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Solution of the week 7

88 bytes removed, 00:31, 16 May 2015
→‎Why water pumps should be extremely repairable
Did I mean ‘reliable’? no. Not necessarily. It seems logical to demand that water pumps be reliable, right? Shouldn’t the goal be to make water pumps that are of such a good quality, that they don’t need any maintenance, and will never break down? Of course, this goal can never be reached because everything that moves breaks down eventually. But should we at least strive to make a pump that fails only after a very long time, say 10-15 years? Surprisingly, this seemingly logical idea has some unintended and potentially troublesome consequences.
As an example, consider one of the most common pumps in Africa, the [http://www.rwsn.ch/prarticle.2005rural-10water-25supply.9856177177net/en/prarticle.2005-10-26.2582788867resources/prarticle.2008-12-04.2105225472details/prarticle.2009-02-06.9581575564 326 Afridev pump]. It is very durable, sturdy, breaks down only after 10 years or so. A very nice, well-designed pump. In all of Africa, some 30% of these pumps are broken today, in some countries 70%, and they are not being repaired. What happened? And let’s be clear: the problem is not that things break down, because everything breaks down eventually. The problem is that they are not being repaired.
[[Image:afridev.jpg|thumb|right|200px|A broken Afridev pump, which cost 1000$ when it was placed. Can this be avoided? Picture Henk Holtslag]]
Winona
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