CHAPTER 4: LOW COST WATER SUPPLIES

Low cost water supplies are required for rural communities and minor urban centres in
developing countries. Their need arises from:
i. Limited capital for construction, operation and maintenance.
ii. Shortage of skilled manpower to operate mechanical systems.
iii. Difficulties in obtaining maintenance services and spare parts for broken down
machinery.
iv. Unavailability of water treatment chemicals
v. Large component of cost of machinery and chemicals being transport from country of
manufacture.
On the other hand, the target areas have
i. Plenty of cheap unskilled labour and are hence suitable for labour –intensive (as
opposed to capital intensive projects)
ii. Readily available land unlike in urban areas or the developed country.
The following design approaches lower the cost of water systems.
1. Pre-treatment
Pre-treatment refers to ‘roughing’ treatment processes such as plain sedimentation, storage and
roughing filtration, which are designed to remove the larger sized settleable material before the
initial treatment units. During periods of excessive turbidity, it can reduce the load on
subsequent treatment units and hence substantial savings on operational costs especially
chemicals.
2. Chemical Feeders
Feeders for hypochlorite and coagulant chemical should be simple in design and easy to operate.
Simple gravity solution type feeder is preferable to pump and chlorine gas feeders, which are
complex.
3. Rapid mixers
Hydraulic rapid mixers such as the hydraulic jump, flumes or weirs achieve sufficient
turbulence without need for mechanical equipment. They are easy to construct, operate and
maintain using local materials and personnel.
4. Flocculators
Hydraulic floculators such as baffle channel, gravel bed and helicoidal-flow type do not require
mechanical equipment or continuous power and can be built with local material and labour at
relatively low cost.
5. Sedimentation Basin
Manually cleaned horizontal flow basins require no imported machines and labour is readily
available. They can also be overloaded without adverse effects.
6. Filtration
Slow sand filters have several advantages over rapid sand filters in low cost water supply. They
do not require pre-treatment and hence they have no coagulation and flocculation costs.
However, experience with the filters is limited.