plan 42RWHT for 3 rural schools

Summary

Creation of 3 Underground Rainwater Harvesting Tanks in the rural community schools of Port Loko District (Mamama, Magbonto-So and Makende)

Background

All schools lack safe drinking water and are situated in rural communities. Wells in the near vicinity of the schools are not working or have impure water quality.

Location

Nothern Province, Port Loko District, Sierra Leone

Attachments

  • IMG_1957...
  • IMG_1965...
  • IMG_1967...
  • IMG_1949...

Focus

Primary Focus: Drinking Water - Schools
Secondary Focus: Drinking Water - Community

People Getting Safe Drinking Water: 2,500

School Children Getting Water: 1,070

People Getting Sanitation: 0

People Getting Other Benefits: 2,550

Workers needed to create the tank
Community knows how tank works and can maintain it themselves. They also know how to keep the water in good condition.

Start Date: 2007-01-15

Completion Date: 2007-05-15

Technology Used:

Rain Water Harvesting Tank equipped with India Mark II hand pump and connections to the schools roof.

Phases:

one

Community Organization:

Committees will be set up in each community consisting of representatives of the school, different groups of the communities (women, youth, …) to ensure the proper use and maintenance of the tank.

Government Interaction:

Ancillary activities:

Training for responsible people will be carried out to inform them on how to chlorine the water and how to keep the pump in good condition.
Several Meetings will ensure community ownership and committee building.

Other Issues:

Maintenance Revenue:

Usage Fees:
Students: 500 Le (20 US-Cent) per Term
Community-Members: 200 Le (8 US-Cent) for each bucket of Water

Maintenance Cost:

Metrics:

Prior art before metrics

Cost: $32,150

Per Tank
No/Item/Costs [Leone]/Costs [Euro]/Costs [Dollar]
1/material/18,000,000/5,454.55/6,428.57
2/activity costs/7,000,000/2,121.21/2,500.00
3/transportation/1,000,000/303.03/357.14
4/project support/4,000,000/1,212.12/1,428.57
/Total Cost/30,000,000/9,090.91/10,714.29

Total Cost for all 3 Tanks
Leone 90,000,000/Euro 27,272.73/Dollar 32,142.86

Co Funding Amount: $0

Community Contribution Amount:

Community takes care of maintenance, provides land, where available sand and bush sticks as well as unskilled labour

Fund Requested: $32,150

Attachments

  • IMG_1957...
  • IMG_1965...
  • IMG_1967...
  • IMG_1949...
  • 2 participants | show more

    Nice Project

    Ned Breslin of Water for People

    Thanks for this project as I think this is an important project. I like the idea of underground tanks and think more work should be done on innovative ways to capture large amounts of raniwater for future use. As such, I think we can learn alot from this and thanks. My only question is whether the costs for maintenance are sufficient ...

    Thanks for this project as I think this is an important project. I like the idea of underground tanks and think more work should be done on innovative ways to capture large amounts of raniwater for future use. As such, I think we can learn alot from this and thanks.

    My only question is whether the costs for maintenance are sufficient and the supplies for the Mark II are available.

    Nice

    Thansk

    ned

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      The cost is sufficient and supply of the hand pumps is readily available here. There is lack of water in the interior and as such NGO's are busily engaged in providing water and businesses knowing this stock handpums to engage the market. With experience these handpumps donot get spoilt so easily except they are stolen.

      The cost is sufficient and supply of the hand pumps is readily available here. There is lack of water in the interior and as such NGO's are busily engaged in providing water and businesses knowing this stock handpums to engage the market. With experience these handpumps donot get spoilt so easily except they are stolen.

  • 2 participants | show more

    detail on the technology

    Meera Hira-Smith of Project Well

    Rain Water Harvesting in underground tanks is excellent method provided there is enought of rainfall throughout the year and maintained properly to avoid bacterial contamination. Questions: How many gallons of water would each tank hold? Is rainfall occurring throughout the year, if not, will there be enough water in the dry months to ...

    Rain Water Harvesting in underground tanks is excellent method provided there is enought of rainfall throughout the year and maintained properly to avoid bacterial contamination.
    Questions:
    How many gallons of water would each tank hold?
    Is rainfall occurring throughout the year, if not, will there be enough water in the dry months to cater to more than 800 people?
    In rural Argentina such underground concrete tanks cater to one family and the farm animals to cover whole year round. The tanks are chlorinated twice a year and cleaned once a year. The maintenance cost would be negligible but should be regular.

