WATER

Hand Pumps for Drinking Water Wells

The importance of safe and adequate drinking water supplies for rural areas can never be over emphasized. The State Government is alive to the need for potable water in villages and is implementing a programme for digging borewells and fitting them with handpumps. UNICEF is also extending help to the State Government's programme. However, much of the anticipated benefits have been mitigated by a large number of breakdowns. In Phase-I of the project, failure modes of existing designs of handpumps were analyzed and an improved design was evolved. Using an accelerated testing rig, this new handpump was tested and the design passed on to the Public Health Engineering Department, Government of Karnataka. It was also felt that a strict quality control and an effective maintenance system was the only solution for increasing mean time between failures. It was felt that if a pump that would u se standard parts could be designed, the variation in the quality would be mininum.

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