Replacing a borehole motor in a borehole that ran dry
That the borehole motor was burnt was obvious. The metal casing was blue, there was oil in the water and it wasn’t pumping water. But the reason? The borehole in question has given me endless trouble. It has gone through more than a few motors over the years. We thought we’d finally got it solved last year when it became evident that the old steel borehole casing had rusted away and was collapsing and dumping mud into the pump. It was re-lined with a PVC liner, the pump and motor replaced and I thought our worries were over for the foreseeable future. I was wrong.
Marianne suggested I try contacting Allan, listed on my phone as “Borehole Repair Recommended”. When I described the problem he was straight forward – “Is the pump protected against running dry?” When I answered in the negative he said “That’s your problem. The pump controller you have installed does recognize when the pump is dry but it doesn’t work that well and the pump inevitably cooks. At this time of year (it’s winter and the dry season) the water levels drop and the pumps inevitably run dry. Get yourself a smart controller with liquid level detection and your problems will be over”.
There’s a irrigation equipment supplier close to my business so I paid them a visit to get a new motor and whilst there asked if they had an intelligent controller. Whilst perusing the manual I noticed Nathan, a plumber, who’d done the plumbing on our new on-suite bathroom, was also there. When he heard what I was looking for he recommended going to a nearby hardware store for the controller – “I have personal experience with them and I know they work” he added. I took his advice and installed the new pump and controller and, after decoding the bad Chinese English in the manual, managed to get everything working.
A mere two weeks later Fabian (one of the foremen who does the maintenance amongst other tasks) came to me with a long face and reported that another borehole had stopped working. I told him to get the pump and motor up and sure enough, the motor had all of the characteristics of being burnt. Another trip to the supplier, more cash changed hands, and this time I came away with a replacement motor and two intelligent controllers – including one for the third borehole that I was hoping to preempt the motor burning out.
It all seemed straight forward at first – after all we’ve had plenty of practice at getting borehole pumps and motors up and changed. This one was no different but the intelligent controller just wouldn’t cooperate. The motor drew current like it was working but nothing else happened. Allan was mystified – “I’ve never had a problem like that” so I just had to take a deep breath and book one of his teams to come out this Friday and have a look.
Driving back from work at lunch time I took a more scenic route than usual past the old Mount Pleasant golf course. It hasn’t been used for that purpose for many years now and is largely over grown. It’s not prime development land being low lying and very wet in the rainy season so is untouched – for now. Houses adjoining the area seem to have good ground water and sprinklers were merrily whirring over verdant verges oblivious to (or ignoring) the Harare City Council’s directive that it’s illegal to do so for, make no mistake, Harare is running dry.
Harare’s main water supply is Lake Chivero to the south-west of the city. It is downstream and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to grasp the scale of the pollution. It’s nothing new, as an eight year-old child I attended a sailing school on the reservoir and can remember a deep revulsion of the state of the water. It recently made headlines when four rhino and various other animals at a lakeside national park were killed by the polluted water. Very little of the available water in the lake now makes it’s way into the Harare water supply. It requires pumping and there’s seldom power to do that and the water purification works have long ago fallen into disrepair. So in true Zimbabwean fashion we’ve had to “make a plan” – usually in the form of having a borehole drilled. That of course is no guarantee that it will not be dry (and most are) but for those of us lucky enough it can be a massive relief and money saver. The unlucky majority have to rely on the burgeoning water supply business and at US$50 for 5,000 litres it isn’t cheap. Water tankers are ubiquitous on the streets and come in all shapes and sizes. Some are made for the purpose but most are just plastic tanks strapped onto disheveled trucks. They source their water from outside the city limits.
Nathan is succinct – “Harare will run dry in five years at the most”. We are luckier than most in having a working borehole but it is not prolific. Tested at 1,000 litres per hour we don’t push our luck and the lawn dies off in the dry season. This year we’ve pumped the swimming pool dry (it’s filled with rainwater runoff collected off the roof) so that we can get the leaks fixed and the pool tiled. Grey water from the kitchen and shower is collected and used on the garden too. We keep our fingers crossed and try to balance having a nice garden without having to recourse to buying in water.
