Introduction

Introduction

The bucket pump is briefly described in the paper entitled “The
Bucket Pump - A simple Water Lifting Device For Low-Yielding
Boreholes” presented by the author at the 29th Convention of the
Indian Water Works Association. Since then, additional
information has been collected from numerous small villages where
the bucket pump had been installed in previous years; this helped
to re-assess its performance and acceptability by the users as
well as to evaluate its sustained water delivery capacity under
the different hydraulic conditions of the tested boreholes.
The bucket pump performance survey was carried out in the dry
months of March and April 1997, three years after the
installation of the first experimental model. Based on the
excellent results obtained, it is now possible to recommend the
country-wide use of this simple device not only for boreholes
drilled in volcanic rocks of Maharashtra but also in other
different rock types. Furthermore, the bucket pump can be
suitable also for other water structures such as hand-dug wells,
infiltration galleries and shallow wells drilled manually (as it
occurs in the Gangetic Plain of Uttar Pladesh) or with mechanical
drilling in soft rock formations.

The bucket pump was originally conceived with the purpose to be
installed mainly in low-yielding boreholes. As reported in the
paper presented to 29th Convention of the IWWA, “The author
installed the first bucket pump in Gorad-Arkasha Pada (Wada
Taluka), Thana District- Maharashtra, in 1994. The driller
considered this borehole "dry" as the only sign of water was the
damp aspect of the rock fragments from 8 to 30 ft. Between 30 and
75 ft only dust came out from the hole and therefore the drilling
site was moved 100 m closer to the bank of the Thansa River. Four
hours later, an inspection of the abandoned hole (casing had been
removed) revealed that the water level was at only 6 ft below
ground; its water quality was excellent with 200 mg/l of total
dissolved salts while water from the newly drilled borehole was
poor, with 1500 mg/l of total dissolved salts.

The presence of water in the "dry" hole was due to tiny water-
bearing fissures temporarily clogged by the high amount of dust
produced by the fast drilling. Once the drilling stopped, water
slowly started to seep into the hole washing out the dust and
cleaning the fissures”.

To collect water from the “dry” borehole, it was decided to
design a device appropriate to the low yield of the borehole (to
avoid a drastic drop in the water level) and operated on the
traditional way of withdrawing water from the large diameter
hand-dug wells. The bucket, in this case, had to be used to
collect water from a 6" drilled hole. This device was called the
"Bucket Pump"(see photo); users call it “Tino’s” pump.

The bucket pump was designed also with the prospect to be used in
abandoned Groundwater Survey and Development Agency (GSDA - an Indian governmnet organization) low-yielding boreholes where drilling had failed
to find sufficient water to justify the installation of Mark II
or Mark III pumps widely used in Maharashtra.

As most of the small rural villages fetch water from highly
polluted pits and open wells, wells equipped with the bucket pump
would have supplied water of better quality. Water use would have
been mainly for drinking and cooking. For this purpose, 10 liters
of water per day per person were considered sufficient; a
borehole yielding only 50 liters per hour could be used by at
least by 50 people. For the other water requirements (bathing,
washing, animal drinking) villagers would continue to use the
existing water sources.

With the increased knowledge about the performance of the bucket
pump in the past years, its use has been extended to a wider
range of boreholes having different hydraulic conditions. The
yield of the 27 boreholes equipped by bucket pumps ranges between
25 and 42000 liters per hour. In the 1997 program, several bucket
pumps were installed in high yield boreholes drilled for small
villages.