Ingenuity Brings Clean Water to Nicaragua

Innovative new Biosands Filter brings clean water to hundreds in Nicaragua

Hundreds of people in Nicaragua are drinking cleaner water thanks to Dennis St. John.

The Green Valley resident isn't the first or only person trying to bring fresh water to the third-world country, but he has designed a lightweight, cheap bio-sand water filter that requires little maintenance, and has traveled to Nicaragua six times since 2011 to help build and install them.

The concept of a bio-sand filter is simple. A hollow tube is filled with a couple layers of gravel at the bottom and sand - preferably crushed rock or volcanic sand - on top of that. Water is poured into a diffuser at the top, which then filters through the sand. The top layers of sand hosts microorganisms that consume pathogens in the water while the lower levels absorb them. Some pathogens simply die because they don't have enough heat, food or air inside the filter.

The water then goes through the gravel layers, which keeps the sand out. Gravity pushes the clean water through a pipe at the bottom and out a spout.

A better idea

When St. John began volunteering on water projects in 2009, the common bio-sand filter had a 330-pound concrete body that took three days to make using a steel mold. Piqued by the drawbacks of the design, the former architectural manager set out to make improvements.

He started doing research and consulting with Canada-based Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology on how to make the filters simpler and easier to install, which would make efforts to provide them - primarily led and funded by volunteers and non-profits - more sustainable.

"If we can make them simple, we can keep them going," he said.

It was during this research that he struck upon an idea: Instead of concrete, make the body out of 10-inch PVC pipe. It would filter the same volume of water, weighs just 22 pounds, and would be easier - and cheaper - to mass produce. Another plus there is that there is no shortage of pipe in most parts of the world, St. John said.

After two years of tinkering, St. John made his first trip to Nicaragua in 2011, where he and others built and installed a dozen as a test program in San Antonio de Baston. They proved effective in filtering out E. coli and dissolved limestone from contaminated well water.

In 2012 and 2013, three other non-profits ran with the design and installed 392 additional filters. Another 60 were installed in 2014, with 85 built this year and scheduled to be installed in homes by this summer. Counting the test 12, that's 549 homes with access to cleaner water in the past five years.

St. John has made the trip down to the Central American country six times with various volunteer groups and non-profits. As a testament to the success of his design, he and other volunteers were able to produce those 85 units in five days during the last visit in January.

Source: Green Valley News

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Taxonomy

• Non Profit
• Purification
• Filtration