AGBEDANU Derrick Elikplim

B.Sc. Civil Engineering 3

8143519
Environmental Quality Engineering.

WATER DISTRIBUTION TO THE KNUST COMMUNITY FROM THE

KNUST BOOSTER STATION.
Water is conveyed from Barekese to Suame using a pump. Then, it is transported to the KNUST
booster station by gravity into a storage reservoir. The capacity of the underground spherical
reservoir is 1 million Gallons and it is 12 ft deep. This reservoir is shared by both KNUST and
Ghana Water Company Limited. There are two high level reservoirs 72 ft tall. These tanks serve
a twin purpose. There are used to store water and also used to distribute water to the entire
KNUST campus using mainly gravity as a driving force and sometimes using small pumps. The
main water supply components are the underground reservoir, the high-level reservoir and the
booster station.
Water is pumped into these two high level reservoirs using four pumps. Before the pump is
started, some conditions must be met;
1. There must be enough water in the underground reservoir.
2. It must be made sure that the pumps are in good working conditions.
If these conditions are met, then the pumping is started. Even though there are four pumps
available, only one is used at a time where the remaining is left on standby. The pump is then
primed. Priming is the process of removing air from the void spaces in the Pump. Water is
pumped into the elevated tanks which has a capacity of 5376 ft3 and ready for distribution.
Currently, the KNUST water distribution centre pumps and distributes 30,000 Gallons/day
against an estimated demand of 100,000 gallons/day.
The water in the elevated tanks is then transported to the various user points such as Halls of
Residence, Bungalows and Faculty area as far as the Faculty of Allied Sciences on the Mango
Road, Medical Village using pipes of different sizes with the help of gravity.
A sketch of the distribution network is shown below
Figure 1 An image of the Water distribution of the KNUST community