WA:Garden Water Access Project

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Information
The pump team circa spring 2011
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Student Members
Advisors
Clients
  • Serving In Missions, Burkina Faso

Many families in rural Africa subsist on food and revenues generated by farming small plots of land. The arid climate in Africa makes providing ample irrigation for the plants difficult during the drier seasons. A solution to this problem is a small, family owned, shallow well handpump. Many pumps in Africa are owned and used at the community level. Since many people draw from these wells, they must be deep and extremely robust. However, providing irrigation for an acre-size plot of land requires much less water. Most shallow well pumps are out of reach financially for most families, especially if a well is also needed. A common problem also found with other pumps is that they require specialty parts, tools, or technical skills to repair and maintain.

This project is attempting to address that need by providing a cheap, locally sustainable pump and well solution. We plan to utilize a simple design that is a legacy of past pump projects' research into modifying other existing pumps as a design basis for our pumps. We want to make this pump out of locally sourced and widely available materials, and design a manufacturing process requiring a minimum of tools. We hope that our design will provide families with a reliable source of irrigation water at a reasonable cost.

Mission Statement

To provide an economically viable irrigation solution that enables inhabitants of arid, rural regions to increase production of self-sustaining and income generating crops.

Goals

General Overview:

  • Our goals for this project are to design a hand-pump capable of providing irrigation water for an acre-size garden plot during the dry season. The financial goal for this project is to provide a borehole and pump for under $250.

Our goals for the pump are to:

  • Have an approximate price of $200.
  • Have a 5 gallons/min flow rate at 10 meters of head.
  • Determine mean time between failure from the client.
  • Use nationally-sourced parts.

Our goals for the well drill are to:

  • Work up to 10 meter depth.
  • Have a mean time before failure of 4 years.
  • Have an approximate price of $500.
  • Be able to drill through unconsolidated soils (sand, dirt, gravel, etc.)

News and Updates

  • Interaction with our client during January 2013 site trip revealed the need for a better drilling rig and drill bits. Our plan is to design and fabricate these components at Messiah and ship them over to Burkina Faso. The drilling rig has been constructed and drill bits are in the final stage of design.

Milestones

Test Pump To Failure

  • Complete testing rig setup
  • Begin test

Well Drilling Rig

  • Manufacture prototypes
  • Test
  • Redesign

History

Resources

and Draft National Code of Conduct (Code of Practice for Cost Effective Boreholes]

Documentation

Contact Information

For more information about this project, please contact:

For information, contact Zach Sizemore (Water Group Leader) or Tony Beers (Project Advisor, Full Time).

For more information about this template, please read Help:Project Alternate and Help:Template.
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