I can see clearly now...jokes...pretty foggy here!

Miércoles 18 Julio

Sunny Lima...

With all the fog we've been having lately the hills have started to turn green with moss and little plants! According to Raul, usually in winter the slopes are so wet and covered in plants that it's quite dangerous to try and climb up!

Box yield (just over a litre)

Yesterday I was joined by Luis and Raul for what I thought was going to be the last day of construction. We measured the yield from the previous 2 days (2.1L in the SFC and 1.4 L in the Box collector- lower than expected but pretty good nonetheless) and Luis took samples of each to be analysed, which is pretty exciting! Luis was impressed with the quality of the water we were collecting which was much less turbid and gross than what theirs collected (mostly due to how clean our meshes were), but there was still quite a few particulates that would have to be sedimented out.

Claribel's daughter and I

After taking heaps of photos we set about connecting the hoses and buckets to our collection troughs.With some super strong PVC cement we were able to do this fairly quickly and easily, and  connected the lot to buckets on the ground. We had to cut the hose to size to allow the water to reach the bucket easily without getting caught in extra loops of hosing.

The SFC with about 2 L of water collected

The last thing to do was add the 'Faldas de Luis' (Luis' skirts)- the plastic sheeting that covers the base of the support posts. They're designed to protect the posts from moisture on the windward side, while being open on the leeward side to let any moisture escape/ evaporate. Pretty simple, but without them the wood is prone to rotting and breaking under wind loads- ruining the whole structure. (This is what happened to one of PEBAL's fog collectors).

Luis, Raul and I bumped into Freddy on our way up the steps!

We packed up the site and brought down all the spare materials, tools and equipment and divided them up into things we could leave to the community - a bucket and half a bag of cement, things we needed for the upkeep of the project (extra mesh, hosing etc) and things we would leave with SEM like tools and silicone.

Lidia's daughter outside their house

Luis and Raul joining all the piping connections

Everything's connected!

Luis preparing the plastic skirt

Luis and Raul with the completed plastic protection skirts

So, the next big step is to connect hoses from our collectors down to the little shack (a couple of hundred metres away) that contains PEBAL's water tanks. This way, once we go home, Claribel (a lady who lives really close to the project) can measure our yields and use the water, and we can keep track of how the collectors are performing over the months. This involves measuring the distance, marking out a track (with flour), digging a trench and laying the pipe. The plan is to get this done next Monday, so hopefullly that goes well!