That there is no interest on the part of the government in changing the situation is best summarized in a conversation I had with Anton, my personal trainer, at a nearby gym. His wife, also a person trainer, used to have the Egyptian ambassador as a client. She, the ambassador, told Anton’s wife that Egypt had offered to completely rebuild the water treatment works at Lake Chivero. It would have been a gift from Egypt to Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean government turned it down; there was nothing in it for them. The ambassador commented that she’d worked in a number of African countries but had never encountered one in which the government cared less for it’s people.
Dawn breaking on ART farm – it was colder than it looks!
The car thermometer read 10C but I was determined to get the photograph that I’d seen on several early morning trips to walk the dogs on ART farm on the northern boundary of Harare. There was nothing for it but to just put up with the cold. Yes, it’s winter here in the southern hemisphere and we expect it to get cold, with the occasional frost in low-lying areas, but this winter has been unusually warm during the day.
We get our rains in our summer and this last season was marked by an El Niño event in the south Pacific Ocean (unusually warm temperatures) which kept the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), the source of most of our summer rain, well to the north over Kenya and Tanzania. Zimbabwe went dry and consequently hungry. Most of the staple crop of maize grown in the country is rain-dependent and there was widespread crop failure. Farmers desperate to sell their cattle while they were marketable, swamped the abattoirs who eventually refused to buy any more. I’m told by my commercial farmer customers that what maize has been grown has been subject to widespread theft.
Droughts are nothing new in this part of the world – in 1992 when I was living in the east of the country we had a similar one and I took the photo below near where I was living. The next year the rains returned and the grazing recovered.
Not the sort of temperatures we expect to have in what is usually the coldest time of the year
From my business’ point of view I am not complaining – the warmer temperatures help us to get the seedlings through the nursery quicker and reduce costs. We really do need the prospect of a good wet season though as we rely entirely on boreholes for our water supply and despite the La Niña event of 2020 to 2022 we didn’t get the good rains the rest of the country experienced so they will need replenishing.
This is the Gwebi River on the road into town this morning. From Friday to Monday 90mm of rain fell – not exceptional but still a lot. A customer who deals with small scale farmers in the Zambezi Valley area told me that the rivers up there are starting to flood. Again this is not that unusual for that area which, being a flood plain of a major river, does tend to be prone to flooding during times of heavy rainfall. Most of Zimbabwe is relatively steep so does not flood that often. A friend who lives in Mutare in the east of the country said they had 300mm of rain from Thursday night to Sunday night which is very damaging given that it is the first major rain they have experienced this season. So you may think we are having a good rainy season in Zimbabwe. Sadly this is not the case as the distribution in time and location has been highly inconsistent.
The first rain fell at my work on October 16th, 14mm. Not a lot but certainly useful if followed by more rain. But nothing over 5mm fell until 4th December when 12mm fell. This effectively marked the beginning of the season for us though it was 3 weeks later than it normally is. Elsewhere in the country they have been less lucky, especially in the south, south-east and west. In theses areas, although it is raining heavily now, there will be no meaningful crops this year.
This will be the third year in a row of erratic and patchy rains in Zimbabwe. I would be reluctant to say it is the result of climate change because it is probably within the natural variation but certainly, the regular daily thundershowers that I remember in my childhood appear to have gone.
Zimbabwe Absurdity 
Running dry
6 07 2025That the borehole motor was burnt was obvious. The metal casing was blue, there was oil in the water and it wasn’t pumping water. But the reason? The borehole in question has given me endless trouble. It has gone through more than a few motors over the years. We thought we’d finally got it solved last year when it became evident that the old steel borehole casing had rusted away and was collapsing and dumping mud into the pump. It was re-lined with a PVC liner, the pump and motor replaced and I thought our worries were over for the foreseeable future. I was wrong.
