11 August 2009
Diary: Building in a Honduran Village
Water systems engineer Dan Saulnier mentors the Northeastern University chapter of Engineers Without Borders-USA. In December 2007, he led a team to finish building a water transmission system in Los Planes, Honduras, a project that was started during an earlier trip. Following are excerpts from the diary he kept during the trip.
December 12, 2007
So far, we’ve inspected the work done by villagers in our absence and inspected the work we did on the last trip to see how it held up. We also have taken measurements and moved some materials into position.
One of our tasks is to construct a suspension bridge to support a water pipe over a river gorge. The bridge consists of a steel cable anchored to reinforced concrete blocks we built on the last trip. The pipeline will hang from cables that have to be cut to precise lengths and affixed at specific points so they support a pipe hanging level that will not leak or break.
Today we replaced three lengths of exposed pipe with galvanized steel pipe along an exposed rocky slope. Hondurans did the digging. Then our team did the assembly. Spent the evening cutting cables for tomorrow’s bridge-building.
December 22, 2007
Big day today — Bridge Day. Construction was very smooth. At first I thought it was luck. Looking back, I think experience had a lot to do with it. We learned from the last project.
We returned to the bridge site to connect the steel piping on the bridges to the buried plastic pipeline. The pipes weren’t quite lined up, so we spent a lot of time digging to make the plastic pipes lower, to match up. That still wasn’t working.
Eventually, Mike and I sat down and thought out a solution. We added a third 90-degree elbow to the piping where it hit the edge of the gorge. This gave the pipe complete range of motion so we could connect it to the plastic pipe. The design change was immediately added to our standard bridge design. Perhaps stopping and thinking should be added to the list of standard daily procedures.
The Los Planians seem to be getting more comfortable around us. They were joking and laughing today in front of us, which they hadn’t done before. I hope that on the next trip we’ll have more time to spend with them socially.
We made the final connections on the new bridge today, left instructions for compacting the surrounding soils and for turning on the water tomorrow and clearing any filings and cutting oils remaining in the pipeline. Tomorrow morning we will take a trip to the nearby city of Yoro for supplies.
This project is rapidly drawing to a close. Tomorrow we’ll also do a quick pre-assessment of another village (El Chaguite). In the evening we’ll pack, inventory our remaining supplies and clean up the bunkhouse.
December 24, 2007
Christmas Eve! It’s sad to be heading back to the U.S., but it feels great to have finished this two-year project. We learned a lot technically and organizationally that we can apply to future projects. Now the question is not: “Will we come back?” It is: “When will we come back?”
The answer: “As soon as we can raise the money for air fare and construction materials.”