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      - one tank will hold up to 100.000 litres - the rainy season lasts about 3 months and are among the ones with the most rains in west africa - in case the water is used up it can be refilled with water from a reservoir (money collected for water usage can be used for that) since there are almost no animal husbandries in the area water will...

      - one tank will hold up to 100.000 litres
      - the rainy season lasts about 3 months and are among the ones with the most rains in west africa
      - in case the water is used up it can be refilled with water from a reservoir (money collected for water usage can be used for that)

      since there are almost no animal husbandries in the area water will be used for drinking for the students of the schools. Main priority are the school-children, then the community

  • 2 participants | show more

    cost details

    Meera Hira-Smith of Project Well

    what are activitiy costs and project support?

    what are activitiy costs and project support?

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      activity costs include salaries for engineers, workers and other expenses to carry out the actual project project support = admin costs

      activity costs include salaries for engineers, workers and other expenses to carry out the actual project
      project support = admin costs

  • 2 participants | show more

    Gutters and filtration

    Don Howard of Rotary District 5450

    I noticed from the pictures of the schools that there were no gutters attached to the roofs. Have the costs of attaching gutters and providing filtering debris been factored in to the project?

    I noticed from the pictures of the schools that there were no gutters attached to the roofs. Have the costs of attaching gutters and providing filtering debris been factored in to the project?

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      Gutters can be constructed to the roof top of the buildings during construction of the tanks.We used the PVC Water collection pipes to get the water. These costs are included in the project.

      Gutters can be constructed to the roof top of the buildings during construction of the tanks.We used the PVC Water collection pipes to get the water. These costs are included in the project.

  • 2 participants | show more

    technical and cost questions

    Rick McGowan of East Meets West Foundation

    Port Loko Schools - Clarifications requested on the following issues: This proposal lacks many details that need to be included before any reasonable assessment can be made of its value. As it stands, it does not explain the current source of drinking water (whatever condition it is in), but only say that “All schools lack safe dri...

    Port Loko Schools - Clarifications requested on the following issues:

    This proposal lacks many details that need to be included before any reasonable assessment can be made of its value. As it stands, it does not explain the current source of drinking water (whatever condition it is in), but only say that “All schools lack safe drinking water and are situated in rural communities, and wells in the near vicinity of the schools are not working or have impure water quality.” They must be consuming water from somewhere. In particular, they need to address the following issues:

    Existing Situation - Currently the school apparently has no water. So what do they drink during the day? Bottled water? Dirty well water?

    Population to be Served – The number of people getting “safe drinking water” is 2,500. Number of school children getting water is 1070. So is the total number of persons served 2,500 or 3,570?

    Water Consumption – Domestic water users are typically allocated allocated at least 30 liters per capita per day (LPCD) according to WHO, UNICEF and other major donors working in the rural water sector. If you assume that 2,500 people will get that amount, you'll need 75 m3 per day. That's a lot of water to get from a rainwater catchment from a school roof. For the 1,070 school kids, you say that they are only getting drinking water, so I assume you mean about two or three liters per day, a total daily demand of about 2,140 – 3,210 liters. But what about the water they need to wash their hands after defecating, and for flushing the latrines? Or aren't there any latrines, or perhaps only VIPs? If not, you should consider building some school latrines, as this will likely have a major positive impact upon their health.

    System Design:

    Basic layout – You apparently want to collect water from the school roof, then pipe it to storage tanks that will be built, then install India Mk-3 handpumps to pump water (presumably) just to the surface so people can take it home in jerry cans.

    Storage Tanks - The basic design includes three underground water storage tanks, each with a capacity of 100,000 liters (mentioned in the Q&A section, not in the original proposal). I don't see any information about what they are to be made of (steel tanks – too expensive, brick lined tank – more likely and cheap, ferrocement – even better, and not too expensive).

    Rainwater Collection – The proposal does not say whether they intend to use a roof collectors (presumably the school roof) or a ground collector (see below). A ground collector is sometimes cheaper and easier to work with, but you probably propose to use the school roof. However, there does not appear to be any information about the size or composition of that roof, so I cannot assess whether or not it will be able to meet your likely water demand. However, I made a quick assessment of about how big the roof would have to be to meet your water demand (see below). You should find somebody who knows more about the local weather to develop a more accurate assessment of the required area of the rainwater collector before you build this system. Also, as someone else mentioned, there was no mention in your proposal about piping from the collector (roof) to the ground storage tanks, nor the cost of that piping.

