Greetings from Kilifi, Kenya.

Discussion in 'Introduce Yourself Here' started by areba, Apr 26, 2015.

  1. areba

    areba Junior Member

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    Hello everyone, Name's Collins setting up somewhere in coastal Kenya, some 75 odd Kilometers from civilization. With just a tract of land, a huge river and Passion.
     
  2. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    hello and welcome! :) what made you decide to go for the remote area where you are at?
     
  3. areba

    areba Junior Member

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    A 50 meter wide river, a flood plain where I could get circa 50 acre lake syphoned from the river, and lots of indigenous bush to start with. For the first years Ill just be watering the bush to see how that turns out... :)
     
  4. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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    Welcome Areba,
    So you're located on the northern coast of Kenya? Does your bush area include trees (excuse my ignorance)?
     
  5. areba

    areba Junior Member

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    yes 9anda1f.
    exact coordinates
    -3.119359, 39.657991

    I actually have tonnes of questions along the lines of: can I?
    just a few:
    a) syphon over a 1.8km length with a climb of almost 10 meters and a head difference of 4 meters.
    b) grow silage for biogas to power continous pumping.
    c) harness an extremely slow moving river .. waterwheel?
    d) or just get a wind turbine in the water (like partially submerged) and leverage the higher power density.
    and tons of stupid questions.

    as for natural vegetation, mostly its of the acacia variety, plus tons of other species.
    here you can see some of that, this was taken sometime back showing a much faster current..
    [video=youtube;yk-W4M2pAqs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk-W4M2pAqs[/video]
     
  6. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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    Wow, what an awesome area! With all that water and silty plain, where are all the people/farmers????

    Siphons are very interesting (I siphon out of storage tanks in lieu of punching holes in the tanks). Once a siphon has been established, it will work to a very small head differential ... but getting a siphon started with a small head is very hard (in my experience). Locally, very large siphons are used to move huge volumes of water over hilly terrain:
    [​IMG]
    so it can be done, but I think the key is to create a leak-free pipe. Any air leaks will tend to break the siphon.
    So at the size of a 1" hose (or thereabouts), I think you could do it. Why go much larger when the water flow will be 24x7?

    Or maybe you could put together something closer to your property using the river current to power something like this:
    [​IMG]
     
  7. areba

    areba Junior Member

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    Thanks! Achimedes pump looks awesome. My biggest challenge with abstracting water from the immediate bank is varying water levels. At this stage of the river, one day you would be pumping water from a point, the next it would be 2 meters submerged.

    As for the syphon, looking at burying HDPE pipe, (comes in 100m rolls) about 4 feet down. Then pumping using a diesel pump from upstream side to start the syphon. Praying it works. I need at least 4 inch to charge the lake I intend to put up.
     
  8. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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    With the river that close, where's your water table? If you dig a hole in the area of your future lake, will it accumulate water??
     
  9. areba

    areba Junior Member

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    havent tried, but from the colour of the vegetation it is likely that there is some water that may come up. I know people do that a few meters from the river, but there might be credence to that reasoning given the colour of some shrubs growing there.
    I am looking foward to actually "creating" a spring eventually, but planting and irrigating the upstream area into a dense vegetated area with planty of "storage". Then maybe my lake will be getting crystal clear water. not the current Algal green river water.

    Oh, I forgot to also mention that I am hoping to do some quick sand, charcoal filtration and chlorination of the river water for immediate farm use, and if it works , Since I can make charcoal, and have sand in the river, could try scaling up for livestock.

    As you can see, my mind is in overdrive.
     

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