5 ms·

I'm not a civil engineer but I do work with them occasionally. There are numerous challenges with this, probably the hardest is water pressure: if the water pre

I'm not a civil engineer but I do work with them occasionally. There are numerous challenges with this, probably the hardest is water pressure: if the water pressure cannot be guaranteed then poor plumbing can send waste water back into the water main, which is a really big problem. I also assume that to ensure water pressure involves electricity - a lot of poorer countries do not have a constant or reliable electricity supply. Building this sort of infrastructure is a massive engineering task and it can take years to complete a project like this. It requires skilled engineers and labour. During that time, people will die because it's not done yet. In conclusion, I think Gates and co have made a good investment.

baybal2 8y ago
>Building this sort of infrastructure is a massive engineering task >It requires skilled engineers and labour Exactly, and there are no tricks around that are known to solve that, other than to engage in massive infrastructure projects. A very simple thing.
- gtsteve 8y ago
  There are tricks around known to solve this, such as building intermediate solutions like what Gates proposes to do. When you have a serious issue in production that can be fixed with a global variable in 5 minutes or spending a day correctly planning and implementing a fix that routes the data correctly, what do you pick? I'd hope doing the first thing and replacing it with the second. It's that sort of decision, only people die if you don't move in time.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    Yes, the magic toilet took a possibly a decade to make, and I bet will never ever see real world deployment. In the same time, most banal sewers and septic tanks take days to build.
wongarsu 8y ago
>I also assume that to ensure water pressure involves electricity - a lot of poorer countries do not have a constant or reliable electricity supply. Today water pressure in the western world is mostly generated by running finely controlled electric pumps constantly, but it wasn't too long ago that water towers were used everywhere to maintain water pressure. The advantage of a water tower is that you can run an inaccurate oversized pump occasionally to fill up the reservoir on top of the tower, and gravity does the rest of the work. Of course building a tower capable of holding many tons of water is a comparably complex civil engineering task and is costly in materials.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Of course building a tower capable of holding many tons of water is a comparably complex civil engineering task and is costly in materials. In most cases it's not. You park a ground level tank on one of the taller hills in town.
- senorjazz 8y ago
  That's completely forgetting a lot of these areas are water stressed now let alone what they are projected to be in the near future
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    Send them Brazilian soap operas then.

baybal2 8y ago

>Building this sort of infrastructure is a massive engineering task >It requires skilled engineers and labour Exactly, and there are no tricks around that are known to solve that, other than to engage in massive infrastructure projects. A very simple thing.

gtsteve 8y ago
There are tricks around known to solve this, such as building intermediate solutions like what Gates proposes to do. When you have a serious issue in production that can be fixed with a global variable in 5 minutes or spending a day correctly planning and implementing a fix that routes the data correctly, what do you pick? I'd hope doing the first thing and replacing it with the second. It's that sort of decision, only people die if you don't move in time.
- baybal2 8y ago
  Yes, the magic toilet took a possibly a decade to make, and I bet will never ever see real world deployment. In the same time, most banal sewers and septic tanks take days to build.

wongarsu 8y ago

>I also assume that to ensure water pressure involves electricity - a lot of poorer countries do not have a constant or reliable electricity supply. Today water pressure in the western world is mostly generated by running finely controlled electric pumps constantly, but it wasn't too long ago that water towers were used everywhere to maintain water pressure. The advantage of a water tower is that you can run an inaccurate oversized pump occasionally to fill up the reservoir on top of the tower, and gravity does the rest of the work. Of course building a tower capable of holding many tons of water is a comparably complex civil engineering task and is costly in materials.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>Of course building a tower capable of holding many tons of water is a comparably complex civil engineering task and is costly in materials. In most cases it's not. You park a ground level tank on one of the taller hills in town.
senorjazz 8y ago
That's completely forgetting a lot of these areas are water stressed now let alone what they are projected to be in the near future
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  Send them Brazilian soap operas then.