    Surface Catchments: Rainwater harvesting using ground or land surface catchment areas is less complex way of collecting rainwater. It involves improving runoff capacity of the land surface through various techniques including collection of runoff with drain pipes and storage of collected water. From the Introduction to Rainwater Harvesting (see website: http://www.gdrc.org/uem/water/rainwater/introduction.html), compared to rooftop catchment techniques, ground catchment techniques provide more opportunity for collecting water from a larger surface area. By retaining the flows (including flood flows) of small creeks and streams in small storage reservoirs (on surface or underground) created by low cost (e.g., earthen) dams, this technology can meet water demands during dry periods. There is a possibility of high rates of water loss due to infiltration into the ground, and, because of the often marginal quality of the water collected, this technique is mainly suitable for storing water for agricultural purposes. Various techniques available for increasing the runoff within ground catchment areas involve: i) clearing or altering vegetation cover, ii) increasing the land slope with artificial ground cover, and iii) reducing soil permeability by the soil compaction and application of chemicals.

    Collection Area – Have you actually made any calculations about how much water you are likely to get from the school roof collector, based on local rainfall data? I made two rough estimates that you might want to consider. One way to look at it is through annual rainfall (although of course, it varies considerably over the year). Weather data (from 1951-1980) for Freetown shows that it gets 312 cm per year. On an average basis, that's 0.85 cm/day. If you needed 75 cubic meters per day, you would need about 8,774 meters square. That's a roof more than 90 x 90 meters. I doubt that the school roof is that big, but I don't know. A perhaps better way of looking at it is to look at the “average storm”, which according to the weather data drops 2.5 cm per storm. For a 75 m3/day demand, the roof collection area would “only” have to 55 m square. So how big is the roof?

    Cost – Although there was a general cost breakdown in the proposal, there was not much detail. Three tanks cost $32,142, which is $10,714 apiece. It doesn't say what the materials are, or the type of construction.

    Therefore, it seems that some additional information needs to be included before any decision can be made about the suitability of this proposed system.

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      There are wells available in all three communities but are not sufficient enough during the dries as the water table gets low.(unsafe water for drinking by then.) The actual population is 3570 and when compared to the tanks' water holding capacity,the the water is not enough but since they have wells which though there water table beco...

      There are wells available in all three communities but are not sufficient enough during the dries as the water table gets low.(unsafe water for drinking by then.)

      The actual population is 3570 and when compared to the tanks' water holding capacity,the the water is not enough but since they have wells which though there water table becomes low during the dry season can compliment the additional water needed. Also, arrangement has been made with the government water reservoir to be refilling the tanks as and when necessary. The cost can be covered by the contribution already upon by the beneficiaries.

      Water would be collected from the school roof top through water collecting PVC pipes and then sent to the RWHT underground. The catchment area for the three schools overall is 8,850 Sq.Ft. There are existing roofs already and we only need the water collection pipes which estimate cost is less than 5% of the total cost. It is cheaper compared to the ground/floor collection. These underground tanks are made out of cement concrete with Iron rods on all four walls and the ground is also floated with concrete.India Mark II pump is being used to get the water from the tank. Each of the three tanks will hold 100,000 litres of water.

      The catchment area of 8,850 Sq.Ft. is enough to fill these tanks since we already have one which has a catchment area of 1,600 Sq.ft. and it fills 100,000 litres tank within one week during the rains. The rainy season runs for six months: April/May - October and there is an heavy down pour in July and August which sometimes causes flooding here. outside the rainy season we are not expecting any drop of rain.

      The materials we used in the construction are cement, Iron rods, Sand, Stones, Boards, Plastic sheets, PVC pipes, Sticks, Plywood, India Mark II pump and its component and the tools used for the construction such as headpan,shovels pickaxe,wheel barrow,etc.

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      There are wells available in all three communities but are not sufficient enough during the dries as the water table gets low.(unsafe water for drinking by then.) The actual population is 3570 and when compared to the tanks' water holding capacity,the the water is not enough but since they have wells which though there water table beco...

      There are wells available in all three communities but are not sufficient enough during the dries as the water table gets low.(unsafe water for drinking by then.)

      The actual population is 3570 and when compared to the tanks' water holding capacity,the the water is not enough but since they have wells which though there water table becomes low during the dry season can compliment the additional water needed. Also, arrangement has been made with the government water reservoir to be refilling the tanks as and when necessary. The cost can be covered by the contribution already upon by the beneficiaries.

