Installation Report

Living Waters for the World – Installation Report
Chuina, Campeche, Mexico – March 2007
Presbytery of Western Kentucky Team


Day 1

Arrived at site in late afternoon (Monday, March 12, 2007)
All materials ordered through Carlos Castilla delivered on time
Local team on site and started dry assembly under supervision of Carlos MacGregor
Only items missing were Cistern Tank, Finished Water Tank, Salt, and Bleach
Local team had Softener apart, added gravel and resin to Softener, used cut-off, plastic 2-liter bottle to funnel resin into annular space around center tube in softener
Local team met all expectations with Covenant responsibilities – electrical, building, wastewater pit, etc. (only exception was the lack of tanks on site)

Takeaways – Carlos MacGregor was invaluable to installation team. He leads by example, knows what needs to be done, and will step back to let the local team do the work (Bubba pose trained.) Carlos also has a van full of miscellaneous spare parts from other installations that bailed us out on several occasions. I think this is the model for an in-country network coordinator.

Day 2

No tanks
Finished electricity to board – separated building lighting circuits from board circuits, used grounding rod installed by local electric supplier
Inlet raw water supplied via 1” rubber tubing from municipal supply, will need adapter to system
Started list of items to buy on road trip to Escarcega (larger town than Chompoton) 40 km away
No self tapping screws to connect filter cartridge heads to brackets
¾” to 1” adapters for pressure gauges missing
Short one ¾” brass faucet

Day 3

Still no tanks
Many missing fittings found today by Carlos in his miscellaneous parts stashes
Piped up board, Softener, drain lines, three bottling stations
Building layout good with separate bottling area (windows between rooms & outside of building), bottle washing to be outside with drains to wastewater pit (Overall building about 80 – 90% compliant)
Installed RO membrane today – Carlos as “T” tool for membrane container ends removal
Carlos Castilla’s son assembles RO and includes all PVC fittings so that unit can be connected to 1” fittings on board
Once RO membrane installed, trained locals on RO operation and maintenance, used flow diagram, data sheet, etc. (all in Spanish) Labeled all lines on the RO unit
Covered local operators on Clean-in-Place procedures and CIP cartridges (Carlos MacGregor was given two sets of 20” CIP cartridges and three sets of 10” cartridges – alkaline cartridge & acid cartridge with each pair) (20” cartridge will do RO units with two membranes – Carlos Castilla supplies RO units with 20” cartridges)
Scheduled Dedication Ceremony for Friday at 6 PM (Day 5)

Takeaways – Carlos MacGregor hands-on experience with RO unit was invaluable. He was able to reinforce the training with local operators and learned something himself. When installing the membrane, pay attention to the orientation of the connecting lines, so that when reinstalling the membrane the connecting lines will not be placed in a strain. Membrane orientation inside cartridge doesn’t matter.

Clean-in-Place is best done with CIP cartridges – less chemical exposure, cartridges will have the correct chemical concentrations for cleaning, single use cartridges easy to dispose of and will not be a hazard. 20” cartridges are capable of cleaning RO units with two membranes in series. 10” cartridges are capable of cleaning single membrane units. CIP cartridges go inside the blue cartridge casing for cleaning in place. We may want to make 10” cartridge casings available for all single membrane RO units.

Day 4

Piped up what was left to do except for Finished Water Tank
Part of team left to inspect and troubleshoot Miguel Colorado installation
Tanks delivered after installation team had quit for the day at 5:30 PM
Locals piped up Cistern tank to supply and the board, Cistern tank was a “loaner” because supplier had run out of tanks

Day 5

Second road trip to Escarcega for more PVC piping, 90’s, and other stuff, fittings available were schedule 40, PVC pipe was “thin-walled” – used for drain lines (covered local operators on need to paint thin-walled pipe installed outside)
Completed piping Finished Water Tank and Cistern Tank
Connected Softener and RO to board
Added 100 kg of salt to brine tank
Leak checked board components – tightened cartridges and threaded joints
Added bleach to water in finished tank for shocking system
Let bleach soak for 30 minutes, drained to wastewater pit at 4:30 PM
Flushed raw water through softener for 30 minutes until rinse water was clear going to drain, all filters & RO out of system (also served as chlorine system flush)
When clear, pumped some water through venturi and ozonator churn to tank - Ozonator working, good suction on venturi with RO not connected, fine bubbles observed in clear PVC pipe
Installed filters, primed system, connected RO, fixed two leaks in RO, pumped water through system to Finished Water tank
Pressure on G-1 = 31 psi, G-2 = 29 psi, Pump head = 38 psi
Tested TDS w/ portable meter
Raw water – 546 ppm
After Softener – 675 – 689 ppm
Finished water into tank – 27 ppm
TDS meter on RO unit – 10.4 ppm
Local bottled water from store – 35 ppm

Tested Hardness with Hach titration (1 drop = 17 ppm as CaCO3 hardness)
Raw water – 50 drops = 850 ppm
Finished water – 0 drops = < 17 ppm

Unable to baseline RO unit – ROG-1 = 40 psi, ROG-2 = 39 psi, membrane not saturated, hardly any waste flow from the unit.
Flow rates through rotameters difficult to read - air in system (estimated 1 gpm)
Drank first sample of water at 5:39 PM (Ceremony scheduled in 20 minutes)
Shut down system for ceremony at 6:00 PM
Water meter reading – 0001.637 m3
Pump head pressure – 21 psi
G-1 = 21 psi, G-2 = 19 psi
ROG-1 = 30 psi, ROG-2 = 25 psi
RO flows ~ 1.0 gpm

Takeaways – Water for the ceremony had not been ozonated with second pass, but was safe to drink. One more day was needed to fine tune the RO unit, emphasize the second pass through the ozonator loop, and train operators on routine operation. The Spanish data sheets, old version of manual in Spanish, and other training aids in Spanish will help, but training was barely satisfactory. This team will be leaning heavily on Carlos MacGregor for some time to assist. Team conducted training during downtime periods and when team visited Miguel Colorado. This training is valuable, but not the same as live training on your own operating system.

I recommend that the 2007 Sustainability/Maintenance Tour of RSY and George Plouffe visit this system this summer or have someone from the Miguel Colorado visit when they are in the Yucatan in July 2007.

Ralph Young
Approximate Water Building Layout w/ dimensions at Chuina