Plumber in Cashan,
Rustenburg

Cashan drinks from a reservoir on a strained line

In December 2024 Rustenburg Local Municipality put the Barnardsvlei system under restrictions. Rand Water was under strain, its notice said, which had "resulted in lower inflow and pressure". The same notice listed which reservoir feeds which suburb: Cashan Reservoir supplies Cashan, the Cashan extensions, Protea Park and Waterfall East, and Boschdal Reservoir supplies Boschdal and parts of Safari Gardens and Cashan.

Height matters for pressure. The national water department said in 2023 that in Rustenburg "high lying areas do not have water due to low pressure in the system", caused by high demand in summer. It named no suburbs, but the ground is easy to measure: satellite elevation data puts the middle of Cashan at about 1,318 m, rising to about 1,425 m on the upper streets, against roughly 1,165 m in the town centre.

Waterfall East is the odd one out. It shares the Cashan Reservoir but sits on the flat plain at about 1,151 m, lower than the CBD. Weak pressure in a Waterfall East house is less likely to be about height and more likely to be the supply itself, or something on the property.

There is money set aside for this line. The 2023 Blue Drop report records R28,091,789 "available for new mains from Cashan Reservoir to Geelhout and Industrial reservoir". Until that work lands, water still runs downhill, so a dip in supply shows first at the top of the slope, and the municipality warns that refilling after an outage can take up to 48 hours.

For a house on the slope that leaves three things worth checking before blaming the municipality: whether pressure is low at the meter or only at the taps, whether a strainer or the geyser's pressure control valve is choked with silt, and whether a tank with a booster pump would carry the house through the evening dips.

Test the garden tap nearest the meter. If that tap runs hard but the house runs weak, the fault is inside your boundary, which is the part a plumber can sort out.