Container Shipping Slow Sand Filters

It's surprisingly affordable to ship community slow sand filters overseas by container. We can get six 8' diameter slow sand filters capable of treating 43,000 gallons per day into this 20' container. Total shipping to Africa from Bellingham Washington was about $4,000
Here's how we do it..

First, we bundle and load the lids

We load the first filter up to the edge of the container opening

Then, we load the next paper cup fashion by sliding it into the first tank. A bit trickier than it looks. We repeat this until all six tanks are loaded.

Finally, we add the control tanks with all fittings and documentation enclosed

Unpacked and placed into operation in this African community after travelling thousands of miles across oceans.

Filters in Mindanao

So many times people feel overwhelmed with the world's problems and just feel they can't do anything about it. Well, don't tell Thomas Schneider that. Thomas works as a janitor at a school in the mid-west. He called me one day last winter saying how he often thought about people in faraway lands not having access to safe drinking water. He though about researching water treatment with the idea of making something and then finding people with the need and sending it to them. In his search on line, he found Blue Future Filters. He called  me and asked if it would be possible for him to buy a filter and have us find a good home for it instead of him having to reinvent the wheel on his own. I assured him that I am in contact with a number of small organizations always trying to find funding for safe water systems for people in need in their regions of activity.
After I got off the phone, I contacted folks I have worked for before in Peru and the Philippines and got a quick reply.
If you haven't followed it, Mindanao, the large island in the south of the Philippines has had devastating typhoons in recent years. Theses storms wipe out infrastructure and create torrents of polluted water and accompanying disease. Some filters Blue Future has supplied in the past were the only sources of safe water for whole neighborhoods.
Blue Future works with local organizations and with a company in Manila who supplies us with the tanks using our design and components.
I recently received the pictures shown here of the neighborhood and some residents who just took possession of the new 1800 gallon per day slow sand filter that Thomas provided.

Offending the Spring

or, how to keep spring production continuing.

Springs are like teenagers. They need encouragement, nurturing, and minimal push-back to keep them from running away. It's important when you want to develop a spring to not inhibit it's flow in any way. As we all know, water finds its own way. If you push water, it goes around you. If you dam up a spring to collect the water, it will find another route to come out or disappear entirely.  It is also important to safeguard the spring water from surface contamination, kind of like parental controls on the world wide web.
There are a couple of common ways to develop a spring. The most common way is to build a spring box. This is usually out of concrete, but any variety of other materials could be used so long as it can be secured from contamination. Water enters the spring box from a porous surface into the hill from which the spring emerges. This can be made by building in perforations in the concrete, or building a block wall with big openings between blocks. The important thing is to make sure that the outlet from the spring box is set at such a height that water does not accumulate above the spring source which would cause back pressure.
The other common method is to drive a perforated pipe into the hill and spring and capture water that way. Concrete grout is used to seal the pipe where it enters the hillside. Horizontal well drillers put these in all the time and they are quick and clean.
It's also important that you put an overflow in the piping after the spring box or spring pipe. This allows for times when you aren't using all the spring water, but don't want water to back up into the spring box.
Helpful hint. Oftentimes springs can be located by the presence of woodwardia ferns

Rope Pumps

One of the most interesting pumps I have seen for pumping water from depths that a a suction pump can't manage is the rope pump. By cranking the bicycle wheel, a continuous rope extends down into the well and back up through a PVC pipe. What allows the unit to pump are rubber gaskets on the rope at intervals, held in place with knots. When the rope enters the pipe, it lifts a column of water which then exits the pipe through a tee fitting above the well cover. Brilliant, simple, and manufacturerable almost anywhere.
The book, Providing Water, contains many such innovations appropriate to developing countries. Drawing by Xan Blackburn (www.xans-art.com)

Providing Water, Book Update

Nine days left on the Kickstarter project- to assemble a Field Guide for Providing Water. I receive calls regularly asking various questions as diverse as spring design to how much storage is needed, and everything in between. This book will be a summary of my experience over the last 25 years in the US and with groups in 20 countries. This book allows people working in developing countries, as well as rural Americans, to find solutions without having to reinvent the wheel. It is also one of the very few books that emphasizes appropriate technology. A few more backers of this project will get it off the ground and flying.
Providing Water, A practical Field Guide

Climate change and Water Scarcity

And why we need to change the way we design for water and wastewater

A recent opinion piece in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat   talks about Amy's foods needing to expand and the City of Santa Rosa wanting a $31 million water and wastewater permit fee. Amy's, one of my favorite packaged food companies, is expanding rapidly and needs a larger manufacturing plant which they anticipate will require 12 million gallons a month of water and resulting wastewater. The city says they have to expand water and wastewater facilities for this kind of demand, and want Amy's to help pay for this. Back in the last century, battles like this would rage, companies would move, cities would back down, and the taxpayers would be in an  uproar.
But here's the thing. This isn't 1950, nor even 1980. We are in an age of increased population and demands on water as well as requirements to clean up discharges into precious water resources. Then, you pile on top of that climate change, rising sea levels, increasing salt water intrusion, and it is necessary that we rethink our water use and wastewater production radically.
A couple of years ago, I was hired to do research into methods of providing water and dealing with waste streams for a planned community with the following rules- no aquifer depletion, no discharge of wastewater, and rainwater to be the sole source of water.
You'd be surprised to know how much you can do with those constraints. Capturing rainwater through porous materials and storing in huge underground self supporting structures, complete recycling of wastewater leaving only solid residues, using biological treatment systems that don't have high energy or chemical requirements. It's all available now.
If Amy's were to use these approaches, they could not only reduce their usage, and therefore their bill, but also not strain existing water resources, and help the planet. And I bet  it would cost less that $31 million.
Of course, this also requires major changes in how the regulatory process works, and a big change in the engineering mindset that relies on last century technologies and approaches to 21st century problems.

River wells

The drawing above is representative of the type of illustration the Field Guide will use. Since the book will be available in ebook and paperback format, this type of illustration is more readable in ebooks, especially the  black and white versions. The drawing depicts a river well, one form of a structure to take water from a stream or river, or pond for that matter. Surface water sources often have algae and seasonal high turbidity and sediments. By digging a shallow well a few feet away from the water edge, filling it with gravel and then placing a perforated vessel in the middle of the gravel, most of the algae and sediments problems are solved. The gravel layer extends above the water level so that the well does not become a breeding ground for mosquitoes  A pump can then be placed in the perforated vessel and operated without concern for the pump being plugged. This is an example of the kind of information available in the Field Guide. The book is scheduled for publication May 2014. Please click on the link above or in the side bar, to follow this project. Thanks!

(drawing interpretation by Xan Blackburn from a photograph)