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rwsn » Flagship Themes » Self Supply » Building Blocks for Self Supply » Technology and technical advice

Technology and technical advice
Suitable technology for supported household investments in rural water supply, in terms of affordability include hand dug wells, manually drilled wells, rainwater harvesting systems and household water treatment. Below you will find a list of useful publications and weblinks which can provide you with more information about these rural water supply technologies.

General

Encouraging Change. Sustainable Steps in Water Supply Sanitation and Hygiene
A downloadable (£6.00) manual for fieldworkers on facilitating low cost improvements to water supply, sanitation and hygiene, with special relevance to Africa. Produced in conjunction with Ministry of Health, Zambia. Clear procedures, and examples of results, with flexible approach. To access got to TALC UK Browse downloads

Hand Dug Well Upgrading

Hand Drilled Wells

Click here for detailed information.

Low Cost Pumps

Canzee Pump (used widely in Madagascar and now also manufactured in Uganda) - see

Rower Pump

Rope Pump

EMAS Pumps

All EMAS handpump designs use glass marbles and standard PVC fittings or pipes as return valves. Different pump designs are available for high pressure, high quantity, hand-powered, pedal-powered, and windmill powered.

Rainwater Harvesting and Domestic Roofwater Harvesting

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) is once again recieving due attention from policy makers, water supply practicioners and rural dwellers. Even in the case of arid and semi-arid regions, domestic rainwater harvesting has a proven track-record of providing water next to the house. For more information you can consult the following resources:

Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage

It is being increasingly recognized that drinking water from protected sources is not always free from faecal contamination and that the collection, storage and use of water in the home can frequently lead to contamination. Household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) are being promoted to deal with these concerns, as well as to potentially enable water from unprotected sources to be consumed safely.

Household water treatment includes filtration, solar disinfection, chlorination, boiling, combined flocculation and disinfection.  Recent research suggests that these technologies may be among the most cost-effective ways to provide safe drinking water.  However, successful adoption of HWTS which includes considerable behaviour change requires product availability at a realistic price, combined with suitable promotion strategies.

Key publications:

Networks

  • The International Network to Promote Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage was set up to advocate, promote and facilitate the inclusion of HWTS in policies and practices at the national, regional and global level.  The network, which held a meeting in Accra in June 2008, has compiled numerous relevant resource materials.  See the document “Combating Waterborne disease at the household level" for information about the network on by clicking here  or visit the website.  If you would like to join the network, contact hhwater@who.int

Organisations

  • One of the RWSN members, the enterprise Pure Home Water (PHW), used two-years of start-up funds to provide safe drinking water through dissemination of Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage (HWTS) products in Ghana and became financially self-supporting (locally) in its third fiscal year.  In the first year Pure Home Water began by selling a range of Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage options.  They soon realised that due to limited capacity, they could either promote one product properly, or many products poorly.  Pure Home Water thus focused on the Potters for Peace ceramic pot filter, which has been locally branded as the Kosim filter.  
    10,000 filters were sold in the first two years.  This included selling to communities which draw their water from unimproved sources.  Pure Home Water currently promotes and markets the Kosim filter, while Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) supports PHW with studies as well as monitoring and evaluation.  For more information, please click here.   or contact Mary Kay Jackson on  marykay.jackson@yahoo.com
 
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