January 19, 2010 - Masaka/Ddegeya

This morning, we set up two solar cookers, one with the same inner-outer box configuration as yesterday except that the inner box was not insulated with a plastic wrap and contained a 5 L black-painted jerry can instead of a 1.5 L black-painted Rwenzori plastic bottle. The other one was with the same single box configuration as yesterday except that the box contained a 1.5 L b black-painted Rwenzori plastic bottle instead of the 5 L black-painted jerry can. The intention is to stress-test the stronger solar cooker (the double layered one) to see if it can pasteurise 5 L of water, even with the inner box non-insulated. We also want to test if the weaker solar cooker (the single box configuration) may be able to handle smaller volume of water. The test was null in both case: by 1:45 p.m. when things turned cloudy, the WAPIs in both containers failed to melt.

Today was the first day that the Albany medical team is operating in the clinic, and in the morning the line of patients was so long that it wrapped around the clinic.

We first did some Petrifilm tests of the solar cooker that failed to melt WAPI (no counts), samples from the household drinking/rain water, and from all active water sources in Ddegeya. At about 9:00 a.m., we set out for Masaka to get the following items:
- 3 jugs of water for the clinic
- 100 plastic cups for the clinic
- putty glue, silicon glue, teflon tape, rubber o-rings, and 1 m of rope (as much stuff as we need to prevent the water from leaking in the bucket)
- metal wire (for holding up the solar cooker reflector)
- transluscent sheets and framed glass for the solar cooker insulating cover
- one kettle and pot (anything that doesn't melt easily on a solar cooker)

We were back to the clinic with our stuff by 1:00 p.m. Then we started putting together the sand filter bucket with rubber o-rings (with plastic bag between the threads), with the help of Richard. After two leaky attempts, we decided to turn up the notch and use Teflon tape between the threads. This time the pipe seems to be holding up---at least 4 hours after, the nearly full bucket is still not showing any leaks. We added some silicon glue to the joints and left the setup until tomorrow.

Mike brought the BH part to a shop in Ddegeya Trading Centre to see if it is possible to loose some parts. This was unsuccessful, and since he was unsuccessful at getting the right BH pipes in Masaka today, he is thinking of making a trip to Kampala. We e-mailed Michael Thornton and he gave us some useful hints about where to look in Kampala. The plan might be to pull up another BH (BH5) to see if this is fixable, and if so, have Mike make another trip to Kampala before this week ends.

At this time, there was an extremely heavy downpour. Kevin was washing some sand at BH4 and got caught. He then proceeded to use rainwater in the clinic to wash some more. Mike's situation was even more gruesome as he was walking back from the Trading Centre.

After the rain stopped, there was barely any traffic at BH4, so Kevin went to wash three more batches of sand (which took about 2 hours). Mike and Dave put together an inner box consisting entirely of a shiny metal sheet that they found in Masaka on the trip before today. Then this metal box was painted black on the outside.

Though we bought some framed glass intending to use as the insulating covering of specific boxes, we found that Kevin's tape measure didn't give inches, but a wierd unit of 3.3 cm. This messed up all the dimensions, and all the framed glass turned out to be too small. We started making larger wooden frames for the glass, but did not finish as we wanted to test the performance of the transluscent sheet first.