The concept of the BluePump was originally developed in 2004 by the staff of the Rural Water Development (RWD) Diocese Program in Kisii, Kenya under coordination of the Director of the RWD Program Paul van Beers.  

The RWD Program was one of the largest water programs in Kenya and created over 1.500 water points (boreholes, dugwells and protected springs), 300 rainwater harvesting systems and over 16.000 latrines in Westen Kenya.

However, the RWD program concluded that without donor funding most of the handpumps could not be maintained in a sustainable way, due to the many breakdowns and costly repairs. From a similar project in Western Kenya that installed over 1.000 handpumps already 95% of the handpumps were abandoned.

Therefore, the RWD staff concluded that a more reliable handpump was needed, that could be maintained at low cost, without the constant need of small spare parts such as rubber seals and bearings.

The result was the concept of a new handpump, which was called by the RWD staff the "Afripump", and later re-namend "BluePump". After his work for RWD, Paul van Beers continued to promote this concept. From 2004 to 2006 he continued field testing in South Angola with the help of Abel Costa, the Director of the Provincial Water Department of the Huila Province, and the local representative of the Volanta pump in Angola, Fermacom Ltd. in Lubango.

This resulted in a serious testing phase with the assistance of many serious NGOs like the CSC Water Development Project in Blantyre, Malawi, with OXFAM Kenya and with UNICEF Mozambique. After years of contineous heavy duty & intensive testing which reslted in an even better product, the BluePump 2010 is now considered by international experts as the most simple, durable and versatile handpump available for Community Water Supply for all depth. 

The BluePump is not a public domain handpump and is the design and concept is with the FairWater Foundation in The Netherlands for overall coordination, quality controll and financing the development, improvements and promotion.

The BluePump can be obtained with Boode B.V. in The Netherlands and can be send in any quantity to any place in the world. Hundreds of BluePumps have been send by containers and by air and can now be found in Angola, Burkina Faso, Niger, Gambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Congo, Mexico, Haiti, Chaad.

The BluePump is a very good product, however, experienced showed that there is one important point of attention for NGOs that want to try a BluePump.

Once the communities have tried the pump and appreciate its easy handling, high water output and reliablility, there is no turming back and they only want the BluePump for their water supply.

The BluePump has amazing revolutionary features.

• A maintenance free pumping system (BPS) in a stainless steel cylinder that has no rubber washers;
• the BluePump therefore does NOT need a supply of spare parts to function;
• breakdowns are minimized by using vey strong materials and self lubricating heavy duty bearings;
• the BluePump can lift water from 1 to 100 m deep;
• the average yield at 40m. is 1,2 m3/hour, so a bucket of 20 litres is filled within 1 minute, which makes people happy, day after day!
• pumping is light due to the counterweight in the handle,  even a child can still pump water form 60 m deep, see picture below;
• the cap is secured with a special key and cannot be openened by others;
• the cap has space for advertising messages from donors or local companies;
• pumping direct from the casing is possible in case of a new borehole; this reduces installation time, costs and logistics. No need for an expensive borehole casings anymore (see pdf file below)

BluePump in Mozambique at 65m. deep
(Click on the pictures to enlarge)

No spare parts required ???
The BluePump has a special piston with stainless steel valves but without rubber seals; the water pressure is created by water moving between the piston and the cylinder; this hydraulic lock is activated when the piston moves with the stainless steel rods.

Unlike all other handpumps, with the BluePump there are no parts to change, maintenance is therefore only limited to cleaning of the pump and platform, checking nuts & bolts and applying paint were necessary.

The BluePump will therefore not suddenly stop due to parts wearing out.

The BluePump is therefore probably the first real VLOM community handpump.

Estimated lifetime
The lifetime of the BluePump can only be estimated and is expected to be 25+ years in normal conditions. This is based on the extremly simple and strong design.

Replace old handpumps
The BluePump pedesatl is specially designed to fits on an old pedestrial of an india pump or an Afridev handpump. In less than a few hours you can change a borken India pump by a Bluepump. Most of the work will be to get the old India pump out.

Installation of the BluePump is easy and can be done by 2 people, up to 100m deep, without the need of special tools or equipment.

The old pedestrial can stay in the concrete and for more stability, the blue box of the BluePump can be fixed into 4 new anchor bolts in a concrete basement that is made around the old pedestrial pipe, after the installation of the BluePump.

Pumping from the Casing
In case you have your own drilling rig, you can install the BluePump directly in the new borehole with some screens below the conical seat. This allows faster and cheaper installation (see the pdf file below).
After drilling and airlift for cleaning, you can directly proceed with the construction of the concrete base with the 4 anchor bolts, wait some days until the concrete has hardened and install the blue box. The last thing to do is to lower the cylinder with the conical seat in the pipes until it fits in the conical seat of the casing / rising main, conect the rods to the handle and start pumping. It cannot be easier than this.

Lease concept maintenance
Due to its reliablity and good performance, the BluePump is very suitable to be used in a lease concept, for instance to replace an old, broken down handpump. In the lease concept, a communitie is only paying a few hundred dollars for the installation of the pump ( 5 - 10 US$ per family) and also 5 - 10 US$ per familily per year for the rental of the handpump. Studies show that this is normaly affordable. A small part of the rent can include a "water tax" and be used to finance monitoring by the local governement.

The BluePump is probably the best option for most countries to achieve the millennium goals in 2015 and beyond. Participants of the recent HTN handpump conference in Accra, Ghana  (December 2006) voted for the BluePump concept as the best recent inovative soltution for rural water supply.

The BluePump represents a new, modern vision for Rural Water Supply:

"... where people have sustainable access to safe water, with modern and light to use equipment without breakdowns which can be maintained at very low costs ..."

Already over 250 BluePumps installed in 14 countries ...

For more info, mail to info@fairwater.org