How Many Cows

Hello Everyone!

I have been home for a week now and it has been great. I am clean, rested, stuffed with yummy food and already packing for the next trip! I leave early tomorrow morning for the second phase of the Haiti Goat project. We will be providing more goats to the students in Marbial and training students and community members in livestock care.

I will have to talk more about that later, because I still have much to share about El Salvador! Here is a video of the entire project site. The video will be nice for those of you interested in seeing the finished tanks, piping and faucets.

If you want details, keep reading – although it might be boring so you can just skip to the two pictures at the bottom if you want 😉

The first (upper) tank shown is the one we built to contain the spring water coming from the rocks. The tank holds approximately 1700 gallons. The tank is a 3-sided concrete block enclosure built into the rock wall (with the rock wall being the 4th side of the tank). We [painstakingly] “sewed” screen and chicken wire together and then sewed that around a 1″ pvc tubing frame for the main part of the upper tank.  We created that lid to protect the tank from leaves and insects while still allowing water to flow into the top of the tank during rainy season.  The men drove rebar into the rock itself to attach screen where our lid didn’t reach.

There are two pipes that exit the upper tank. A 2″ pipe used for draining the tank during maintenance is at the bottom of the tank. About 6″ above the bottom is a 1-1/4″ pipe which transfers the water from the upper tank to the lower tank. The pipes are PVC, but once the pipes exit the tanks, they are encased in 2″ galvanized pipe to protect the PVC.  The pipe was buried where possible, but, as the video shows, there is a lot that is exposed and supported by concrete/rebar pillars.

The second (lower) tank is made out of corrugated metal that was bolted together in an 11′ diameter circle. The tank holds approximately 3000 gallons. The tank was built over a 3″ concrete pad. The metal was painted and lined with a potable water tank liner purchased in the States. We built a massive rock/concrete wall around the entire tank. The lid is sheet metal that was bolted to 1″ square metal tubing frame. The lid alone took about a week.  We did not have drills, dremels or circular saws. We had hammers, nails and a hack saw.  Each hole had to be created with the hammer and nail before we could bolt the lid to the 1″ tubing or bolt the tubing to itself where it intersected. We cut all the metal with the hack saw and went through about 5 blades during the course of the entire project. Two pipes exit the lower tank -a  1-1/2″ for draining and a 1-1/4″ for moving the water from the lower tank to the faucets.

The platform built for the faucets was set at a height that would make it easier for the woman to move their full jugs of water up to their heads.  The woman carry everything on their heads (it is quite amazing!) so we wanted the platform to be high enough that they wouldn’t strain too much moving the 5 gallons of water onto their heads.