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Greetings from the Trenches: Rose-Hulman Engineers without Borders blog from Dominican Republic
August 26, 2011
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Daily rains filled the trenches,
making it difficult to lay the pipe. Water was bailed by hand until
a pump was rented. Assisting with the water removal efforts were
Abby Grommet (left) and Angelica Patino.
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Four members of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology's
Engineers without Borders (EWB) group are currently continuing the
organization's work with the Batey Relief Alliance in the Dominican
Republic. They are renovating an old building on a sugar cane
plantation into a functional in-patient facility for the health
clinic Centro Medico, which serves approximately 10,000
people. This summer, the EWB team is focusing on expanding
the building's septic system, constructing a septic tank as well as
installing a pipe network. Work will continue through August
29.
The Rose-Hulman group includes EWB President Angelica Patino
and Abby Grommet, two holdovers from last year's trip, and
newcomers Ryan Oliver and Elaine Schaudt. There are two
mentors, Wil Painter of Indianapolis and John Gardner,
associate professor of Spanish (serving as cultural
mentor/translator).
EWB projects are multi-faceted and students bear significant
responsibility to successfully complete the projects.
Rose-Hulman students provided the following observations from
this summer's trip.
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Leaving El Toro before getting covered in mud and
sweat. The front row are (from left) Angelia Patino, Elaine
Schaudt and Abby Grommet. In the back row is Ryan
Oliver.
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Septic System Design
Working with Dr. John Aidoo of the Department of Civil
Engineering, as well as Mike Cline and Wil Painter from
EWB-Indianapolis, we designed a septic system for Centro
Medico. The system consists of two main parts: the piping
network and the septic tank. The piping network
essentially connects the septic tank to the in-patient facility
building.
During the week break between winter and spring quarter last
year, a team of students surveyed the property in order to
calculate the appropriate slopes for the piping network, which is
critical for the fluid in the pipe to be released into the septic
tank. The placement of the septic tank also depended on data from
the topographical survey.
The septic tank requires a minimum capacity of about 1,200
gallons. The final dimensions of the tank are 11 feet long by
8 feet high by 8 feet wide. This is based on the water usage
and waste disposal of the in-patient facility, along with future
plans of adding more bathrooms, a cafeteria, and, in the very
distant future, a surgery center. The top and bottom slabs
are made of pre-cast concrete, while the walls and interior baffle
are made of concrete blocks, mortar, cement filling, and #4
rebar.
Arriving on Site
Every single day, the Dominicans on our team get a two-hour head
start by arriving on-site at 6 a.m. Stepping out of Rudy's
truck, sounds of snappy Spanish shouts, laughs, shovels hitting
soil and swishes of running water mix with crying babies and
murmurs from patients waiting in line. After setting our bags
aside on the back porch, the head honcho of the whole show swings
by and loudly announces, "Angel Rojas está aquí." When handed
a cup of coffee from a lady in the clinic kitchen, he returns an
affectionate "Gracias, mi corazón."
Once the morning gets going, Angel has already smoked half a
pack of Marlboros and, while lighting yet another, orders Choco
(short for Chocolate) direct trucks full of building supplies
or to fetch tools from the tool room. Chicle (chewing gum),
El Tigre (tiger), Henry, Frances and Daniel huddle around the
manager Mejía and receive instructions on where and how deep to dig
next. Once Mejía finishes, the guys resume their
singing and pseudo mud fights between piling up mountains of
dirt.
Construction
Before any pipes were laid or slabs cast in place, both the
pipeline trenches and septic tank pit were dug out -- so simple to
say, not so simple to do. A critical part of the design was
getting the elevations as exact as possible. Otherwise,
gravity would work against us instead of for us, fluid would fail
to drain into the tank, and the toilets and water fixtures in the
building would be dysfunctional. (Note: Unlike in the
U.S., most piping networks here rely on gravity flow alone rather
than a pump.)
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Rose-Hulman's EWB team members help local residents in
backfilling a trench in this summer's project.
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While digging, unexpected challenges popped up -- buried
concrete slabs to crack through, ceramic tubing from previous
buildings to remove and inconveniently placed pipes from the
current system to dodge when we place our pipes. These
challenges turned out to be manageable and didn't alter the design
of the pipe network. At this point, every single pipe is
laid, and early tests show that drainage occurs properly.
With the inhuman strength of the Dominican work team, the septic
tank pit has finally been completed after digging nonstop for eight
days. However, we've stalled on laying the bottom slab due to
the same weather delays. The actual digging of the septic tank pit
has been quite the undertaking. The first layer of topsoil
was soft to break through, but the clay layers seemed to increase
in density the deeper we dug. Daily afternoon rains also
slowed us down and forced us to shift around mud instead of dry
ground. Groundwater seeped through the pit walls and combined
with the rain. This meant that each day, we had to both bail
and pump the water out of our "swimming pool" before digging could
resume. Such a process took at least four to five hours.
What's for lunch?
After sweating in the hot Dominican morning sun from hours of
hard labor, we are eager for our much wanted lunch break.
About midday, a lady from down the road arrives at the work site
with a home-cooked lunch tightly packed in Styrofoam containers for
RD$125 (a little over U.S. $3). We kick off our wet, muddy
boots and rest our blistered and calloused hands while enjoying the
authentic tastes of Caribbean cuisine.
