March 6, 2007

Hola

Hola a todos -

Hello all, Annie has been doing more “blogging” as of late, so if something I say is redundant forgive me. Training is going well; the language training is good… I get really frustrated at times but that is a part of learning I guess. The tech training is going well, I have a small advantage over other people having studied water resource engineering, but I think having studied a shovel may be more advantageous in a lot of the work we will be doing here. We visited the water system here in SL las Thursday, very interesting, they have some nice springs that supply the necessary flow during the wet season and a good well that supplements in the dry season (which I am told has been trending towards 8 months out of the year as opposed to 4 months of dry season years before). Friday we built some “bomba-flexi” pumps, which are basically relatively cheap and easy to make water pumps made with a few feet of galvanized iron and pvc pipe with some check valves made from miscellaneous pvc connections and two marbles and bike tubes for gaskets. They are neat, but marginally useful, a person could maybe pump 1 to 2 gallons per minute from a cistern to a storage tank above a house with the one I built, more if they did a really good job making the pump (which could be a lot of pumping).
We are generally going to estimate 20 – 25 gallons of water usage per day for folks in Honduras for drinking, bathing, washing, I don’t think flushing is in that estimate (you don’t flush the latrine). For reference estimates in the states for water use in the house are around 160 gallons per day per person, more in drier places and twice as much if you water your lawn. Not to say it is bad to use more water it keeps us clean, well hydrated and healthy, and in places like Iowa it rains a lot so it isn’t as if we have to worry about it (as long as the treatment plant/septic is working an your not breaking thermometers in the sink).

Hasta luego,

Luke

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Luke~
good to finally hear some about what you'll be doing work-wise. i was just thinking that, if learning spanish doesn't work out for you, at least you'll still speak VBA--not many people can do that! i have a feeling that while you're working there you'll constantly feel limited by money and resources for what you can do for the community. but once you get back and work in the states, you'll be limited by politics and idiots instead. so enjoy the simplicity while you can.
--mary jay

Unknown said...

Dear Luke,

I wish you had known about those pumps earlier. I certainly could have used them while designing irrigation systems in HI. I feel that there is a hugely untapped market for "bomba-flexi" pumps here in the U.S., and I will start manufacturing them as soon as you forward a design on. Your cut will be 10% of net.

Oh, and by the way, I appreciate your blogging. It's added another unproductive 15 minutes every other week to my schedule...

Your Friend in Cycloneness,

Jordan