Today Engineers without Borders-UCLA participated in kid's day for Engineer's Week at UCLA. We held a relay race that involved kids carrying buckets of water with 'contaminants' and then having them remove the 'contaminants' with nets and returning back with the buckets of 'purified' water. This was the second time we've hosted this race and it was again a success. Tomorrow there will be club tabling with trivia challenge questions for people passing by. There will also be club tabling on Thursday.

In regards to the Nicaragua Sanitation Project, we are in the midst of the funding process and have a couple small school grants that we've been applying for.

Our group has also begun the design phase of this project and we have made a couple of alternative suggestions to the preexisting latrines in the area.

First off, as of now we wish to have piped ventilation for the benefits of odor reduction, fly removal, and quickening of drying time of the compost (due to the sunlight from the top of the pipe as well as the air ventilation that will be imposed (via bernoulli effect for a velocity/pressure gradient). This ventilation system will be modified so as to have the top of the pvc pipe caped with a piece of glass that will let sunlight through but not rain. To accomodate for the flies and air circulation, we will also have (attached to the main structure) a downwards pointing elbow joint along with fly paper.

Another important feature that is different from most dry latrines in the area is a completely separate urinal for the men. This can easily be constructed out of a large plastic bottle cut in half and some rubber tubing. The reason behind having a separate urinal is ease for the men as well as preventing any moisture getting into the vault.

Regardless of whether or not a separate urinal is built for the men, we will still have to deal with the issue of urine for women, which is why the current design (as pictured below) should still be implemented. The only difference we wish to have would be to shape the toilet seat in a manner that renders it compatable for having a conventional plastic toilet seat placed on top of it. This reduces the need for cleaning and allows for the families to better see and clean this unit (without the use of water, which often times drips into the vault.

The latrine design will also incorporate the use of wood wedging between the zinc roofing and the wooden structure. This wedging would serve the purpose of reducing any sideways rain from entering the unit.


We are still looking into the possibility of a "solar latrine" design. Further research is much needed on the subject matter.

Alternative designs/considerations: here is a link to a fiberglass latrine design (cost est. $500):
http://www.edusc.org/Forms/HaitiDryLatrineProject.pdf


-Julia