This equipment is part of several packages devised by the Oxfam Public Health Engineering Team to help provide a reliable water supply for populations affected by conflict or natural disaster. The equipment is designed to be used with any or all of the following Oxfam water equipment: Water Storage equipment, Water Coagulation and Disinfection equipment, Water Filtration equipment, Water Distribution equipment, Water Pumping equipment, and Water Testing Kit. All are designed using available, easily transported equipment which is simple, rapidly assembled, and fully self contained, to provide an adequate, safe water supply at moderate cost. The principles used in these packages may often be useful in long-term development projects.


The Oxfam equipment packages, which consist of "Oxfam" tanks (steel sheets, rubber liners), diesel water pumps, 3” PVC pipes etc, have been used successfully in the last two decades in often harsh environments, ranging from tropical to temperate climatic areas. Although this equipment is designed for emergencies, if installed and protected adequately it can give many years of useful service, though some up-grading works will be necessary to prolong its life. This equipment can be dismantled and re-used elsewhere. However, these Oxfam equipment packages, while being simple to erect over a period of days, yet durable enough to last several years, do not lend themselves to very rapid deployment in a few hours. Increasingly, the nature of work which Oxfam has been called on to undertake has required equipment that can rapidly deployed then dismantled and moved to other locations. This has led to the development of the so called “rapid response kits” since the mid-1990s. This type of equipment is seen as a necessary complement to the original Oxfam equipment and is best used to provide a start up package in the absence of a detailed assessment and where affected populations are likely to be highly mobile. The relatively higher equipment costs and lack of suitability for anything other than short term water supply means that the deployment of the “rapid response kits” should be used only where appropriate.

Bibliographic information

Oxfam (2000). Hand Dug Well Equipment Humanitarian Department

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