Last night I went to bed anxious to test our water system. I dreaded that once all the faucets were on there may not be enough flow to supply both taps especially not in addition to CDF’s water tank. I pictured mere trickles of water coming out of the faucets.
We rose early to test out these fears.
Removing some of the cement bag coverings that were protecting the fresh plaster on the tap stand, we placed buckets underneath the two new faucets, took off the temporary caps, and added flow regulators, and faucet heads.
With the easily accessible valve box C (good work team), I turned on water to the new tap stand, and we turned on each faucet to extremely impressive flow of about one liter every 6 seconds, and that’s after we used the flow regulator to lessen the water flow to a manageable rate!
Even with all faucets on, and the CDF tank pipe flowing, we had strong flow from each tap! No leaks, breaks, non functional parts, or the like.
I breathed a sigh of relief and we all had grins on our faces.
We took flow rates for each faucet individually and for each faucet with the whole system on.
Here's the data:
Flow rates running each faucet individually: seconds/liter
Old Tap:
Lower Faucet: 8.4 seconds/liter
Upper Faucet: 6.8 seconds/liter
New Tap:
Lower Faucet: 5.68 seconds/liter
Upper Faucet: 5.36 seconds/liter
Flow Rates running all faucets and CDF tank fully open: seconds/liter
Old Tap:
Lower Faucet: 5.80 seconds/liter
Upper Faucet: 6.76 seconds/liter
New Tap:
Lower Faucet: 6.16 seconds/liter
Upper Faucet: 7.84 seconds/liter
It was such a stark contrast to our initial flow rate testing when we arrived five weeks ago. Besides the flow being ridiculously variable, the flow was painfully low. I remember sitting at the old tap for 15 minutes waiting for a bucket to fill even halfway so I could stop the flow test.
Now here we are with a more than functional water system!
We will collect this flow rate data in addition to other monitoring criteria four times a year for the foreseeable future: twice a year when our EWB team travels and two times without EWB students in the Spring and Fall, coordinated by Bhupal.
I am so very proud of this team and this morning’s success validated all the challenges along the way!
We did a full system video so that all future teams will know how to maintain and fix problems that could arise.
We placed the concrete lids on the valve boxes, tidied up the area, and walked down the hill for the final time.
To celebrate our project completion, I, Emily, and James hiked over to Ward 9 to a beautiful waterfall!
To a job well done and to continued functionality of this project!
-Abbie
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