A practical review of pit latrine emptying technologies

Most guidance on pit emptying technology describes what each machine is designed to do, but says little about what happens once it is in daily use. Information on realistic job durations, common breakdowns, running costs and the pits that equipment cannot handle is difficult to find, which means operators and utilities tend to work it out for themselves after the purchase has been made.

The four cities taking part in this session — Kisumu, Kampala, Kigali and Lusaka — are using much the same set of equipment, including Gulpers, the PitVaq, the PuPu Pump, trash pumps, exhauster trucks and improved manual emptying, but with quite different results. A pump that performs well in one city can end up unused in another, and the explanation usually lies in the pits, the roads, the distance to disposal and the way the emptying business is organised rather than in the technology itself.

Speakers from each city will present what they found: which technologies they used, in what conditions, and what difference this made to the number of pits emptied, the cost of the work and the safety of the crews. Equipment that turned out to be unsuitable, jobs that had to be abandoned partway through and pits that no available technology can empty will be covered alongside the successes, since these are rarely documented and are often the most useful things to know before committing to purchases.

The presentations draw on the FSM Action Research Project, which has recorded over 550 field observations across seven technologies, together with the working knowledge of the operators and utilities involved.

The session should be useful to sanitation enterprises and utilities considering equipment purchases, to municipal authorities planning non-sewered sanitation services, and to programme staff and funders deciding what to support. A discussion will follow the presentations to draw out comparisons across the four cities.