How Much Water Is Used From Water Wells in Uganda?

Hope 2 One Life, with assistance of HydroSolutions, will soon install its 9th drinking water well in Uganda, thanks to our sponsors and donors. Most of the wells are furnished with a simple but reliable hand pump. During our trips to Uganda we see the heavy use some of these wells receive, yet since there are no measurement meters, we don’t have information on just how much water is withdrawn on a daily basis, or how that might change over the year. This type of information is not available.

Now, thanks to the generous donation of electronic transducers from two manufacturers, we have installed these devices in three of our wells during our November 2015 mission trip. A fourth transducer will be installed in the solar-powered well on the FEM Farm by a well service company the next time they are in that region.

The company SOLINST of Georgetown, Ontario, Canada, donated two of their Levelogger transducers to be used for collecting water level and water temperature data from our water wells in Uganda. These are small, sealed programmable electronic instruments which are deployed deep in a well and record the pressure of the overlying water column and its temperature. We decided to install the SOLINST transducers in two wells designed to give us critical data about water use by humans and livestock in Uganda.

The first SOLINST transducer was installed in the East Well on the FEM Farm in central Uganda, which is heavily used by residents of the Farm and surrounding villages. The second was installed in a well near the town of Opit in northern Uganda where we are in partnership with an order of Ugandan nuns to raise goats as an income-generating project to support our charitable causes there. See below the photo of this installation.

These transducers were programmed to record a water level and temperature every 15 minutes. This will allow us to see how long each well is used each day, year-round. By calibrating the outflow from each well when pumped, I’m hoping that we can convert the transducer data into an estimate of the volume of water pumped. This will provide essential data allowing us to better plan the number and location of water wells in the future, ensuring our donors that our efforts are matching the needs of the Ugandan people with whom we partner. 

–Tom Osborne, Principal Hydrologist

HydroSolutions thanks Solinst for this valuable donation.