Days 9 - 19: Setting up pipes and tanks

The past 10 days have been dedicated to setting up the piping, tanks, and spigots, so that as soon as the pump is installed, water can be pumped up to the tanks from the borehole and accessed at the spigots. As always, the work has been grueling but rewarding. Christine, Erin, and Robbie joined our team in Ghana on the 12th. 

Here, Christine is carrying gravel to put into the trenches to stabilize the pipes.

Erin and Robbie clear the trench of debris before laying the pipe down.

Robbie works on cleaning and gluing PVC pipes together.

Erin carries PVC pipes from the storage location in the chiefs' palace to the worksite.

The piping is almost complete - just one more PVC length until we reach the tank connection .

Robbie, Christine, Mira, Sammy, Lucas, Erin, Leerang, and Kofi stand proudly before the fully connected tanks.

We were unable to find valve boxes (apparently these are not made or sold in Ghana) so we improvised them out of 6-inch HDPE pipes and PVC pipe caps. The kids figured out that our "valve boxes" made excellent drums and serenaded us all afternoon.

Wise Water Engineering, our electrician contractors, installed the meter board for the power supply. Here they are installing a copper grounding rod, using water and a hoe to dig the hole for the rod. 

Mira, Christine, and Erin were invited to speak at the girls' secondary school in Obodan. We explained the project we are working on in Obodan, and then we encouraged the girls to study hard in school, especially math and science, in order to bring development to their own villages. Hopefully we've encouraged some of the girls to become engineers like us!