Any gardener who cares about the environment has to look for the "grail": water! What are the best solutions for watering and enhancing your garden?
Digging a well: an idea worth exploring
How to dig a well? Installing a well in your garden is a great opportunity to reduce your water bill. If you have a vegetable garden, a lawn or even to wash your car, having a well is a solution, provided there's water in the depths of your land. Before taking the plunge, it's essential to carry out a soil study to determine whether it's possible to build a well in your garden.
A dowser or hydrogeologist will be able to detect whether or not there is water underneath. If so, he or she will assess the depth of the source, which is usually between 6 and 8 meters below the surface. All that remains is to assess your needs and, above all, choose the type of well you want. The work involved is not the same for dug, sunk or drilled wells. The choice depends on several criteria:
- Depth of aquifer reserve
- Geological nature of the subsoil
- Daily water requirements
- Cost of installation.
A dug well is manually dug into the ground. In this case, it will be 10 to 20 metres deep, and the walls will need to be reinforced with stone or concrete. This type of structure is easy to build and inexpensive.
The dark well, on the other hand, is deeper. It can reach 15 to 40 meters. It requires more extensive equipment: a pointed tube to be sunk into the ground, a strainer to filter the water...
The drilled well, as its name suggests, is drilled. Digging is generally done with a truck equipped with a drilling tool. The cost is obviously much higher, but you can dig up to 300 meters.
Rainwater harvesting: a money-saving idea
How can you help the planet and lower your water bill at the same time? The solution lies simply in installing a rainwater collector. Every gardener dreams of having water close to his vegetable garden, so he can water during the scorching summers and avoid losing his precious harvest. This providential water is a gift from heaven! In the face of climate change, we need to change the way we manage this natural resource.
There are two easy ways to recover rainwater:
- Install a wall-mounted rainwater collector and connect it to your gutter. You can also add a pump to make watering easier.
- Store water in an underground tank connected to a gutter.
A question of budgetA wall-mounted water recuperator for watering your garden, with a maximum capacity of 500 liters, costs between €60 and €200. The price then depends on the intended use, the material (concrete or polyethylene with rotational molding), the capacity (from 1,000 to 10,000 liters) and the installation work required.
What about regulations?
Be careful, if you've decided to collect rainwater! It is forbidden to connect the rainwater network to the drinking water network. If your water is intended solely for watering the garden, the volumes used will not be taken into account when calculating your sanitation charges. To dig a well, you won't need planning permission, but rather a declaration from the town hall. This is compulsory before starting work. Whether it's for a "classic" well or a borehole, the declaration must be made at least one month before work begins. You'll need to fill in a works declaration form (cerfa n°13837*02), accompanied by an extract from the land register.
Stéphanie Swiklinski