Mission Accomplished. Oops! not so fast....

It is Sunday, and in Guyana it is a day of rest. Victor, Arthur and Betty are packing their bags and preparing to leave. They only had a few days to share with us and their time is gone. But with the water project completed, we have all felt comfortable with this. But as the sun began to heat us the local savanna, the list of problems began to grow.

Almost immediately this morning we noticed a significant lack of water pressure. Sinks and toilets worked, but the showers did not or would only provide a trickle of water. Vic and Arthur surveyed the problem noting numerous leaks that would need to be repaired immediately, but none of them seemed to be the problem. Eventually, Vic realized that he could hear water like a water fall inside the standpipe exiting the water tank. He realized the pipe should be full and that there must be air caught in the pipe. He sent Tom up the tower to vent the air and the problem was fixed. An air vent will need to be installed on the system at the top of the tower, but as all the stores are closed on Sunday, we will have to wait until Monday to make these repairs.

The next problem we noticed was that the chlorination system was not working. Unless we get it fixed, we are still simply drinking river water. We all looked over the system for a while to determine the problem. Arthur personally tested the system out in Canada before we left and it worked perfectly. What we were able to determine is that there is not enough suction force pulling the chlorination out of the tube and into the water pipe.

Vic described how venturi forces were being used to make this happen. He described to me how as water is squeezed into the center of the venturi, there is an increase in speed and how when it then exits the center as the pipe widens, there is a pressure loss. If another line is connected at this point, the pressure acts as suction. This is how it works in a carburetor.

Immediately Arthur and I futilely attempted to melt a PVC pipe over the campfire to form a venturi. We were unsuccessful. Then we started considering placing the system in another location and even considered trying to make an electric pumping system. But regardless of what we planned to do, we all realized that whatever was done, it would be done without our water specialists.

To this end, most of us sat around the table to discuss how we can solve the problem. There were many ideas and the final solution came from a combination of ideas from the team. Our game plan is to move the chlorination system to the top of the tower where there is less water pressure for the system to overcome. We will then tap into the inlet line and change the inlet line from a smaller diameter pipe to a larger diameter pipe. By doing this, we should be creating a crude venturi affect at the point where the pipe expands. At this point, we will insert the chlorination system. To find tune the system, we have to mount the chlorine reservoir at a level where the chlorine does not continue to drip into the tank without water movement through the pipe.

It will be much like adjusting the drip rate of an IV with a secondary piggyback drug. If the piggyback is set too low, the IV will run into the piggyback solution. It must be held higher than the main IV solution for it to work. For us, however, since we do not want it to continue to run without water flowing we cannot simply hang it well above the water line. We must find the point where pressures are equalized and then just a bit of suction through the venturi will draw out our chlorine.

Well the science seems to make sense. We will have to see if we can make work on a practical scale.