A tour of the filter factory en route to Trojes
Friday, July 30, 2010
Oscar and I spent July 22 driving from Tegucigalpa to Trojes, where Pure Water’s field office is located. The road wound its way through the rolling mountains and majestic forests of southeastern Honduras, making for a beautiful drive. Other attractions included several key steps in the filter supply chain.
At the halfway point in Danlí, Oscar pulled off the road so we could drop by the workshop that makes the filters for Pure Water’s projects. It has been spun off as a microbusiness, a one-man shop that churns out filters for Rotary projects as well as for Pure Water. When we stopped, Santos, the wiry craftsman, was sieving sand for the filter media using a sieve hung from an overhead frame. Though labor-intensive, sieving is important because the sand needs an effective size such that so water will flow through at the correct rate, giving time for the contamination removal processes to occur.
Besides sieving, Santos also washes, disinfects, and bags the sand for transport to the installation sites. He also makes the concrete shell of the filters, which requires mixing the cement, filling the forms, and checking the product for defects. The finished filters are taken to the project sites by truck, no small feat over the rough dirt road connecting Danlí to Trojes. Oscar told me the road is usually fixed up a bit towards the end of the year to facilitate transport of the coffee harvest, but on Thursday it was still a long, bumpy ride.
The highway to Danlí winds through beautiful pine and broadleaf forests, an important natural resource for fuel and timber. The smooth, gentle curves were clearly an accomplishment that had required extensive earthwork, including cuts through bedrock.
Outside of Danlí, we passed over the Hato river (pronounced “Otto”), whose sandy banks supply the media for the filters. The sand is excavated near the river, then taken by dump truck to the filter workshop. Hato sand makes good media because it has little fine-grained material, meaning it is much easier to wash. If the sand is not washed properly, silt and clay plug the voids between the sand grains and water can’t flow through. Hato sand also has relatively little organic matter, which would otherwise give the water an unpleasant taste and color. It also has little bacterial contamination.
| Close to Trojes, we passed the bridge that had been damaged in last week’s storms. A crew was repairing it and our truck crossed the creek on a bypass driveway in the mean time. Note the spindly, unsupported PVC water supply pipe in the foreground, subject to wind, floods, and UV damage. |
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Thank you for writing the entry so quickly. I look forward to reading more. Be safe, have fun and thank you for making PWW a better organization because of your efforts. Carolyn
August 3rd, 2010 at 2:30 pm
What amazing things are going on already to provide pure water to people in Honduras. I checked out the u-tube video from the PWW efforts around Danli. It sounds like the people are recognizing and appreciating the improvements in health that the water filters afford. But it also sounds like there are still a lot more people who need filters. It sounds like Santos may have to expand his business and hire a couple more people to help him out! You sound like you are in your element.