Warka Inspired Water Towers
We were inspired to create our project based off of the Warka water towers that are being built in Ethiopia. Basically, we are creating a structure that takes the morning and evening condensation and traps it in a mesh to create fresh water. There are no current blueprints for a design, so, as a group, we will be testing three different designs of our own to see which one yields the most water. The documentation of this project will be included below.
Created by: Ethan Stern-Ellis, Amaya Caudle, Connor Ffrench
Created by: Ethan Stern-Ellis, Amaya Caudle, Connor Ffrench
Oct. 31st, 2015: 11 AM-4 PM
Today we bought our nylon mesh that would be used to catch the water in the morning and evening.
This helped us dream up our designs and plan out what we needed to buy next. We decided on using PVC pipe to create the skeleton of our structure. The goal is to create structures that are all geometrically different to see how each of them affects the capture of water.
Nov. 7th, 2015: 12 PM-5:30 PM
Today we went and bought our PVC pipe. We bought cheap, $2.86 3/4 in. by 10 ft. pipe. We then decided that the height of our structures would all be five foot pipe so we had to cut each in half.
Nov. 25, 2015: 2:30 PM-7:30 PM
Today we finalized our designs. With our Materials in front of us, it was easier to understand what would be feasible for our structures. We decided on two triangular structures and one square structure. We had two goals with these structures that involved; the design of the mesh, and the design of the structure itself. We wanted to see which structure/mesh shape yielded the most water out of the ones we picked. The blueprints look like this:
Dec. 6, 2015: 12:30 PM-11:30 PM
Today, we finished building and started testing our designs.
Data
Dec 6. 2015, Night 1, Test 1:
The Water Towers were put outside at 11:18 pm at a temperature of 63 degrees.
Dec 7. 2015, Day 1, Test 1:
I checked the towers for water at 7:22 am at a temperature of 52 degrees.
Results: 0 oz. of water. I believe that this was the case because it is extremely dry in San Diego right now. I could see this in the morning when there was not any moisture on the outsides of my windows or on any of our cars. There also wasn't enough change in temperature, similar to what happened to another person who tried to test a water tower in the video below:
The Water Towers were put outside at 11:18 pm at a temperature of 63 degrees.
Dec 7. 2015, Day 1, Test 1:
I checked the towers for water at 7:22 am at a temperature of 52 degrees.
Results: 0 oz. of water. I believe that this was the case because it is extremely dry in San Diego right now. I could see this in the morning when there was not any moisture on the outsides of my windows or on any of our cars. There also wasn't enough change in temperature, similar to what happened to another person who tried to test a water tower in the video below:
Dec 7. 2015, Day 1, Test 2:
The towers were kept outside in the hope that they would be able to collect water throughout the day. I wanted to take a closer look at the temperature throughout the day to see the change in it and see when it changed the most and by how much. These were my notes from throughout the day:
Temp:
8:30 am, 59 degrees
9:30 am, 64 degrees
10:30 am, 70 degrees
11:30 am, 72 degrees
12:30 pm, 72 degrees
1:30 pm, 72 degrees
2:30 pm, 72 degrees
3:30 pm, 75 degrees
4:30 pm, 70 degrees
5:30 pm, 66 degrees
7:20 pm, 64 degrees
Tower Check: 7:47 pm, 64 degrees, no moisture, too dry
Dec 7. 2015, Night 2, Test 2:
I checked the towers at 7:47 pm, again to find 0 oz. of water. This was very frustrating for me, but not unexpected. San Diego does not have enough change in temperature throughout the day in order for our towers to collect moisture. There is also very little humidity which means less moisture in the air.
Results: These towers are not the best for a place like San Diego. The design and build of the towers is sound, but the environment around is not.
I then compared the humidity levels between San Diego, CA and Austin, Texas using weather.com:
The towers were kept outside in the hope that they would be able to collect water throughout the day. I wanted to take a closer look at the temperature throughout the day to see the change in it and see when it changed the most and by how much. These were my notes from throughout the day:
Temp:
8:30 am, 59 degrees
9:30 am, 64 degrees
10:30 am, 70 degrees
11:30 am, 72 degrees
12:30 pm, 72 degrees
1:30 pm, 72 degrees
2:30 pm, 72 degrees
3:30 pm, 75 degrees
4:30 pm, 70 degrees
5:30 pm, 66 degrees
7:20 pm, 64 degrees
Tower Check: 7:47 pm, 64 degrees, no moisture, too dry
Dec 7. 2015, Night 2, Test 2:
I checked the towers at 7:47 pm, again to find 0 oz. of water. This was very frustrating for me, but not unexpected. San Diego does not have enough change in temperature throughout the day in order for our towers to collect moisture. There is also very little humidity which means less moisture in the air.
Results: These towers are not the best for a place like San Diego. The design and build of the towers is sound, but the environment around is not.
I then compared the humidity levels between San Diego, CA and Austin, Texas using weather.com:
San Diego does not change humidity nearly as drastically as a place like Austin. This leads me to believe that the towers would have a much better chance of working in a place like Austin versus a dry, "even keel", place like San Diego. The relative humidity in San Diego is much different than the relative humidity in Austin. San Diego does not even get close to having full humidity, which helps me understand why these towers aren't collecting any water.
Source: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-humidity
Source: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-humidity
Conclusion
Our initial goal was to see which of these designs would yield the most water. Because of our environment, none of our structures yielded any water. However, they could hold water. It was easy enough to test their ability to hold water by putting water from a sink directly onto the mesh. These towers would have had a better chance of working during the warmer times of the year, or more specifically, during the heat waves we had during this past fall when it was much more humid.