Serving the mid-Island
Water wells in Errington and Coombs
Electoral Area F — low-productivity shale, with sand and gravel along the edges.
Errington and Coombs sit over Aquifer 220, fractured Haslam Formation shale rated low productivity, with 325 wells on record, a median depth of 60 m and a median yield of 3 US gallons a minute. The lower quartile is 1. Median depth to water is shallow at about 4.6 m, and static levels on record range from flowing to 61 m below ground.
Low productivity is the defining fact here, and it is a rating rather than an opinion. Wells work, but the margin between what the formation gives and what a household wants is narrow, and it narrows further every August.
A low-productivity aquifer, measured
Aquifer 220 covers about 158 km² and carries 325 recorded wells. The median depth is 60 m and the median yield 3 US gallons a minute — the upper quartile reaches 5, the lower sits at 1. Overburden above the shale is thin, a median of under 5 m, so most of the hole is rock. Water levels have been falling: about 0.32 m a year across one five-year window, and roughly 0.11 m a year over the longer record since the mid-1980s.
What the water carries
Fluoride has been measured in this aquifer at up to 2.90 milligrams per litre. Wells report hydrogen sulphide — the sulphur smell — and some well records note salty water. Total dissolved solids have averaged in the hundreds of milligrams per litre with recorded peaks far higher. None of that makes a well unusable, and all of it is worth knowing before a pump and a treatment system are specified rather than after.
Sand and gravel at the edges
Not all of Electoral Area F is shale. A small unconfined sand-and-gravel aquifer in Capilano sediments sits between the Englishman River and Morrison Creek, covering around 5 km² with about 43 wells, rated highly vulnerable. North toward Parksville, Quadra Sand carries a median yield near 25 US gallons a minute, and flowing artesian conditions are documented along the base of the slope between roughly 50 and 60 m elevation. Which of those a property sits on changes the well entirely.
In Errington and Coombs the aquifer rating sets the expectation and the property sets the exception. To find out which one applies here, get the property looked at.
Nearby service areas
Find out what is under the property.
Free site assessments across Electoral Areas A, B, E and F.