Other Projects
In addition to our work on village water supplies, we have also upgraded the water faciliites in two health clinics that serve many villages in the District, and two high schools, each of which has about 1500 mainly resident students.
Many buildings where we work in Ghana are made of cement block to prevent damage from insects or wood rot. If a building is to have plumbing, then pipes and drains must be installed during construction and that was done in the two health clinics in the District that we worked at. Both clinics are located far from a reliable central water system so, except for the drains, the plumbing was seldom used. At the time we visited the clinics one had a well with a working hand pump where the staff drew water to carry into the buildings in buckets. A well had just been drilled at the other clinic but the hand pump had not yet been installed. Until that time, the clinic had either purchased water or collected it from more distant sources.
We were able to provide running water in both clinics by installing a submersible electric pump into each well so the water could be pumped to a tower that we constructed. The water then flows by gravity into the clinic buildings and the staff quarters. We also added outside faucets at both clinics so that local people could draw water there for their own use.
The tower below was constructed at the first clinic and the second pictute shows the midwife at that clinic running the water in the shower shortly after the system was installed. A ceremony was held to celebrate the completion of the project, and the picture at the right below shows many of the local dignitaries who attended. The event was important enough to be broadcast later on national television.
The two pictures below show the hand pump on a concrete pad behind the second clinic before our project. After the project the pad is still visible on the slope below the tower. The low wall on the pad holds the faucets where people from the area can draw water.
At the high schools, the large number of students using hand pumps to draw water from wells led to frequent failures of the pumps. We were able to install a submersible electric pump into a well on each campus, send the water to a tower and then let it flow by gravity to faucets that were already in place. Thus, the lines of students carrying water from a hand pump to the dormatory aren't seen anymore. The headmasters of both schools have reported to us about the value of the savings in time for the students.
