Borehole Drilling
Illovo

Illovo sits on granite near the southern end of the dome, not far from the quartzite ridges of Parktown and Houghton. Drilling typically goes through a weathered layer before reaching harder, fractured rock.

Illovo has changed into a dense mix of apartment blocks, offices and restaurants along Oxford Road, with older freestanding homes on quieter streets. Compact sites, basements and shared ownership affect where a rig can work.

What Is Under Illovo

Formation	Where it sits	What it means for drilling
Johannesburg Dome granite and gneiss	The basement rock under the whole suburb, part of the Kaapvaal Craton	Hard, slow drilling once fresh rock is reached. It holds water only in joints, fractures and quartz veins, so the hole has to intersect them to produce.
Residual weathered granite	The upper section of the hole, varying in thickness across short distances	Quick to drill and quick to collapse. Casing through it is standard, and its depth is only known once the rig reaches fresh rock.
Dolerite and diabase intrusions	Thin sheets and dykes crossing the dome	The intrusion itself yields little, but the broken contact zone alongside it is often the most productive ground on the property.

What That Means for Your Borehole

• Neighbouring results are a guide, not a forecast because yield depends on the fractures each hole meets.
• The weathered mantle must be cased and sealed or it collapses and lets shallow water into the hole.
• A storage tank usually does more than a bigger pump given the moderate yields typical of granite ground.

Where We Work Around Illovo

• Melrose and Melrose Arch
• Inanda
• Sandhurst edge
• Oxford Road mixed-use strip
• Illovo apartment and walk-up blocks
• Rosebank border
• Older freestanding houses on quieter roads

What to Watch For Here

Apartment blocks need trustee approval and access planning. Walk-up and high-rise blocks in Illovo are usually sectional title, so trustees must approve, and the rig needs a clear spot away from basements and boundary walls. Ground-floor gardens or the edge of a parking area are often the only workable options on these tight sites.

Mixed-use buildings may cross the household line. Restaurants, offices and shops at street level draw water for business purposes, which can take them beyond Schedule 1 and into national registration, on top of the municipal application. Water testing also matters before any borehole water is used near food preparation or customer areas.

What the Water Is Used For

• Watering shared gardens at Illovo apartment blocks
• Irrigating planters and landscaping around Oxford Road offices
• Standby water for mixed-use buildings during outages
• Gardens and pools on freestanding Illovo homes
• Hosing down paving, bin areas and parking courts

Wellpoint or Borehole?

Rarely. Decomposed granite can look sandy, but it is mixed with clay and the water table usually sits well below suction lift. Only a thin strip of alluvium beside a spruit might suit a driven point. A drilled borehole is the realistic route here.

Approval and Abstraction

Illovo falls under the City of Johannesburg. Both main metros require approval before drilling. The City of Johannesburg requires an application to its Environment and Infrastructure Services Department, and an approved application comes with a drilling certificate that has to be kept on site while the rig works; drilling without one risks a fine and impoundment of equipment. The City of Ekurhuleni requires authorisation, with applications reviewed by its Dolomite Section and by Water Demand Management. Elsewhere, including Mogale City, confirm the municipality's current requirements. Separately, the National Water Act governs how much you may abstract: reasonable domestic use generally falls under Schedule 1, and in 2026 the Department of Water and Sanitation confirmed that households using borehole water for reasonable domestic purposes do not need to register nationally. Commercial, agricultural and larger abstraction may need registration or a water use authorisation. Rules change, so confirm the current position before drilling.

Related Services

For the drilling process itself, the geology across the wider area and how a quote is put together, see Borehole Drilling Johannesburg.

Nearby Areas

Borehole Prices in This Area

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	R450 - R1,100 /m	Decomposed granite drills quickly; fresh granite is slow and wears bits. The split between the two on your stand sets where the cost lands.
uPVC casing, installed, per metre	R400 - R700 /m	The depth of decomposed granite decides how much casing is needed, and it changes across short distances.
Mobilisation and site establishment	R2,500 - R9,000	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	R60,000 - R180,000+	Everything above, excluding treatment, which depends entirely on the water analysis.

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