Our guys have been busy this clearing the site for the diversion dam at 'Back Valley' on the river that we will be diverting part of the water from to supplement the flow at the intake dam for the penstock.  They also cleared the path from the intake dam down to the site of the turbine house.  That's two km so a lot of work to do with a cutlass.  Fortunately, we had a good number working on the clearing and they finished today.  Attached are some pictures of the sites. 

Clearing the area for the canal from the diversion dam

Penstock trench from the intake dam to the edge of the escarpment

 

Penstock path from the escarpment to the turbine site

Cutting eucalyptus poles for the high-tension power line

This was a busy week digging out the site for the diesel generator building.  We learned to use the Bobcat including both the bucket and the 'front loader'.  One of our staff, Samuel, was assigned to learn to operate the equipment.  He did great.  I ran it for a couple of hours and found out that it isn't easy to coordinate the movement of the machine and the bucket simultaneously.  The front loader has an additional motion that has to be mastered so it really takes a lot of coordination. 
The site was full of large stones, many that weighed over 100 lbs.  Moving them with the Bobcat was much easier than doing it by hand.  By Friday, the excavation of the site was complete.  Work began on laying out the footings.  We hope to see rapid progress on the building this next week. 

The Bobcat has arrived!

One of the big needs that we had in completing the hydroelectric project was some basic equipment to work on the roads, building and dams, etc.  One of the NAB churches stepped up to help us with this need.  Century Baptist Church in Bismark (where Bobcats are built) raised the funds, found the proper machine and attachments and oversaw the shipping out to Cameroon.  The container arrived a several months ago but was not brought up to the hospital because we don't have anyone with experience operating this type of equipment (I ran one for about 15 minutes, 20 years ago but I doubt that that counts).  Given our current situation, we decided that it was important to have the Bobcat available so it arrived today.  We have selected two of our experienced drivers to train on the machine.  So with the help of YouTube and the operators manual, we will begin.  In addition to the basic Bobcat, we received a dozer blade, backhoe, pallet fork,  compactor and drop hammer attachments, so we have a complete set of tools.

We will begin using the Bobcat on the site of the diesel generator building on Monday.  You can imagine the interest that our construction guys took in the new equipment.  The last picture is how they were preparing the site this week.  They work diligently but progress is slow with shovels and wheel barrows.  When this site is cleared and leveled, we will begin work on the roads leasing to the construction sites.

We are working on putting together the final budget for completing the hydro project.  This week we found the penstock pipe that we will use.  We need just under 2 km of pipe the water for the turbine from up in the hills down to the turbine.  The cost comes to $200,000 but pipe is available in Douala and ready to install.  The pipe was left over from the Chad - Kribi pipeline so is less expensive than if it had to be imported for this project.  It also is coated with a layer of polypropylene so it will last for may years without corroding.