The week about water

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Third week of November. This was to be the week of water. And what a week it’s turned into.

As some of you may know, there is no running water at the project site and the nearest water source is several hundred meters from where we’re working (there’s also some serious hills and cliffs incorporated into that distance). We have already moved a 6000-liter water tank to the site so if we can just fill that up, we should be good for the completion of the foundation. If we need more water after the foundation’s complete, we’ll have to fetch more for the mortar.

Now the tools that we have available to move the water include: our trusty steed (the Land Cruiser), three 200-litre plastic drums, a diesel powered water pump, a spool of 1inch hose tubing, and three 14-liter buckets. Despite all that we’ve got going for us with our impressive collection of equipment, we also have a few minor obstacles that might hinder us.

A. The 6000 liter tank is very tall, and nothing can be poured into the top of it without great difficulty.

B. The Water pump has a really large intake hose and needs a large, deep supply of water to pull from.

C. When full, the 200 liter barrels are very heavy and cannot be lifted easily. Likewise, the opening on the barrels is only 3 inches across.

D. The water pump is roughly 80 kilos (176 lbs.).

Now the original plan was to go to a water hole that was close to the road, pump water into the barrels, drive to the tank, and then pump water into the tank. As with most of my ‘Plan A’ strategies, this plan was shot down pretty quick. The water hole we wanted to use decided to run dry this week. I was completely confused as to how something like this could happen. It had been raining quite inconveniently hard during the previous week (as far as driving is concerned) so I figured that the natural well would be overflowing!

When I asked the community members what had happened, I got a quintessentially Vanuatu response. The translation amounts to something like this: “Sometimes the water comes, sometimes the water goes.” Now I’m no geologist and I claim no knowledge as to how underground rivers work, but this was just odd.

And so we move on to the next plan.

Below the water point is a river at the bottom of a short gorge. There’s even a small waterfall and a picturesque little pool with plenty of depth for our pump. I judged the distance from the road to be about 100 meters, and I figured we had 50 -75 meters of hose-pipe. Also, there’s a 20-25 meter drop down a cliff to get there. Pumping the water from the river just didn’t seem like it would work.

The next option involved going further down the road to another creek. This new location had water close to the road, but the flow was too little for our beefy pump. We’d have to bucket the water into the drums and then pump it from the truck into the tank. It would cost more in fuel to drive the extra distance, but it was the plan that seemed most likely to work.

My boys had a different idea in mind.

They really didn’t want to carry water in buckets, and they had a better sense of estimating the length of a bundle of hose-pipe. My head carp assured me that the spool of pipe in the truck was definitely 100 meters, and as it turned out, he was right. The fellas convinced me that they should be allowed to try the pipe…just to see if it was long enough. So into the jungle and down the cliff we went uncoiling the hose as we marched through the mud.

I was partially surprised that it made it all the way, but reserved because I knew what the next step was going to be. The pump had to make it down to the riverside. When I told the boys, they laughed and said that they would keep the pump up top and pull the water from the river to the truck. Then I laughed and explained that the large intake hose did the sucking, and the small 1 inch hose did the ‘spitting.’ After the fellas figured it out, they weren’t laughing anymore. When I explained that the pump would have to come back up the cliff afterwards, they weren’t even smiling.

So on we moved to the next step and down the valley (with the heavy pump) we went. It was rough, but not too crazy, and eventually we had everything connected and ready to go. After a few failed attempts to get the pump running I had to teach a brief class on pump priming and the importance of filling intake hoses before ignition.

When I got the thing fired up finally everyone shouted with joy. They could feel the water coursing through the pipe. We waited a few minutes to let the water go the distance but the man at the top of the cliff kept saying that he couldn’t feel water in the pipe.

When I went to check the pump I noticed water leaking from the pump’s drainage bung. So I thought to myself, “Oh! It must not have been screwed on tight enough after it was drained the last time.” I then reached down to tighten the little knob and the ensuing shower I received was one of those that I should have seen coming. It was a real Looney Tunes special. You see, as soon as I touched that little knob it exploded into a horizontal geyser on par with a ruptured fire hydrant. And I was standing in exactly the right location.

