Percussion : technical training handbook on affordable manual well drilling

The high cost of developing potable water sources prevents many rural people from gaining access to clean, safe water supplies. Increasing access to improved water supply for under-served people and communities while keeping up with growing populations will require serious consideration of lower cost alternatives to the existing expensive water supply options. The manual drilling sector has proven itself as a successful, lower-cost approach with great potential under suitable conditions. In numerous countries manual drilling techniques are used as an alternative or to complement machine drilling. Drilling ‘shallow’ water wells by hand using local enterprises, can reduce the cost of a well by a factor 4 - 10 compared to a machine-drilled borehole. This cost reduction not only enables NGOs and Governments to construct more water points, but also ‘opens the door’ to villagers, farmers, schools and small communities to fi nance well construction independently through the private sector. Strategies and programs should be adopted to professionalize the manual drilling sector in order to scale- up rural water supply for drinking and irrigation purposes.This handbook describes in detail the percussion technique. Although the technique is slower than other drilling techniques, it is the only manual drilling technique that is able to drill through consolidated rock layers. [authors abstract]