As we carefully unwrap the bundle, making sure not to spill a
morsel of the much coveted midday sustenance, the aroma of freshly
cooked meat in a flavored sauce of herbs and exotic spices fills
the air. A typical lunch also contains a colorful array of
vegetables picked from one of the many lush fields that encompass
the tropical island, as well as large mound of white rice smothered
with a soup of spicy bean blend. This national dish is
commonly referred to as the Dominican flag as the rice and beans
depict the white and red colors of the flag, and the blue is . . .
well . . . a figment of your imagination.
We carry over our plates to sit under the canopy of palm trees
what surround the medical clinic. These trees provide our
afternoon shade. The spectrum of colorful hues of flowering
shrubs paints the epitome of this tropical paradise, creating the
perfect ambiance for our afternoon rest. After scarfing down
the 'comida' in a matter of minutes, our bellies are once again
happy, and we shortly return to work only after allowing a crowd of
hovering stray dogs to lick the remaining crumbs off our
plates.
¿Por qué, Irene, por qué?
Checking the weather before we arrived, the forecast predicted
rain every day. Although disheartened, this was the only time
of year we could all come down for the standard two-week
implementation schedule. The first day, it was sunny in the
morning and cloudy in the afternoons; it rained extremely
consistently from day to day, usually from 3pm to 5 pm, with
sprinkling throughout the day. Saturday, five days after
starting to work, we came to the clinic, and the Dominican civil
engineer, Angel Rojas, warned us of a tropical depression "muy
enorme" coming our way. On Monday, what he predicted, except
at a harsher level - a level one hurricane, was becoming
reality.
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Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology student Elaine Schaudt
prepares the surveying equipment in order to figure out whether the
elevations of the junction box placements agree with the calculated
pipe slope.
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When the grocery store opened, we rushed to stock up on jugs of
water and crackers in case stores were closed for a few days and
supply lines were disrupted. Strangely, no Dominicans seemed
to "franicking" (frantically panicking). Apparently there was
a previous scare two weeks ago -- Hurricane Emily -- and when it
approached the island, everyone was released from work early to
take shelter from the storm. Similarly, there were only
strong winds and a torrential downpour, but nothing amounting to
hurricane level.
Even so, there were many less people on the street, and the town
had a darker, almost ghost-town-like feel. Usually, on the
way to the friendly neighborhood fruit vendor, we pass by a corner
where older men, perhaps policemen, sit around on their
motorcycles, chatting it up. Just another street down,
younger boys, mounted on bicycles, imitate the men. Many
people are dressed up nicely, heading to work either on foot, by
motorbike, or by Guagua (cheap public bus/van transport).
Students trudge by with their parents, while other kids make
scrubbing motions with their hands, trying to find people willing
to have their shoes shined. People relax in the main square,
a park with a central pavilion, eating breakfast from the many
different vendors surrounding. All of this was missing on the
day of the hurricane. The church, usually with daily mas and
bells ringing, remained undisturbed. A few people were busily
walking about, trying to beat out the storm while racing towards
their home, and very few stores were open. The grocery was
one of them, along with our daily fruit vendor cart. As the
bright lightning stripes came closer, and the loud boom of thunder
reverberated more deeply within our ears, we quickened our
pace. Some of those around us seemed unworried, as they are
used to these kinds of storms. No one was lining up at the
store like what happens in Miami during similar
circumstances. We seemed the most worried.
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Sporting an EWB t-shirt, Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology student Abby Grommet discusses with EWB chapter members
Elaine Schaudt and Ryan Oliver about the required length of pipe
for a trench.
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That day we left the clinic early and spent the afternoon in our
hotel, waiting for any huge gust of wind to fulfill our excitement
and fears. We watched the news, although in Spanish, without
regress, tracking the path of the hurricane as it became larger and
larger. Alas, after waiting for hours, our spirits were
dashed and we all fell asleep early, like old women with nothing to
do but knit and complete crossword puzzles, except without the
materials to do even this. The rain had just come in spurts,
and while it did soak some people riding home late, it was similar
to the other rains we had seen earlier in the week.
Now our project is postponed due to thunderstorms, rain and
standing water. In Puerto Rico, the communication network is
down and hundreds of thousands of people are without
electricity. In northern Dominican Republic, where the
hurricane had more directly passed over than where we were, many
bridges were destroyed, trees were downed, and flooding was
occurring. We were lucky, in the sense of feeling only the
outside edge of the storm with only low wind speeds and some heavy
rains. While some of us had been interested in experiencing a
hurricane for the first time, at least our work site would suffer
minimal damage, causing us only a few setbacks. We still
arrive at the worksite every day, hoping the rain will die down
long enough for things to dry and for us to start laying more
concrete. As we write this, we are under a small pavilion,
overlooking our project, hoping for the weather to comply and for
our excavations to remain relatively unharmed. As the
hurricane moves so slowly over the ocean, at around 10 km/hour, the
water that picks up is just dumped on us as the storm system
grows. The upper layer of dirt is completely saturated, with
the impermeable clay beneath stopping more water from seeping
in. The water just flows out into the surrounding farms,
drowning crops (even rice), and hurting animals. We can only
hope that this ends soon so that we can continue with our goal of
completing the septic tank before our final departure Monday
afternoon.