Marianne suggested I try contacting Allan, listed on my phone as “Borehole Repair Recommended”. When I described the problem he was straight forward – “Is the pump protected against running dry?” When I answered in the negative he said “That’s your problem. The pump controller you have installed does recognize when the pump is dry but it doesn’t work that well and the pump inevitably cooks. At this time of year (it’s winter and the dry season) the water levels drop and the pumps inevitably run dry. Get yourself a smart controller with liquid level detection and your problems will be over”.
There’s a irrigation equipment supplier close to my business so I paid them a visit to get a new motor and whilst there asked if they had an intelligent controller. Whilst perusing the manual I noticed Nathan, a plumber, who’d done the plumbing on our new on-suite bathroom, was also there. When he heard what I was looking for he recommended going to a nearby hardware store for the controller – “I have personal experience with them and I know they work” he added. I took his advice and installed the new pump and controller and, after decoding the bad Chinese English in the manual, managed to get everything working.
A mere two weeks later Fabian (one of the foremen who does the maintenance amongst other tasks) came to me with a long face and reported that another borehole had stopped working. I told him to get the pump and motor up and sure enough, the motor had all of the characteristics of being burnt. Another trip to the supplier, more cash changed hands, and this time I came away with a replacement motor and two intelligent controllers – including one for the third borehole that I was hoping to preempt the motor burning out.
It all seemed straight forward at first – after all we’ve had plenty of practice at getting borehole pumps and motors up and changed. This one was no different but the intelligent controller just wouldn’t cooperate. The motor drew current like it was working but nothing else happened. Allan was mystified – “I’ve never had a problem like that” so I just had to take a deep breath and book one of his teams to come out this Friday and have a look.
Driving back from work at lunch time I took a more scenic route than usual past the old Mount Pleasant golf course. It hasn’t been used for that purpose for many years now and is largely over grown. It’s not prime development land being low lying and very wet in the rainy season so is untouched – for now. Houses adjoining the area seem to have good ground water and sprinklers were merrily whirring over verdant verges oblivious to (or ignoring) the Harare City Council’s directive that it’s illegal to do so for, make no mistake, Harare is running dry.
Harare’s main water supply is Lake Chivero to the south-west of the city. It is downstream and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to grasp the scale of the pollution. It’s nothing new, as an eight year-old child I attended a sailing school on the reservoir and can remember a deep revulsion of the state of the water. It recently made headlines when four rhino and various other animals at a lakeside national park were killed by the polluted water. Very little of the available water in the lake now makes it’s way into the Harare water supply. It requires pumping and there’s seldom power to do that and the water purification works have long ago fallen into disrepair. So in true Zimbabwean fashion we’ve had to “make a plan” – usually in the form of having a borehole drilled. That of course is no guarantee that it will not be dry (and most are) but for those of us lucky enough it can be a massive relief and money saver. The unlucky majority have to rely on the burgeoning water supply business and at US$50 for 5,000 litres it isn’t cheap. Water tankers are ubiquitous on the streets and come in all shapes and sizes. Some are made for the purpose but most are just plastic tanks strapped onto disheveled trucks. They source their water from outside the city limits.
Nathan is succinct – “Harare will run dry in five years at the most”. We are luckier than most in having a working borehole but it is not prolific. Tested at 1,000 litres per hour we don’t push our luck and the lawn dies off in the dry season. This year we’ve pumped the swimming pool dry (it’s filled with rainwater runoff collected off the roof) so that we can get the leaks fixed and the pool tiled. Grey water from the kitchen and shower is collected and used on the garden too. We keep our fingers crossed and try to balance having a nice garden without having to recourse to buying in water.
That there is no interest on the part of the government in changing the situation is best summarized in a conversation I had with Anton, my personal trainer, at a nearby gym. His wife, also a person trainer, used to have the Egyptian ambassador as a client. She, the ambassador, told Anton’s wife that Egypt had offered to completely rebuild the water treatment works at Lake Chivero. It would have been a gift from Egypt to Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean government turned it down; there was nothing in it for them. The ambassador commented that she’d worked in a number of African countries but had never encountered one in which the government cared less for it’s people.
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Tags: boreholes, climate change, Lake Chivero environmental disaster, life, maintenance, running dry
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