Honduras Interns Progress Report
Date: 2/15/08
Location: Tamara
Tamara Construction - John
¿ WORK COMPLETED THIS WEEK
o Construction Update: The first beam, "solera intermedia" has been poured on all the tanks. About half of the bricks are up above that beam. At the same time they are working on digging the remaining footings for columns and pouring columns.
o Ing. Serrano and John made a schedule for construction that has each activity listed and programmed for certain days. We met with the Junta after Tuesday´s capacitation and they are concerned that the project is behind. The new schedule calls for all cement and structural work (roof, doors, fence) to be done by April 15 and for the piping, lamina modules and accesories to be in place by April 30. Finishing by these dates will require an increase in pace. APP hired one more qualified mason and the Junta started sending two more unqualified laborers to bring the total to 8 unqualified laborers and 3 qualified. Attached is the cronograma.
o Ing. Serrano printed a small copy of the plans with revisions, but there were still a couple small changes. He will reprint the plans next week and we will send them.
o The majority of the pipes, accessories and lamina have been ordered. Antonio and John went today to Amanco, the supplier of the polycarbonate sheet and they gave us a very good price (875L per 12´sheet instead of the 1085L we were quoted at the cheapest hardware store). They will deliver directly to Tamara.
o Based on concerns with bricks sticking out of the tank walls being weak and a pain to repellar, we rethought the design to detain the sed tank lamella. One idea was to perforate holes in the tank walls and anchor a horizontal tube there to support the lamella platform. This was discarded because we want to avoid perforations in the tank walls. The current plan is to leave 1.5" pins of 3/8" rebar sticking out of the wall every 50 cm just above the solera. They will repellar (spackle) the wall around these pins. After spackling they will connect the pins by a horizontal piece of 3/8" rebar running the length of the tank. The rebar will serve as reinforcement to pour a 2" wide by 3" tall band of concrete on the wall. (See attached Drawing). All of the rebar will end up well covered with cement and the masons asure us that the band will be strong, even strong enough to stand on. Bands like this are added often as decoration to brick walls. Unfortunately, because of time constraints, and our concensus, we went ahead with this idea without consulting Cornell.
o Tried Fred Stottlemeyer´s idea for using PVC unions to space the lamina and it worked well. Built a sample 4-lamina module. We suggest going with this method. The unions are only 4cm long. We could add small pieces to make them 5cm, but it would be easier to go with a 4cm spacing. Waiting to hear from Cornell on this.
Capacitations - Entire Team
¿ Held a 3-hour capacitation Tuesday, Feb 12 on water quality (mainly pH, chlorine residual and turbdidity). Included some background information on water quality, specifically in Honduras, and practice in small groups using the turbidimeter, pH meter and chlorine test kit.
o 4 people from the Junta, 3 prospective opperators, Yovani the Fontanero, and 3 APP personel other than us attended.
o Carol was the only woman at the capacitation. We need to work on this. America, the only woman on the Junta had another commitment but will come to other capacitations. The Junta invited a woman from the patronato, but she didn´t come. We might look into inviting someone from the health center.
¿ FUTURE PLANS
o Look over and revise the manual written at Cornell last year for the lamina modules
o Try Fred´s suggestion for using unions as module spacers on some extra policarbonate sheets from Ojojona.
o Design of distribution of flow from plant to three tanks
o Support with Yovani (Tamara fontanero) about chlorine and collecting data
o Help the Junta with a maintence plan for the sources
o Visit plant site and take pictures to send to Cornell University
o Follow up with linea de base for Tamara with Canales
Ojojona - Carol
o Follow up on monitoring
o All three of us went to Ojojona Friday Feb. 15th
¿ We presented to the municipality at one of their open meetings. The alcalde was present in the morning and seemed to be around the municipaldad in the afternoon but was not present at the meeting. We seem to have the support of the vice alcalde and the regidores, but they want to have one final meeting where they invite all of the community. The Junta should be planning this, and we have agreed to come again and give the presentation. Hopefully after this meeting the tariff will be raised. At the meeting the vice alcalde signed the certifications of the operators.
