St Paul Partners: Image Pump Installation

We went to Image to install the pump on Saturday(3/19). Matthew Amani, a recent Tumaini Community Development Graduate, met me at 7 over breakfast and shortly after 7:30 Byemerwa came with a driver, electrician and two plumbers. The 7 of us packed into the car and hoped that the rain and government vehicle would keep us from being stopped for too many passengers. The rain stopped as we arrived at Image and the team jumped into action. The Headmaster arranged to have the students start digging trenches for water pipe to go to the 3000 liter tank at the Kitchen and to lay electrical cable to the nearby computer room. We were lucky that the Computer lab has a main control box for the generator circuit and we were able to add a circuit breaker for our pump. The electrician went to work mounting the Grundfoss control box on the wall and wiring it to the main line. Image has a man who manages their water system, Robert Magina, who was excited to see that the pump comes from Denmark. He spent 3 years in Denmark working with Danida on water projects. Image is lucky to have an experienced person to manage their water system.

The plumbers assembled the well head with a water meter, shutoff valve and connections to the 1.5 inch pipe. We brought 200 meters of 1.5 inch pipe but were 50 meters short to reach the tank at the kitchen. We measured the well depth again and got 65 meters so the pump was installed at 60 meters to leave room for sediment. The pump was assembled and we had to use candles to heat shrink the waterproof splices. The pump was lowered into the bore hole and connected to the main power. Engineer Byemerwa hit the on button and the pump immediately started gushing water out of the well. An initial low voltage warning (190 volts) was corrected at the main control box and we reversed the wiring to make sure we had the correct pump rotation.

Students started collecting water right away and the pump was filling a 10 liter pail in 8 seconds. The water was cloudy but we expect that to clear as we continue to pump out the well. The headmaster again tested the water for biological contamination by taking the first drink from the well. Byemerwa cautioned them that the water needs to be tested before it should be drunk but I think they are so happy to have water that it will be used anyway. Byemerwa has water testing materials for ecoli and had a nice pamphlet from a UN program on how to test. The materials they recommend are Colilert tubes and 3M Petri film plates, both of which I have used in the past. I hope to bring back a copy of the pamphlet to 3M to make sure they are aware of it. We left Image just as it got dark (after failing to find the extra 50 meters of pipe in Ilula) and got back to the Lutheran Centre at 8 PM after watching a spectacular sky as the sun set.