Our visit to The Scottish Water Station on Gigha by Eze, Rowan, Andrew and Lochlen.
UNICEF is helping other countries to tackle problems and make the world a better place by 2030. They have made the Sustainable Development goals so people will be in a better place than they are now. On Wednesday 4th February, P3-7 pupils and Teachers went to the Scottish Water station which is at the north west of Gigha. We have been learning how people in Malawi have to walk long distances to get their water. We wanted to figure out where our water comes from so we could answer Ewan’s question of “Where does out water come from on Gigha?”
We walked to the water station and met Andy, Dave and Mo who showed us around and showed us where all the water comes from in the reservoir. They have to clean the water, so nobody gets sick using a filter to remove the big contents first. Secondly it goes into a smaller filter made for removing any bugs. After that it goes into the 6-mile-long filter to remove any bacteria that it can. Next it goes into a purple UV light transmitter which kills any remaining bacteria. Finally, they put chlorine into it to protect the water from bacteria found in the pipe network.
Dave showed us all the tools that they used for finding broken pipes and fixing them like the C,A,T4 which finds wires that are under the ground. Dave also showed us the metal detector and we got to have a go with it. The metal detector finds the manholes that are underneath the ground instead of them having to dig up a whole garden just to find one. One of the most important tools is the water gun that Andy uses to suck up all the water that is in the way of fixing the pipe.
Things we learnt:
- We didn’t know that the loch wasn’t that deep-only 2m.
- We found out that there was a pump under the loch which pushes out the silt.
- We did not know that Andy tracked how much water is being used and if it spikes it shows that the water is leaking out of a pipe.
- We didn’t not know how the water was cleaned and filtered with a mini sponge ball.
