Stellenbosch, Western Cape
Stellenbosch Guesthouse UV Disinfection
Borehole supply for a six-room guesthouse
The borehole here reads fine on chemistry, which is exactly why the bacterial counts caught the owners off guard. After heavy rain the lab results moved around, and a guesthouse cannot run that kind of gamble across six rooms with a morning rush of showers and kettles. We kept the existing pressure vessel and JoJo tank in place and worked the treatment into the line they already had.
- Site
- Six-room guesthouse, borehole fed
- Water problem
- Variable bacterial counts after rain
- Equipment fitted
- 20-inch sediment housing, 55 W UV reactor, flow restrictor
- Sampling point
- Dedicated tap after the UV stage
What the readings showed
Chemistry was clean, so iron and manganese were not the story. The issue was microbial, and it tracked the weather. That pointed to surface ingress somewhere between the borehole head and the tank rather than a fault in the supply itself. We sized the UV stage for peak morning draw across all six rooms, not the average day, because that is when the flow is highest and contact time is shortest.
How it was built
A 20-inch sediment housing sits ahead of the 55 W UV reactor to keep grit and fines off the quartz sleeve. A flow restrictor holds the throughput inside the reactor's rated range, so the dose stays where it should be even when two showers and a kitchen tap run together. The existing pressure vessel and JoJo tank were left as they were.
After handover
A sample tap after the UV makes quarterly lab checks straightforward. The owners keep a wall chart in the pump room for UV lamp hours and sediment cartridge swaps, so nothing depends on memory. When the lamp nears the end of its rated life, the chart shows it before the dose drops.
More site write-ups sit in the project archive, and the treatment stages we fit are listed under services.