Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Questions I need to answer

  1. Which location? - This will determine rainfall and amount of water required/day/person.
  2. How will rainwater be collected?
  3. How will the water be purified for drinking?
  4. Will the residents be able to build and maintain their own system?
  5. How many days worth of clean water should be stored?
  6. How can future contamination be avoided? (Thanks Justine)

This is going to be a running set of questions that I'll add to as I come up with more. Feel free to leave comments and/or suggestions of more questions I can add.

6 comments:

Dale Parkes said...

Some good questions here. Try posting some possible answers to these as you get them and then the viewers can help to narrow them down. I have a video for you about sustainable development for low income families. It might help.

Anonymous said...

Gordon,
Are you planning on looking at a specific water system or are you going to compare a few different types?
Also, a question to possibly add: How can future contamination be avoided?
How will the maintenance and technology of the water system affect what which system is used in a developing nation, in regards to education and experience of equipment, as well as costs.

Cari said...

I found this articles when searching for solar heating on the library search engine and it talks about alternates to purifying water using solar radiation. I thought you might be interested.
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.
tru.ca/ehost/pdf?vid=3&hid=117&sid=
b05953ca-3aed-40a0-87a3-
8c9aa0448f3a%40sessionmgr106
If this doesn't work you could go on the library and search academic premiers type solar heating and it should be number 12 i think.

it's all in the details said...

Gordon,
Here are a few books for you to go check out at Chapters:

Drinking Water Quality: Problems and Solutions
| Hardcover
Nick F. Gray | Cambridge University Press | April 30, 2008

America's Threatened Drinking Water, Hazards and Solutions
| Trade Paperback
Patrick J. Sullivan | Trafford Publishing | June 24, 2002

Hope these help.

Jared said...

Hey Gordan,

In hopes of helping you answer your question about how to collect the rainwater, the hawaiians use their rooftops to collect water and they feed it into a filtration system, then into a storage tank, then finally into their home. This is a great idea but the only problem I see with it is, here in Canada we get snow. The house would have to be designed for the extra loads or maybe you can design the roof to have a fold-out collection system that can be folded away during the winter months. Something to think about. Hopefully this was useful.

Jared

Gordon T. said...

Thanks Jared but if you notice, my thesis is about a specific village in Kenya. I'm thinking snow load won't be an issue.