partner PRACTICA

Groundwater wells have the advantage over surface water intakes that clean water can easily be accessed without the need for significant water treatment. In many countries groundwater wells are made by foreign drilling companies with large drilling rigs in which high costs, lack of spare parts, competition, and problems with logistics in both contracting and mobilization face challenges in quick implementation. Furthermore, the smaller mechanized drilling systems requires skilled labour and is usually short term based, rather than remaining in-country.

However, throughout Africa, Asia and South America there are 4 manual drilling principles used; sludging, jetting, percussion and hand augering that proved to be very effective for well drilling in certain soil conditions. These methods have the advantage that they are cheap (wells can be up to 4 times cheaper compared to mechanized drilling of same depth and quality), easy to transport and are relatively easy to learn. Furthermore most parts, if not all, can be sourced and fabricated locally. Yet, as these methods are performed by hand, they are labour intensive and require more time for drilling a well.

By motorizing, these drilling techniques become slightly more expensive but the manual labour will significantly decrease, which will speed up the process. The relief organisations confirmed that these drilling techniques could form an addition to their hardware. In addition, small enterprises that are locally based can be hired for such services and can be easily contracted compared to large companies with large machines. An example of this is happening in Chad for the Darfur region.

In addition; a low cost motorized manual drilling kit could be used as a ‘SEED’ to further professionalize already existing drilling teams/markets in developing countries and find overlap with capacity building organisations.

PRACTICA made the first steps by building 2 prototypes in the their R&D facility in Papendrecht, the Netherlands to test and compare (and potentially combine) different ways of motorizing manual drilling. Several tests were done with the aim to speed up the manual drilling process and to ease the use of operation, so that these techniques can also be applied in emergency relief efforts.

Example: see YouTube movie: