Smooth as a baby's bottom. With lines on it.

Day Three, Tuesday 20th November 2012

A quick call in to the Practical Action office (the partner NGO for this project) to discuss a few issues.  As well as the 'easy' tasks like ordering the filter materials, we have a few more troubling things to sort out, namely organising the collection and delivery of sludge to site ready for testing next week.  The vacutug owned by the municipality is apparently not used, and the tractor that pulls it needs repairs...  After a lot of animated discussions in Bengali (which I hear as yaabababaayayayanalo aslaenallas sludge ascnaoi wssnsnsahaha vacutug yanbaga gfkaakaksksk ok?) it seems we shall have our sludge.  Hurrah.  

Before we head back to Dhaka, we stop in once more at the site:

An array of freshly smoothed drying beds

Looking good!  Except the flat base beds are about 20cm too deep... After some deliberation, we decide to raise the bases by two bricks.  This will bring the sludge closer to the radiative heat of the metal roof, and reduce the bending required to dig the dried sludge out.

We asked them to rule lines on the sides when the plaster was still wet, every 10cm, so it should make building the filters easier. These all seem to be nice and neat:

Plastered filter-base

Next steps:

• drill holes in pipe - we discussed these, 10mm diameter, distributed along the length of the pipe, in two rows along the edge of the concrete, and two higher up.
• dig the soakaway for the filter beds - we will have one, with the three pipes coming into it
• build the filters - tip in the material, base layer to 20cm line, mid layer another 10cm, sand a final 10cm.
• build the roofs

Then construction will be complete, and the sludge can be poured, and testing can begin!  

I hadn't quite realised how far along this would be, how long we would be on site for, and had forgotten how long it takes to get from site to Dhaka, so had a bit of a running-out-of-clothes issue, and returned to Dhaka and my other suitcase.  Sad to be missing the final day or so of construction, but the very capable Suman is on the end of a phone, and I think he will be ok.  We will return on Sunday to have a final check before the sludge is delivered.  Can't wait to get this show testing started!