      Water would be collected from the school roof top through water collecting PVC pipes and then sent to the RWHT underground. The catchment area for the three schools overall is 8,850 Sq.Ft. There are existing roofs already and we only need the water collection pipes which estimate cost is less than 5% of the total cost. It is cheaper compared to the ground/floor collection. These underground tanks are made out of cement concrete with Iron rods on all four walls and the ground is also floated with concrete.India Mark II pump is being used to get the water from the tank. Each of the three tanks will hold 100,000 litres of water.

      The catchment area of 8,850 Sq.Ft. is enough to fill these tanks since we already have one which has a catchment area of 1,600 Sq.ft. and it fills 100,000 litres tank within one week during the rains. The rainy season runs for six months: April/May - October and there is an heavy down pour in July and August which sometimes causes flooding here. outside the rainy season we are not expecting any drop of rain.

      The materials we used in the construction are cement, Iron rods, Sand, Stones, Boards, Plastic sheets, PVC pipes, Sticks, Plywood, India Mark II pump and its component and the tools used for the construction such as headpan,shovels pickaxe,wheel barrow,etc.

  • 2 participants | show more

    People and students count

    Rajesh Shah of Peer Water Exchange

    We have 2 fields on the application: people getting safe drinking water and students getting safe drinking water. For the people, it is assumed to be a source of water that meets that daily needs. This would be a lot of water. 3 tanks for 2,500 folks would not quite be enough. For students, it is assumed that it is water during the schoo...

    We have 2 fields on the application: people getting safe drinking water and students getting safe drinking water.

    For the people, it is assumed to be a source of water that meets that daily needs. This would be a lot of water. 3 tanks for 2,500 folks would not quite be enough.

    For students, it is assumed that it is water during the school day; a much smaller requirement (considering length of school day and number of school days a year).

    In this light, can you please explain what the numbers you have entered in your application mean? Thanks.

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      These are actual figures we have given you. In terms of school hours, we have only six hours if a school runs from 9am till 2pm, i.e. a single shift school.If its a double shift school then there is four hours per each shift. please remember the water provided is only for drinking purposes.

      These are actual figures we have given you. In terms of school hours, we have only six hours if a school runs from 9am till 2pm, i.e. a single shift school.If its a double shift school
      then there is four hours per each shift. please remember the water provided is only for drinking purposes.

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      Sure, but since we are oly providing drinking water it is believed to be enough for now. in terms of school hours, single shift schools uses 6hrs and double shift schools uses 4hrs per shift and the water is only apportioned for drinking.

      Sure, but since we are oly providing drinking water it is believed to be enough for now. in terms of school hours, single shift schools uses 6hrs and double shift schools uses 4hrs per shift and the water is only apportioned for drinking.

      • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

        water for sanitation can be got from wells which compliment the tanks , though the water table of these wells is low during the dry season and could not be fine for drinking but for other purposes.

        water for sanitation can be got from wells which compliment the tanks , though the water table of these wells is low during the dry season and could not be fine for drinking but for other purposes.

    • Idriss Kamara of Safer Future Youth Development Project

      water for sanitation can be got from wells which compliment the tanks , though the water table of these wells is low during the dry season and could not be fine for drinking but for other purposes.

      water for sanitation can be got from wells which compliment the tanks , though the water table of these wells is low during the dry season and could not be fine for drinking but for other purposes.

  • Rating: 7

    review by Blue Planet Network

    Need to keep exploring this tech in Sierra Leone and how to adapt the standard structure learnt in India.

  • Not Reviewed

    by Barefoot College

  • Rating: 7

    review by Water for People

    A good project, will teach us alot and I would finance this. I would like to see some answers to teh questions on the Q&A page however

  • Rating: 4

    review by East Meets West Foundation

    This proposal needs more thought and detail in order to be properly considered.

  • Rating: 5

    review by Project Well

    Amount of rainfall to provide water to 800 people throughout the year is the main a matter of concern.

  • Rating: 7

    review by Rotary District 5450

    The project details are somewhat sketchy, but the replies and suggestions from reviewers provide both explanation and guidance on how to successfully complete the project. Based on experience with similar projects at two schools in Kenya, the costs are reasonable.

Name Status Completion Date Final Cost
RWHT for 2 rural schools in Mamama and Makande completed_late Dec 2008 0