Hydraulic Ram Pump

In September I was able to take a leave of absence from work and spend a month working with Walter, the new agriculture and environment program coordinator. It felt very good to be back in Honduras! I got to see a lot of old friends, and the looks on peoples faces when I showed up on their doorsteps was priceless. I think many people thought they would never see me again.
Anyway, during this trip we tried out an interesting pump design that uses the flow of water to pump water up a hill.

It is called a hydraulic ram pump. The design I used is from Clemson University. http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/equip/ram.htm
So, thank you Clemson. I assume since you posted this design info on the internet that it was fair game for me to use.
I did update the design a bit (basically stripped it down of anything not totally necessary to make it cheaper and lighter). One was built and tested here in Minneapolis which I brought with me in an extra suitcase. We built another one in Honduras. The components turned out to be cheaper in Honduras which was a nice surprise. Who knows about the quality, only time will tell.

The basic concept of the pump is to capture a large flow of water going down a decline, convert some of it's momentum into pressure, and use this pressure to pump a smaller portion of the original water up hill to the destination.

Here is a video of it installed in a field of one of the promoters in the community of Nueva Palestina, Patuca.

Here is Omar and his little girl showing the resulting flow of water up the hill in the plot where the group is growing plantains.

I did make up a little training manual in Spanish much of which is just the Clemson material translated.




You can also access the document by clicking here.


I also need to Thank Engineer 775 on Youtube for the video ram pump lessons (1,2, and 3).
Some of the design changes are taken from him as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y_WWxWdn5A

Pila Project Update

By Matt:

It has been almost a full year since our last post on this blog. A lot has changed. We now live and work in Minneapolis, but we still keep in touch with our Honduran friends, and we had the chance to go back recently. Katie and I took a week off in late August to go visit our friends in Honduras.
Here is an update on the water storage tank project that many of you helped support. In 2011, during the dry season the community members in El Guanabano along with the support of Diaconia Nacional built the "Pilas".

Here are two of my favorite people in the world: Toribio Reyes and his wife Genoveva. Toribio likes to joke around and is very animated. He also knows about a million hilarious honduran "sayings" which are really hard to translate. Genoveva is a very sweet honduran mom. They thanked us over and over for helping out with the Pila. They are very proud of it, and of the new house they have built. I was there when the old house fell over because the wood had rotted out. That was a bad time for them, but now it is nice to see them getting ahead.




Here is Maria with here pila. It was raining on this day, and part of the project included gutters so that rain water could be easily gathered and stored.
That brings up one of the difficulties the project has encountered. The water project that previously served this community has come to a halt because the electricity bill for the electric pumps that move the water is too high for the community to pay. That, combined with the fact that even when the system was functioning a lot of people didn't get water regularly made people not very motivated to pay the monthly bill (everyone got charged a base price regardless of usage). The price isn't very high, but most of these people make around $5 per day working in the fields as hired hands. It is hard to make ends meet with that kind of income, especially if you have a bunch of kids in school.
To solve this problem these folks have decided to dig a well closer to their group of homes so that they can have a nearby source of water that is dependable. They plan to dig the well in the dry season of 2012. It will be dug by hand by the community members. Diaconia will provide materials, and technical assistance of an experienced builder who knows how to dig wells in this way.

Sadly, in the time we have been gone another house has fallen over due to rain and rotting wood. Noel's house fell over when nobody was home, thankfully nobody was hurt. He is working on a new one, slowly. Walter, the environment program coordinator with Diaconia is working to organize a community work day where everyone pitches in to help put up a new house for Noel, his wife Claudia and there little boy.

Here is a picture of a bean called Alacin (a type of cowpea) that we promoted in this community. It is producing well and is edible as green beans and also as dried beans. It is also used as a cover crop for helping maintain soil fertility.



Here is a local mother preparing some of the beans to be eaten.

To date they have built 7 pilas. A little money is left over, which will be used to build the well this spring. The funding has focused on a sub-community of El Guanabano called El Encinal where the need is greatest. It was decided to meet this need first, including building the well, before spreading out with more pilas because the other houses are lower down, and have more access to good water. The full amount of funding for the project has not been met yet, but I believe it was around 3/4 of the way there as of August.
I did some checking, and any other funds that are given to CRWRC for this water project will be used in this community, even if the amount raised exceeds the original budget.
Thanks for all who helped support this effort and have helped our friends have better access to water. They thank God for this blessing.
We will keep you updated as we hear more about the project.
Also, I was able to go back to Honduras for a month this past Septepmber, so I will be blogging little bits of that from time to time.

-Matt DK