Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Chambwe Windmill

Chambwe is a village in Kasungu District, where our irrigation partners at Good Neighbours have been working with farmers to make use of the abundant water supply of the Bua River. A windmill is ideal in this area because it can pump water from the river far up the river bank to a storage tank, thereby extending the range of irrigation. Conventional buckets and treadle pumps are limited to the narrow band along the riverbank.

Last week we built the water tank and installed the windmill tower.

The slab: approximately 12 sq. meters.
 The tank wall: 1.3 meters tall, giving a volume of about 15,000 liters.
Plastering the tank.
 The tower foundation.
 The tower in the clouds: 6 meters above ground.
 Back to the tank for waterproofing.
 And finally, the tank and the land below it to be irrigated.