Water Aid Kiosk and refill points

[Jay Pee]

I think there was some advice being given out including from WaterAid staff earlier one to advise people not top fill their drinking water containers from the hand wash sinks at the toilets.  It would seem a logical suggestion in an ideal world but the temperatures put paid to that advice.

It wasn't advice that the water wasn't potable but more to do with hygiene

[sirjonnyp]

If the weather hadn't have been so extreme, the kiosks may have made more sense to the wider festival goers. Each had the limited edition badges to give away and were also selling the bottles. When you topped up the kiosk volunteer would have told you about the access denied campaign and perhaps suggested a donation, but in the event the kiosks became a vital source of water and cut the patter to dole out the water. One of our neighbours was working in one and said that while it was intense, it wasn't too bad overall and they were happy to help. 

Disappointingly heard that some kiosks were broken into overnight on the Wednesday or Thursday, presumably by some goons in search of money or stashes of the bottles. 

[Quark]

One thing I did notice this year is that way fewer of the taps were at a stupidly high pressure and sending water everywhere.  Don't know if that was just down to the level usage and the pressure in the system dropping accordingly, or if the taps had been tweaked a bit, but either way it was nice not to look like I'd pissed myself every time I filled up a water bottle.

[sprocketrocket]

5 minutes ago, Quark said:

but either way it was nice not to look like I'd pissed myself every time I filled up a water bottle.

Nice for some... A loss of disguise for others. 

[Magma]

Same water, but you could also buy a refillable bottle from them.

[sirjonnyp]

35 minutes ago, Quark said:

One thing I did notice this year is that way fewer of the taps were at a stupidly high pressure and sending water everywhere.  Don't know if that was just down to the level usage and the pressure in the system dropping accordingly, or if the taps had been tweaked a bit, but either way it was nice not to look like I'd pissed myself every time I filled up a water bottle.

One of the people next to us (in the wateraid field) said that there's no regulator onsite, so if the water comes out slower that's purely down to usage. I definitely got wet shorts from one tap on Sunday evening. 

[JohnEW]

I was one of the WaterAid volunteers working in the kiosks to the right of the Pyramid stage - there were three together and a water station next to it. We never had any queue more than about 10 people and that was when an act finished. There were bigger queues on the left hand side where there was only one kiosk. We need to sort that out for next year.

Our instructions were to switch off the outside tap when the kiosk was open (12 hours a day Wednesday to Sunday). In our situation it would have reduced the pressure and therefore have been counter productive. I do know that many of the kiosks placed near campsites did leave the outside tap on as many more people wanted to fill larger containers - they quickly learned what made more sense. For us nearly everyone just had a bottle to fill so it was very quick.

Nobody should have been suggesting making a donation, as that was not the focus of the kiosks. We all had a collecting tin and some people insisted on making a donation, which was fine, but we were not pushing that in any way. We had plenty of stuff to do anyway with a steady flow of customers and selling two different water bottles and the steel cups and giving away badges and temporary tattoos.

The water was exactly the same at whatever tap you used - it's all supplied by Bristol Water and exactly the same as the local domestic supply. What I would say was that there is inevitably a small but possible risk of contamination in taking drinking water from taps used by people washing their hands after using the toilet - small but possible.

My understanding was that the showers were switched off around the site for a time on Saturday to keep the pressure up in the taps - giving priority to providing drinking water rather than for showers.

Thanks for the kind words about the kiosks. We certainly had a great time working in them, but we were lucky in that our kiosks were north facing and usually had a cooling breeze! In the last many previous years I've worked on the pit latrines and then compost toilets in King's Meadow. Sadly we had to give those up this year in order to man the many more water kiosks - they were just too labour intensive.

[Crazyfool01]

1 hour ago, JohnEW said:

I was one of the WaterAid volunteers working in the kiosks to the right of the Pyramid stage - there were three together and a water station next to it. We never had any queue more than about 10 people and that was when an act finished. There were bigger queues on the left hand side where there was only one kiosk. We need to sort that out for next year.

Our instructions were to switch off the outside tap when the kiosk was open (12 hours a day Wednesday to Sunday). In our situation it would have reduced the pressure and therefore have been counter productive. I do know that many of the kiosks placed near campsites did leave the outside tap on as many more people wanted to fill larger containers - they quickly learned what made more sense. For us nearly everyone just had a bottle to fill so it was very quick.

Nobody should have been suggesting making a donation, as that was not the focus of the kiosks. We all had a collecting tin and some people insisted on making a donation, which was fine, but we were not pushing that in any way. We had plenty of stuff to do anyway with a steady flow of customers and selling two different water bottles and the steel cups and giving away badges and temporary tattoos.

The water was exactly the same at whatever tap you used - it's all supplied by Bristol Water and exactly the same as the local domestic supply. What I would say was that there is inevitably a small but possible risk of contamination in taking drinking water from taps used by people washing their hands after using the toilet - small but possible.

My understanding was that the showers were switched off around the site for a time on Saturday to keep the pressure up in the taps - giving priority to providing drinking water rather than for showers.

Thanks for the kind words about the kiosks. We certainly had a great time working in them, but we were lucky in that our kiosks were north facing and usually had a cooling breeze! In the last many previous years I've worked on the pit latrines and then compost toilets in King's Meadow. Sadly we had to give those up this year in order to man the many more water kiosks - they were just too labour intensive.

Thanks  

[stuartbert two hats]

I tell you what, it's a bloody good job they decided to add all the new water points this year. It would have been nice to have more, but this was a very unusual year in terms of the demand on the water supply and it coped incredibly well considering.