HOT WATER .SYSTEMS MAINTENANCE IN REMOTE COMMUNITIES, NORTHERN TERRITORY

摘要

The harsh hard-water conditions in the remote indigenous communities of the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, make hot water units susceptible to scale accumulation and corrosion. The remote community's need for durable domestic hardware has been an issue that arises in every major indigenous infrastructure program due to the high maintenance costs and low technical trade capacity. Currently, maintenance and replacement of hot water units is done on an ad hoc basis as failure occurs by available tradesmen. To minimise downtime and cost, a structured approach to preventative maintenance and replacement is desirable. Such an approach requires an understanding of each system's cause of failure to determine the appropriate action. This exploratory research presents such a measurement method. The descriptive report looks at evidence of corrosion and residue of each hot water system analysed. This method provides recommendations from a component analysis on material durability versus maintenance costs to provide data supporting maintainability for developing technical trade capacity in the indigenous communities. The results from this study are compared with the relevant existing infrastructure design guidelines for indigenous communities and the Hot Water Trials conducted by the Centre of Appropriate Technology (CAT) in 1997.