The TBI Ileret borehole is located some 8 kilometers from the camp. The water needs to be piped to the field center so that construction work can begin at the beginning of next year. This is a brief report of the work in progress from the Ileret water pipeline.
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The work has begun on laying the pipeline to the borehole 8 km from Ileret.
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Digging a straight line through thick commiphora bush is no wasy task and several attempts to do this were made using a variety of techniques, including standing on hill tops flying bedsheets on metal poles, trying to follow GPS tracks drawn from google earth among others.
Success at last with using a dumpy level – a straight line on the ground was drawn and the ditch was begun.
Fraser smith overseeing the project on the ground writes;
"There are the usual surprises to deal with such as a cast iron hammer disintegrating when hammering mildsteel into sand, jembe handles snapping on the first blow, new sisal rope falling apart as it’s unwound, walkie talkie batteries not holding their charge, GPS’s not knowing where they are, multiple punctures in the trailer, new inner tubes bursting, wheel studs striping,
An aerial view of the pipe line – looking north towards the airfield and the Ileret Field station.
The pipe cut into 6 meter lengths. – was delivered from Nairobi (a four day journey by road) and so now has to be welded together using a special plastic pipe welding machine.
Below you can see the pipes being welded. Each join takes between 13 and 18 minutes. There are almost 2000 joins to weld.
The pipe is then rolled up and taken out to the trench to be laid into the ground there.
