It seems to me that a lot of households in the Lake District and other countryside areas get their water from mountain streams or springs, as evidenced by long blue plastic piping running from farms and houses up water courses. My parents have a caravan at a site (i assume) supplied by such a set up. This arrangement looks fairly common and presume there must be some kind of filter but must be fairly substantial.

Does anyone have any knowledge on the sorts of systems used? Purely out of curiosity

You sure it’s not for animals like filling up water troughs? Unlikely to be for domestic use.

Probably not for domestic water supply as it would be too inconsistent from a stream – usually they are from wells, boreholes etc. In terms of filtration yes it goes through a UV light to kill organisms and filters to remove particles etc. You need an abstraction license from the environment agency for this and you obviously negate paying water rates.

Holiday home I used to stay at had a water system that was literally a hose and a funnel with a wire mesh over it, you’d get water nymphs and such swimming around in the tapwater, and the filtering/safety aspect was that every few days you were supposed to walk up the stream and make sure there was nothing dead in it.

I used to live in a property with a private water supply – its not uncommon in Scotland. It was taken from a fairly small stream. Small dam in the stream, pipe to settlement tank and then a pipe to the house. this had precisely zero filtration or anything else – when it was due to be inspected we chucked some chlorine in the settlement tank. this was many years ago

A pal also has a cottage with exactly the setup you mention – just a pipe from a pool in a stream again with no filtration or UV I believe they went onto mains a couple of years ago tho at least in part as they were under pressure to either join the new water main or get UV treatment

I guess my experience is out of date but thats two I know of that until very recently just used stream water and I have stayed in a B&B where the water was brown from the peat from the stream it was taken from. No filtration

I used to live in a property with a private water supply – its not uncommon in Scotland.

its about 3% of households in Scotland; 1% in E&W. the rules are different north and south of the border, and depend on things like renting the property or the same supply being shared between multiple houses etc.

the rules changed (again) about 4 years ago so I am out of data – but there are grants around to help with installing treatment systems…

…a bigger problem with the pipe in a stream is that in the current weather you may have no water (I recall c. 30 years ago going and carrying buckets of snow into a cottage because the pipe had frozen – it was an adventure as a teenager there for a weekend, it would be a ballache if you live there). In a hot summer, you got the opposite issue, with the same result that there was no water at the tap.

the rules changed (again) about 4 years ago

A few years ago lots of campsites/bunkhouses etc started to display signs which said something along the lines of ‘drink the water at your own risk’. One owner told me the rules around drinking water had changed which meant they were now non-compliant and were covering their backs until they could fix it.

We use a private water supply here, sharing it with another 3 properties.

Water is abstracted from the stream and flows into a settlement tank with some baffles in it. The baffles allow some of the sediment to drop out before it flows into another series of 3 tanks. The water is then UV treated in a small shed before heading downhill to each of the properties. We have a secondary UV filter onsite and it’s treated just as it enters so the water is safe to drink.

The turbidity (colour) changes after heavy rain and we could do with a sand filter before our UV treatment to clear that. Not happening given the cost at the moment though.

The water is tested by the council and certified safe to drink. The rules do tighten each year – at some point we may have to sink a borehole onsite for a new supply at a cost of £16k plus.

Hope that helps!

TS.

Mountaineering Club hut got its drinking water from a stream.

Very small dam fed into a series of filters, just mesh at one end and I think UV just before coming out of a tap. Used to clog up fairly regular which was fun mid winter.

That changed ti the supply from a larger and closer river, initially filtered through a washing machine drum. But I think they’re has been changes since then. The sewage system is more impressive tbh.

Our place in Kerry used to be fed from some sort of stream up a hill. No filters or any of that stuff. Lovely soft water but prone to going a bit dark with twigs and leaves if there was a heavy rain. Great for bathing in, not so great for drinking. Was quite pleased when a group water scheme was set up. Wells and boreholes fairly common in rural Ireland still.

Private Water Supply Regulations are what you need to look at. Plenty on DWI website about this.

I wouldn’t assume anything about a PWS they are are all different. Many lack treatment and have seasonal risks.

In England and Scotland it’s a local authority responsibility to monitor and police which means variable interest and enforcement. Plenty of food manufacturers using boreholes.

Almost bid on water treatment (more mow the grass and check for dead sheep) for some local authority supplies in North of Scotland but we couldn’t get past the reality that the water quality would sometimes be poor and we couldn’t risk damaging the main brand and support for drinking tap water.

More concerning are the people selling boreholes to hospitals to reduce their bills coupled with a basic treatment system they are an accident waiting to happen.

I’m on a spring supply, it’s resilient but eats copper and manganese deposits in the kettle, never mind the bugs etc. Will be switching to mains.

Wasdale Head Inn has it’s own supply from the local beck. Ran dry a few summers ago and they had to ration water….

Loads of villages and like fed from local streams around here about an hour south of Dublin.

The campsite our caravan is at had a water supply issue some years ago. They’d said that there was an issue with their private supply so we all had to use bottled water. It then got sorted but the water always tastes quite earthy, and I always get the squits when I go – that may be due to too much beer consumption or very high mineral content of water. As its a campsite I doubt that the supply wouldn’t be up to scratch 9

It then got sorted but the water always tastes quite earthy, and I always get the squits when I go –

Misty/earthy taste is a common problem, due to bugs or funghi in the pipes

Squits more likely due to livestock in the catchment and it’s ecoli etc

Piped in water, you don’t how lucky you are!

The hill cottage I spent my summers in up in Snowdonia, you had to take containers down to the stream at the bottom of the hill to collect water at least once a day. You always had to check for dead sheep etc further up stream a couple of times a week.

My Great Aunt lived in that cottage until her 80s, all the way through the winters too!

On a completely unrelated note, I’m pretty sure I got Giardia from the river water that was the water source in another cottage I visited in Snowdonia.  That was deeply unpleasant.

As above more likely animal troughs these days. We’re on a spring here, occasionally get problems with frogs/moles in the pipes. minging.

Last summer the big house down the hill had theirs dry up, they had to connect to an old animal trough feed from a bog. Proper fruity.