☆ Summer 2019 field study to test out the power of Better Bearings.

While many efforts have been and continue to be made to provide clean water across the globe, many sources of surface water are contaminated with animal and human waste as well as pesticides and chemicals.

Approximately 184 million people living in Africa depend on hand pumps for their daily water supply (MacArthur, 2015) with an estimated 50,000 new hand pumps shipped to Africa each year (Sansom and Koestler, 2009).

Despite efforts to improve rural water service delivery, hand pumps serving rural communities often fall into disrepair. According to data compiled by Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) ((RWSN), 2009) from 20 African nations covering 345,071 wells in 2009, 36% of hand pumps are non-operational. This results in a loss of capital investment in infrastructure and a negative impact on rural communities.

When a community hand pump breaks down, families are forced to find alternative water sources. Alternative sources may include carrying water a greater distance from a hand pump in a neighboring community, or less protected sources such as hand dug scoops or surface water.

Handle bearings in the commonly deployed India Mark II hand pump have been found to frequently fail, often in less than one year. Hand pumps in remote locations have often been abandoned for months or possibly more than a year due to the difficulty in obtaining repair services.

The Better Bearings product was developed by Tony Beers in consultation with World Vision during his tenure at The Collaboratory at Messiah College. Tony’s work on the product indicated that Better Bearings could extend the mean time between failures (MTBF) of bearings on India Mark II hand pumps from 9 months to 3 years or more.

A side-by-side live study of factory shipped bearings vs. Better Bearings will begin in the summer of 2019 in an effort to quantify the improvement offered by Better Bearings. This study will take place in Burkina Faso and in Zambia, Africa.

Would you like to learn more? Or to place an order? Use the contact form to contact one of our Better Bearings team members.

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