Design of a low-cost community hand pump

In Ethiopia there are still tens of millions of people that have no access to water within 1,5 kilometer from their homes. That means they have to walk at least 3 kilometer to go and fetch water.

Collecting water is considered to be a task of women and children in most of Africa. Some women carry a 20 liter barrel on their back, while others use donkeys or a cart for transport. Either way, it will often take them half a day.

Practica Foundation's mission is to design hand pumps that are a) low-cost, b) easy to manufacture c) easy to maintain and/or repair.

Current status

At this moment, ten low-cost household pumps are installed with local beneficiaries for testing purpose. These pumps first need to be upgraded to make them more durable, and then monitored to gather information about the actual amount of users/usage.

An existing hand pump will be redesigned using computer aided design. Focus will be to make it more robust on parts where we see most of the wear has taken place. Ten existing test-pumps will then be upgraded to the more durable design.

Test pumps will then be equipped with motion sensors that keep a record on when and how long the pump is being operated. After three months this information will provide us detailed insight on pump usage.

Eventually the pump design will be included in Practica's pump continent-wide manufacturing training program. These are programs where local enterprises learn how to manufacture, sell, install and maintain pumps.

Practica has worked on developing a low-cost hand pump to be used for individual households. The pump has been tested thoroughly in Ethiopia: ten pumps are installed with local beneficiaries. Tests reveal however that this pump in practice wears off quicker than expected. Our understanding is that although the pump is designed for household use, in reality much larger groups of beneficiaries is using these pumps. Therefore, the pumps needs to be redesigned in order to become more robust and reliable, without loosing its "affordable character".

This project aims to collect information regarding the actual amount of users and usage and to use that information to redesign the pump in such way that it can cope better with large(r) usergroups.

Ten existing test-pumps in the field will be upgraded by local staff of Practica in the first three months of 2011. This way, 100 to 150 families benefit from an improved and more robust pump in the short term, and local technicians will gain knowledge about appropriate pump technology.

A few pumps will be equipped by sophisticated tilt sensors measuring time and frequency of usage. Together with qualitative interviewing this should provide us with more insight on the actual use, and composition of the user community.

In the long run, the new design of the pump will be included in Practica's pump-manufacturing training programme, covering countries throughout Africa. This program aims at training local workshops throughout Africa how to manufacture, sell and install pumps and in this way earn themselves a living.

Goals

• Design of a robust community hand pump
• Gain insight on user network, and pump usage
• Strengthen the knowledge of Practica's local staff
• Encourage the local production of hand pumps in Africa

All Practica's pump designs are open source. Everyone is free to make use of them. Drawings of the design and manufacturing manuals can be downloaded online at www.practica.org.

Practica ensures that all of its pump designs are easy to manufacture in an African context taking into account the level of technical understanding in local workshops throughout Africa.

Maintenance of the pump can be done by the owners using local materials. Often not more is needed than an old bicyle tire, a wrench and a pair of scissors to do regular maintenance.