Roundabout PlayPump
water pump system operated by children playing
The Roundabout PlayPump is a system that uses the energy created by children playing to operate a water pump. It is manufactured by the South African company Roundabout Outdoor. It operates in a similar way to a windmill-driven water pump.
The PlayPump received heavy publicity and funding when first introduced, but has since been criticized for being too expensive, too complex to maintain or repair in low-resource settings, too reliant on child labor, and overall less effective than traditional handpumps. WaterAid, one of the biggest water charities in the world, opposes the PlayPump for these reasons.
Design
The PlayPump water system is a playground merry-go-round attached to a water pump. The spinning motion pumps underground water into a 2,500-liter tank raised seven meters above ground. The water in the tank is easily dispensed by a tap valve. According to the manufacturer the pump can raise up to 1400 liters of water per hour from a depth of 40 meters. Excess water is diverted below ground again.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roundabout PlayPump” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.