[DEMO] Rehabilitate before you drill
A broken borehole in the village is often a better investment than a new one beside it — and easier to fund badly.
The arithmetic
A rehabilitation typically costs a quarter to a third of a new hand-pump borehole and takes weeks rather than months. Where the borehole itself is sound — and it usually is — the failure sits in the pump, the rising main or the apron, none of which required drilling to install and none of which requires drilling to replace.
When it is not the answer
A collapsed hole, a hole that has gone dry as the water table dropped, or one sited badly in the first place cannot be rescued by new parts. The survey has to happen either way, which is why we survey before quoting rather than after.
Why it gets skipped
New construction photographs better and funds more easily. A ribbon-cutting on a rehabilitation is a harder press release than a ribbon-cutting on a new well, even when it serves the same households for a third of the money.
What to ask for
Before approving a new borehole within a kilometre of a broken one, ask for the original drilling log and the reason the old one failed. If nobody can produce either, that is itself the finding.
Related articles
[DEMO] How to read a drilling log
The document handed over at completion, explained line by line — and the one number to check first.
[DEMO] What a water test does and does not tell you
A clean result on the day of handover is a snapshot, not a guarantee. What matters is the second test.
[DEMO] Why we publish our response times
A promise nobody can check is a marketing claim. A published median that can go the wrong way is not.