This was a University team project lead by me as a submission for the Engineers Without Borders Challenge Project in 2015. The Write up below contains verbatim extracts from the project final report.

Spiral Water Pump + Water Wheel = Spiral Pump Water Wheel

          Bambui, being a slowly emerging town in Cameroon is often faced with the absence of electricity. As a result, the community of Bambui is faced with the hardship of limited water supply due to the limitation of non-electrical mechanised water pumping systems; regardless of its abundance of water streams and natural water sources.
This EWB challenge requires a system to be designed that could harness water from streams at lower altitudes. Although this problem may be addressed simply by using a motorised water pump and using solar energy to power the water pump, this solution would be on a higher level of complexity and would require more resources and materials and as a result, the cost of the project would skyrocket.  Our team set out to find different water pumping systems that would fulfill two or more of the following criteria
   1)    Little to No electrical components
   2)   Powered by Nature
   3)   Can be used to harness water from streams at lower altitudes 
   4)   Low cost

          The team took various designs into consideration and finally arrived at a decision to design a Spiral Pump Water Wheel.The Spiral Pump Water wheel Is a combination of two systems known as ‘Spiral water pump’ and a ‘Water wheel’. These two systems collectively create a system that is not only low cost, technologically minimal and reliable, but also requires no electricity or any form of engine to be powered.
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          The spiral water pump, an invention of H.A. Writz possesses great potential as a low cost, minimal technology water pump. If designed compact and sturdy, this system can be considered portable allowing the user to be flexible in terms of the location the wheel must be attached.
The undershot water wheel is an ancient machine used to convert the kinetic energy of a free-flowing water stream or a water fall into various useful forms of energy . This system was mainly used as an electricity generator for farms and rural areas where power lines were limited. This system is still used to date with various enhancements to increase efficiency.
The spiral water wheel pump is a combination of these two systems . The spiral pump doing the job of scooping out the water and pumping it out and the addition of the water wheel to the spiral pump enables the entire system to be powered by a free-flowing stream of water.  This easily built, low maintenance spiral water wheel pump can be used to provide water without the need for fuel wherever there is a flowing stream or river. It can also be hand turned or otherwise driven to provide a low cost, efficient pump 

​         Our team finds that this system addresses the requirement of being simple, affordable and being able to access the main water stream-supply from lower altitudes and as a result, will be extremely beneficial to the Bambui community. We took on the challenge and through countless hours of research we designed a Spiral pump water wheel system that uses no external energy and can operate without human or machine power, 24 hours per day with minimal maintenance. An efficient, environmentally-friendly solution to provide water for irrigation to increase food security and for a better lifestyle with improved access to water for communities. The inclusion of purely non-electrical components in the system, enables the system to be maintained by practically anyone within the Bambui community with a basic mechanical understanding of the system, thus removing the requirement of a 3rd party technician/mechanic to do periodic maintenance and repairs which reduces future costs of maintenance.

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          Free flowing water streams contain a very useful form of energy that is quite often ignored or quite simply unaware of. This energy is formed as water at higher altitude flow to the lower altitudes which creates what we know as “a running river” also known as currents. This energy is Kinetic energy.
          The spiral pump water wheel harnesses the kinetic energy present in free-flowing water streams and uses this energy to drive a conventional undershot waterwheel. It is clear that the rotation of the waterwheel is due to the force of the water flow and is in the same direction as the water flow. The spirals coupled with the water wheel results in water and air being scooped in to the spirals from the water stream as the water wheel along with the spirals are rotated. As the water air combination is being drawn in, it is spiralled through to the centre of the wheel and in to a rotary fitting and finally pumped out in to a simple pre filter that removes rocks, sand or any debris caught in the scoops. The resulting output is a debris free water that may be used for personal use (after being filtered and any pathogens and bacteria removed) or for farming use.

​The Proposed design:

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