FairWater's mission is to rehabilitate abandoned handpumps in Africa, 

and promoting reliable, cost-effective O&M solutions
to maintain handpumps at low-cost

therefore we use the reliable BluePump

Click here to know more about FairWater

The hiden problem of community water supply
In Africa over 300.000 handpumps have been donated, but already more than 150.000 handpumps are broken down due to lack of maintenance. The main problem is a simple rubber seal in the piston, deep in the borehole, that wears out fast. The seal does not cost much but is complicated and expensive to replace, but even worse, it is often not locally available.

Therefore most handpumps last only 3 to 5 years; Each year about 10.000 handpumps are abandoned, taking into their graves some 150.000.000 US$ per year, or nearly 500.000 US$ per day, just because of this silly rubber seal.

Girl showing the problem; the silly rubber seal on the piston ...

In fact, the majority of the handpumps still working are those from recent projects. NGOs don't like to talk about this; billions of donor funding has been wasted. Lack of accountability and transparency about results and impact is therefore the real hidden institutional problem behind the water problems in Africa...

Africa is slowly turning into a handpump gravyard ...

Additional problem: Handpump failures increases with the depth of the borehole and with higher numbers of users, or operation hours per day. Therefore community water supply with handpumps becomes very problematic in regions with deep groundwater.

FairWater solved the main problem
FairWater developed a new pumping system that has no rubber seals; the BPS (Beers Pumping System). The BPS is can pump water from up to 100m deep and is used now in the FairWater BluePump. Over 200 have been installed so far in Africa with projects sponsored by major NGOs Oxfam (Kenya), UNICEF (Mozambique), ADRA (Niger), UNDP (Tanzania and Gambia), Global Water Resources (Tanzania), and many smaller NGOs. This new handpump is extreamly strong and reliable due to its maintenance free BPS piston without rubber seals (!) and can therefore be maintained at low-cost without the need for such critical spare parts.

The new BluePump is now considered by international experts as the most suitable and vertile community handpump for Africa for all depth and is rapidly becoming popular with the users due to a high water output with light pumping and reliability.

Childred pumping with the FairWater BluePump from a depth of 65m in Mozambique

Low-cost maintenance in stead of cheap solutions
Unlike popular believe of many NGOs, cheap solutions (like India handpumps or rope pumps) are often expensive and complicated to maintain for people who survive with 1 US$ a day. The key issue is therefore to help communities with handpumps that can be maintained at very low-cost and not to hand out cheap and fragile handpumps.

Reliability in stead of regular breakdowns
Unlike popular believe of many NGOs, communities do not like to repair their handpumps all the time. Repairs become costly and cumbersome, so fragile handpump (India pumps, rope pumps, etc.) are not a sustainable option for community water supply. Families need about 60 to 100 liter of water every day (3 to 5 buckets, see picture below) and therefore most community handpumps are used from early morning to late in the evening. Regular breakdowns are defenitly not an option.

Unique innovative Sponsor Concept
FairWater developed an unique and innovative sponsor concept to lower the cost of community water supply. To do so, the Cap of the BluePump can be used for advertising or for any message for the community, for instance on Health related subjects like Aids Prevention. A water point is always a focus point in a community and people will see the message every day.

This also offers excellent business opportunities for Mobile Phone companies and local Banks, who want to have their name well known in the rural areas and at the same time
want to improve their corporate image by providing water.

The message can be either screened or painted on the cap or put on the frontside of the pump on a plate that is secured on the cap with 4 rivets.

EEPC sponsored this BluePump for a school in Burkina Faso

The FairWater cost-effective approach
The most cost-effective way to help communities with sustainable water supply is to rehabilitate broken down handpumps and not to drill new expensive boreholes. Imagine, to make a new borehole cost between 15.000 to 20.000 US$, but with a rehabiliation, the old borehole can still be used and only the price of the pump and installation needs to be paid.

FairWater threfore has a focus on rehabilitation of abandoned handpumps with the BluePump, on the specific request of active communities that wants their handpump to work, and are ready to pay a liitle for a maintenance contract in case of Murphy problems. Depending on the number of users, the average maintenance cost of the BluePump is 5 - 10 US$ per family per year.

For more info, go to the menu on the left and click on "FairWater Projects" or go to www.fairwater.org

Open source for your WatSan News and ideas
On this website FairWater also offers easy access to WatSan discussion platforms and an open source to Read & Share WatSan News and discuss WatSan topics on the WatSan information pages. The most recent page is on top; if you click on "Name" in the top line, the order is re-organized and follows the alphabetical order to enable you to find entries by name.

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You can join the sustainable movement and become a FairWater Partner, contact us.

"It is unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little. 
When you pay too much; you lose a little money - that is all. 
When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything
because it was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do".
- - -
"The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot
 - it cannot be done -.  If you deal with the lowest bidder it is well to
add something for the risk you run, and if you accept that
you might as well pay some more for something better".

John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

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