September 23, 2005
Students have researched different water pump systems. Given the topographical and environmental conditions in Lalander, the hydraulic ram pump is the best choice.

September 27, 2005
Budd Mackenzie, founder of Trust in Education (TIE), and Devon Patillo and Elizabeth Gooding (members of TIE), updated the public on the current progress of development in Lalander.

September 28, 2005
Devon Patillo and Elizabeth Gooding come to Solano Community College to talk with our students one-on-one.

October 6-9, 2005
Our students attended the HENAAC (Hispanic Engineer National Achievements Award Conference) and networked with several industry members. They supplied the industry members with project briefs and a budgeting schedule. Students made an attempt to contact them.

November 2, 2005
The students chose the hydraulic ram pump design and planned to build three models to physically understand how the pump works. Richard Crapuchettes offered to help them with this effort. With the help of Karen Cook, they used AutoCAD to create the blueprint for the pump.

Mark Feighner and the students located a good topographical map of Lalander using the Google Earth program. Students were assigned the task of scoping out possible test sites around Solano County that closely resemble the topography of the pump site in Lalander.

November 3, 2005
The Fairfield newspaper Daily Republic published an article about the LHP entitled “Club Develops Pump to bring Water to the Needy.”

November 4, 2005
A project meeting was held at Solano Community College. Students updated the audience on the progress of the project, presented the models and pump design, and discussed the future of the project. Audience members were invited and encouraged to ask questions of the students.

November 10, 2005
The Vacaville newspaper, The Reporter, published an article about the LHP entitled “Pumped Up: Students use Engineering Know-How to Help Afghan Village.”

November 22, 2005
Students attended a talk at Bechtel Corporation in San Francisco. Barney Popkin, resources management consultant at USAID, spoke about the unintended consequences in international development. He emphasized the absolute necessity of thoroughly completing international projects. We learned that in order to ensure the ultimate efficacy of a project, one must consider the long-term consequences of the project.

December 5, 2005
Our group met with Mr. Poya from Caltrans. He asked students to make a wish list of the information he could help us acquire during his upcoming meeting with engineers in Kabul. Included in this list were topographic maps and pictures of the area for our intended test site.

January 10, 2006
With the help of Bonnie Chiu, we arranged a meeting with several engineers at Jones & Stokes in Sacramento. Phil Ryan from CH2M HILL was also present. Our students presented a fifteen minute progress report of our research. Phil Ryan suggested that we feed the pump from a reservoir that is either creek-side or in the creek. He also suggested that all parts, especially the check valves, should be store bought.

January 22-28, 2006
We finalized the designs. We used the original AutoCAD design created by Sterling de Mille to construct the pump. This design incorporated many of the positive features we found while researching.

January 29, 2006
Today was our first visit to Marc Pandone and Wendy Wallin’s property. Marc and Wendy walked us about their property to determine the ideal location for a test site. We chose a small, seasonal creek to simulate a natural, low-flow situation. We tested the Ύ” pump in the creek with success. It effectively lifted the water up four feet using about a two-foot fall. We did not take precise measurements for the length of the drive pipe and vertical fall due to time constraints. We tested the 3” pump, but it did not work.

February 5, 2006
Teri Lee from MESA Connect, a quarterly MESA publication, came to the test site to cover our story. We tested the 3” pump with forty feet of aluminum drive pipe. Although it did exhibit pumping action, the water would not travel up the delivery pipe. Upon closer inspection, we determined that the check valve in the air chamber had failed. We agreed to repair and test the 3” again and build a 2” model in the upcoming week.

February 12, 2006
We built the 2” model with the help of Luis Godoy. We added a snifter hole to replenish the air in the air chamber.

February 19, 2006
With the lack of rain, the creek had minimal flow today. We wanted to determine the upper limit of the flow rate using a flow meter. Using a nearby stream with a much greater flow rate, we determined an upper limit for the creek at 0.42 ft3 / sec. This translates to a little more than 3 gps.

At the site, we tested the 2” pump with 100’ of 3” diameter flexible drainage tubing. We had a rubber reducer connecting the tubing to the 2” drive pipe. The pump would not function correctly with this setup. We surmised that the drive chamber was emptying too quickly. We brought the pump to the nearby stream with 10 feet of flexible tubing. The 2” pump showed minimal evidence of proper functioning with an artificial fall, but did not work with just the natural flow.

February 20, 2006
Luis Godoy, Andrea Haman, and Robert Payawal went to a nearby farm to test the 2” pump under controlled conditions. We used about 15 feet of pipe and simulated a 3-foot fall with a step ladder. The pump performed well with the simulated flow and lifted the water to a height of about 6 feet. We roughly estimated the input flow at about 10 gpm and the output flow at about 1 gpm. This observation agrees with the estimated 10% efficiency of the pump.

February 26, 2006
Sunny weather and little rain depleted the water supply in the creek to a trickle. We decided to forgo trips to the test site in order to work on our future presentations.

March 3, 2006
We held a progress report with six of our students. Budd came to the presentation to relay current progress that TIE has made.

March 5, 2006
As with February 26th, sunny weather created poor pump test conditions.

March 12, 2006
With the rain, we again had water in the creek. We took a small group to the pump site to retest the 3” pump in the seasonal creek. We attached the pump to the 40 feet of aluminum piping. With a fall of approximately 6 feet, we were able to lift the water approximately 13 feet. The pump pulsed 120 times per second. Due to time constraints, we were unable to test the rate of outflow. We also tested the 2” pump with the same apparatus, but realized that the 3” piping provided too much pressure. Needing more sections of 2” piping, we delayed further testing of the 2” pump.

We also tested a 1” model in the creek which easily ran autonomously with about 12 feet of drive pipe. Using about a 2-foot fall, it lifted the water about 4 feet. Left alone, the 1” pump ran continuously for over 2 hours. We left the 1” pump at the site to test its durability.

March 16, 2006
Our group presented the current progress of our research for the FlexCal required day. We performed in front of most of the college faculty. With the theme of Technology in Teaching, the LHP was a good example of integrating current technologies such as AutoCAD, Google, Google Earth, and Powerpoint in research projects. We reported our successes with getting the 1” and 3” pumps to work in the creek.

March 19, 2006
We were able to acquire the necessary parts to simulate a reservoir at the delivery for the 2” pump. The 2” pump worked in the creek. It ran autonomously for about an hour. We used a garden hose as our delivery pipe. The outflow was estimated at ½ gpm. The reservoir was situated about 12 feet up an incline, and the vertical fall was 6 feet. We tried to run the 1” pump from the reservoir, but found that it was drawing more water than was being supplied by the 2” pump. We thought about ways to increase the 2” pump outflow. Suggestions were to move the reservoir lower, change the angle of the delivery pipe, and change the amount of water with which the pump is primed.