so confirm your position before drilling.

Related Services

Borehole Water Survey South AfricaDeciding where to drill Borehole Testing South AfricaWhat the borehole sustainably yields Borehole Pumps Installation South AfricaPumps sized to tested yield Borehole Tank Installation South AfricaStorage for irrigation peaks Borehole Water Testing South AfricaQuality and salinity analysis Borehole Drilling Prices South AfricaHow a quote is structured

For the drilling process itself, the geology across the rest of the country and how a quote is put together, see Borehole Installers South Africa.

Borehole Prices in Camps Bay

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	R600 - R1,400 /m	Hard rock and difficult access both push the rate up on the seaboard.
uPVC casing, installed, per metre	R400 - R750 /m	Casing the weathered zone is standard; the depth of it varies sharply with slope position.
Mobilisation and site establishment	R4,000 - R15,000	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	R110,000 - R280,000+	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 - different 2026 guides quote per-metre drilling rates for the same province that differ by a factor of three - 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.

Camps Bay Borehole FAQs

Can a rig work on a steep Camps Bay property?

Sometimes, and it needs establishing at a site visit before anything else. A truck-mounted rig needs both a route in and level working space at the hole position.

Terraced stands on the slopes above Victoria Road defeat that on a fair number of properties. Where they do, the project either moves to a workable position or does not proceed.

Is Camps Bay borehole water good quality?

Where a hole produces off Table Mountain Group sandstone or granite, usually yes - soft and low in dissolved solids, sometimes with natural humic colour.

The salinity question applies closer to the shoreline and is worth testing for. The yield question is the bigger uncertainty on this ground.

Can a drilling rig even get onto a Camps Bay property?

That is the right first question here, and the honest answer is sometimes not. A truck-mounted rig needs a route in and a working platform at the drilling point, and tight erven with steep access defeat both more often on the seaboard than anywhere else in the metro.

A site visit settles it before anything is quoted. Smaller rigs exist for constrained sites, but they change the cost and sometimes the achievable depth.

Will a borehole this close to the sea give salty water?

It can, and the risk rises with how hard the hole is pumped. Drawing down faster than the ground recharges pulls the saline interface toward the borehole.

Yield testing establishes a sustainable rate, and sizing the pump to that rather than to the hole's maximum is what protects the water quality over the long term.