Construction Blog #1

First a little background:

In the Philippines, I am a Water and Sanitation Technician with the US Peace Corps. Over the course of my (sofar) 2 years in country, I have networked with a number of donor agencies that specialize in funding water projects (specifically potable water supply for needy communities).

Over the last year or so, I have been working with a local NGO (Alternative Systems for Community Development, or ASCODE) to develop a design and proposal for a piped water system for barangays Quitinday and Rizal in Jovellar, Albay (on Luzon). These barangays are both EXTREMELY rural. Rizal is a 40 minute drive from my city of Legaspi; Quitinday is another 20 minute jungle trek beyond Rizal. There are about 80 households in Quitinday, but they are spread out throughout the surrounding jungle.

The people of Quitinday have to hike an average of a half-kilometer to get to the nearest source of drinking water. Imagine if there were no faucets in your house, no water pump outside; everyday you would put a stick over your shoulders and carry 6 1-gallon jugs to fill them with just enough water to cook and drink for the day. If you want to do laundry, you have to carry all your dirty clothes through the jungle to where the spring bubbles up from under a rock and do them there, then carry them back to your house, wet.

Barangay Rizal has a piped water system now, but it was installed in the 1960's and has fallen into disrepair. The pipeline is riddled with leaks and illegal taps that reduce the quality of service for everyone else downstream.

Our plan is to construct two separate pipelines to supply water to these two barangays. One pipeline will start at a spring in Quitinday and carry water through 4" diameter pipes to the center of barangay Rizal, where it will be stored in (2) 30,000 liter ferrocement tanks and then piped down to communal faucets in the population center through 2" pipe. The water system for barangay Quitinday is a bit more complex. Water coming out of a spring is captured, piped through a series of Hydraulic Rampumps to a 9000 Liter ferrocement storage tank, and finally piped down to communal faucets near the houses that need the water.

On May 26th, we broke ground on the pipeline for Quitinday and have made some serious headway.


Highly technical engineering drawing of the Quitinday water system


This picture was taken from the construction site. That cellphone tower is the closest bit of infrastructure.


Here is a kid fetching water for his family (cutest thing in the world with his tiny machete)


Taking a break


Daily snacks of rice wrapped in banana leaves


Moving big rocks to clear out one of the springs


Pouring concrete to make the base of one of the spring intake boxes


Tank formwork (Necessity is the mother of invention and we were all out of lumber)


Bending the reinforcement to the will of the people...


First round of plastering


First layer finished, looks good enough to eat


This will be a manhole cover when it grows up


Tank feels naked with her forms pulled off in public (she's still a bit ugly and needs some more plastering to fill in those holes, but the advantage of ferrocement is that it is really easy to repair and doesn't get self-conscious when you talk about it like this)


"Laying some pipe." Get it?

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Steep section of worksite. OSHA, eat your heart out. (guys were carring 40kg sacks of cement down this on their heads; each step is only about 6" wide)


Did I mention it is BEAUTIFUL up here?


What's wrong with this picture?


That's right, he is holding a hacksaw BLADE in his hand because we didn't have enough handles for all the workers....


No blog is complete without a picture of a giant jungle spider.


More next time as construction continues...