After things were shut down and gotten under control (drippy, yet under control), I looked at the knob I still had in my hand. At first glance it seemed as though the threads had corroded to a point of disintegration. After further inspection it turned out that the bung knob had never actually had threads on it. The whole thing was a jury-rig repair done with metallic epoxy and a rubber stopper from another machine. To say that I was a little disappointed would be an understatement, but in a world of Plan Bs we beggars can’t be choosers.

We moved onto jury-rig number two which involved a knife and a stick (please see photo). The bush cork did the job nicely and in an under an hour we had the pump fired up again. I was hopeful for all of 30 minutes before it became glaringly evident that our 'beefy' little pump just didn’t have what it took to push the water through the pipe and all the way up the cliff face. We shut things down and looked at our options.

It looked like the old bucket method from the other stream was back on the schedule, but the fellas were still keen to try something else that would negate the need to carry buckets of water. I said that they could have another shot at getting the job done easier, but they’d have to carry the pump back up the cliff first. This was met with a bit of disappointment. “We can carry it back up another day! When there’s more people to help! How about it?” was the communal response. I wasn’t up for the procrastination tactics. You see, once we got the water into the barrels (however that happened) we’d need to pump it out, because there was no way that we could pour the barrels into the tank.

The trip up the cliff with the water pump was quite a mud filled fiasco. With 5 people hauling on the pump we could move the unit about 2 feet per heave. With each heave, 2 out of 5 men would loose their footing on the muddy cliff. As long as 3 of the 5 managed to hold on, however, things worked out alright! Of course, on every 5th heave there would be at least one poor sap that would go careening down the muddy cliff for several meters a la slip-n-slide style. I got to enjoy two of these little trips, but since my hands were a full, I didn’t get any photos of the fun.

Once we were all assembled (muddy and dripping) back at the truck, we stopped for a well-deserved lunch break. We’d burned through half a day, were worn and weary, and still had no water in our barrels. After a quick lunch and a short drive to the close-to-the-road watering hole, I was ready to get going with the buckets.

The fellas had other ideas.

They took the 100 meter hose-pipe, dropped one end into the gently flowing creek, and then unrolled the whole mess down the road (which had a gentle decline). My guys were so adamant that this would work out for the best, and that we could fill the barrels from the hose after things started flowing. I, however, saw two massive problems. I tried to explain things to the guys, but they were so set in their plan that I needed for them to just learn by experience.

After an hour of patiently waiting for the water to start flowing, I tried to make my explanations again. They were a little better received this second time. Some of you may not know of what ‘vapor lock’ entails but it generally occurs when the pipe undulates over the course of its run. Basically it means that the water won’ tgo through the pipe. The other issue is pretty simple though: water doesn’t flow up hill. In order for this pipe system to work, the water from the low-pressure stream would have to flow uphill by about two meters of elevation within the first 7 meters of pipe.

After this second lesson in hydro-physics, we broke out the buckets and finally got water into our barrels. It took under an hour to fill the barrels in the truck, 20 minutes to drive to the tank, and then 5 minutes to pump the water from barrels to tank. By sunset we’d made two runs and had loaded 1200 liters of water into the tank.

We were soaked, we were sore, I was sporting a nearly debilitating flu, and it was the middle of the week already, but we knew that if we worked sunrise to sunset the following day we would have the water issue nearly knocked out. Then the call came from the Ministry of Health. They were commandeering the truck for two days, and I was left holding the bag (or water bucket as the case would be).

The next phone call I got was from my dad. This week was turning into a real winner.

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Photos

100 meter Hose
Here's the first time we unrolled the monster that day.

Heading down the cliff.
Muddy, steep, and picturesque.

The Bung
This is where the bloody little drainage cap goes.

WTF?
This may look like corroded threads, but it's really just metallic epoxy on a rubber drain plug.

The bush cork.
Made to order, cut to fit.

Truck to Tank
Here we are prepping to pump from barrels to tank

The Bucket treatment
Here's our bucket brigade.

Nice Funnel.
We made a funnel from Narrow Leaves to reduce spillage.