¿ Right now in Ojojona there is no sulfate, they ran out about two weeks ago and have not yet bought more. This past week it has rained hard for about two days and usually when it rains in Tegucigalpa it rains hard in Ojojona.
¿ The last time we were there Julia said that the delay in sending the information was that Mario seemed to be confused about how he entered the data and that she was alone in the office. It doesn't seem like sending the information is a big priority.
¿ We fixed the cuadros that they are filling out and will check up on Ojojona again on Friday February 22nd.
¿ We built a clear sludge sampling tube and tried it out.
¿ The measuring of the tube causes the turbidity leaving the plant to spike. It goes up from 5 - 6 to 10 - 14 NTU. It doesn't stay up for long, but it does spike leaving the plant. Perhaps after they test they should send the water to waste for a bit.
o Future Plans
o Looks for information on health data
¿ Try to contact the Centro de Salud and find more specific data.
New Communities - Carol
o COMPLETED THIS WEEK
o Brochure
¿ I made a brochure this past week of the plant and the technology. It is attached in the email. There is someone from APP who will is going to make it pretty and will get it to us tomorrow.
¿ We found that when we went to New Communities it would be helpful to have, as a nice reminder of our visit and so that the idea of the plant are clear. Also, I'm hoping to leave a few of them with different organizations, like USAID, SANAA, AHJASA, and in Ojojona and Tamara.
o Ciudad Espana
¿ Ciudad Espana has been taking data of turbidity, pH, and cloro very effectively. We don't have a measure of the flow rate yet. They use the tanks to take this measurement over an hour by closing the exit to the tank and seeing how much it fills up (there is a ruler attached to the side of the tank).
¿ We went for a visit on February 19th and the site for the plant could be a bit tricky. There are two tanks that serve the community and the conduction line diverges about a ½ kilometer before the tanks. There is a pressure break near the community where a plant could possibly be located but the land is inclined and there is no road. A road could be part of the community's contribution to the plant.
o Meeting with SANAA
¿ On February 20th we went for a meeting with Pedro Ortiz and Lizeira Polanco who is in charge of Water Quality at SANAA. They both are aware of the project and have visited Ojojona.
¿ We left a brochure with them. They gave us a few ideas of communities to visit but didn't have any organized information on water data for small communities, especially near Tegucigalpa.
¿ There are plans for them to visit the plant at Tamara on March 3rd, hopefully Pedro Ortiz will get a chance to talk to the engineer and look over the plans.
Float Valve Installation - Carol & Antonio
o We already have a float valve installed in Tamara and Antonio and John are capacitating Yovani the fontanero
o We are currently trying to come up with a way to advertise and to make installation of the float valves easier and more effective.
o What we were thinking of would be a visit to the location. First to see how they are chlorinating right now, are they applying enough? How is the hipoclorador set up? can we connect the float without too much problem? What do we need to connect the float? The second would be to come up with a design to connect the floats, get all necessary parts, return with the float and the table (and correct amount of chlorine to apply) and teach the fontaneros how to use them. They would then have a small book and the card, bottle, and chemicals to measure chlorine. Then we would make another visit in about two weeks and see how things are working.
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o FUTURE WORK
o Look New communities
¿ On Friday we will visit La Venta and Reitoca both of which are close to Tegucigalpa to the south.
¿ Make a list of the sites visited and strengths and weaknesses.
o Make a description of the operator (Antonio)
¿ Antonio will think a bit about the ideal operator and the responsibilities that s/he will have and write that up so we have a clear idea to present to communities about what to look for.
La 34 (not till later in the year, closer to rainy season)- John
o Communicate to set up a visit to La 34
o Make minor repairs and capacitate Jose Angel
Marcala - John
o Fred will be coming Feb 25 for a few weeks. He's not sure when they'll be ready to start installing the polycarbonate floc modules, but will let us know. One of more of us will likely go there to help put together the floc modules.
o We might all go to help with training later in the year when the rain comes.