Engineers have completed work to drill a borehole in Bath to provide the city with a new supply of thermal water.
Work began below Hot Bath Street in September 2011 to tap into a thermal aquifer to provide a new supply of water for a spa hotel that will be opened in 2014.
YTL Hotels, the hotel and leisure arm of YTL Corporation Berhad, plans to develop Gainsborough Hotel in Beau Street into a 99-bedroom five star hotel that will offer spa and conferencing facilities.
The new borehole, which has been funded by YTL, will also help to safeguard the important thermal spa facilities in the city for the future.
Project manager for the scheme Richard Soloman said: “The borehole is replacing the Hetling Spring borehole which has deteriorated, and supplement the existing supply of thermal water to the Thermae Bath Spa and other important facilities in the centre of Bath.
“It will also supply the Gainsborough Hotel which will be the only hotel in the UK to use natural thermal water.”
The borehole will now be handed over to Bath & North East Somerset Council, who will become owners of the new thermal water source.
Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods David Dixon said:
“The borehole drilling – conducted by Wessex Water & Drill Corp to support the sustainability – has been a hugely successful operation and the source we’ve tapped into shows signs of being everything we could hope for. We are now proceeding with strenuous testing of the water flow and quality over the next six months before making it available to our visitors.”
Engineers drilled down through various geological layers to reach the thermal aquifer which is in carboniferous limestone.
Mr Soloman added:
“It was a challenging project and we came across unforeseen geological problems along the way. This included groundwater ingress at the higher levels so we had to grout gaps in the rock so this water did not affect the quality of the thermal water.”
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