Civil Insight: A Technical Magazine Volume 3 | Page 65

Tandon S.S. et al.
Civil Insight (2019) 64-70
minutes to reach the site location by bus from Panauti buspark. The watermill is at the flat basin of
Kushadevi, near Panauti-Kushadevi highway.
Figure description:
1 Chute, delivering the water to the side of the
wheel behind the shaft
2 Hooper (basket)
3 Bird (vibrator to keep the grain moving)
4 Rynd (forged metal piece)
5 Grinding stones
6 Shaft, metal
7 Hub, wood (thick shaft)
8 Wheel or tirl, with obliquely set paddles on thick shaft
9 Metal pin and bottom piece
10 Lever, lifting device to adjust gap between
grinding stones
Fig. 1. Sketch of traditional horizontal water mill (Saubolle & Bachmann, 1978)
1.2) Background of Upper Kushadevi Water Mill
The water mill was established around 70 years ago. The water mill was inherited by Mr. Bishnu Shrestha,
a local resident of Kushadevi, from his father. As per his say, his father was the constructor of the water
mills around the area of Kushadevi during the time of King Mahendra. This implies that Upper Kushadevi
water mill is one of the early-built water mills in Nepal. The water mill was heavily damaged by the
earthquake in 2015. Major components of water mill are: earthen canal, two stone grinders, chute, gabion
weir, and a metal propeller turbine. It is being used by local villagers for decades and the payment method
adopted by the villagers for using electricity is against the exchange of grains; therefore, it is a cheap
medium for agro-processing compared to electric mills.
2) Methodology
Topographic survey, hydrological survey, and socio-economic survey were carried out for this potential
study. Their detailed descriptions are provided in the subsequent sections.
2.1) Information from topographic Survey
Two rivers, Roshi and Ghyalku, meet near Pashupatinath temple at the site location. At present, the water
mill is operated from the water of Roshi River only. When water from both the rivers is used, the gross
head decreases and the discharge increases. Respective calculations are shown in the following tables. A
view from the Google Map, as shown in Fig. 2, gives the visualization of the study area. Further, based on
the topographic survey, a general layout of the site location is shown in Fig. 3.
2.2) Hydrological survey
Medium Irrigation Project (MIP) was used to predict the mean monthly flows since measurement were
taken on an intermittent basin. Nepal was divided into 7 different regions; the coefficients for region 3 were
used to compute the discharge, since discharge measurement of only few months were possible. The
coefficients of region 3 for 80% reliable flow (Department of Irrigation, 1990) are presented in Table 1.
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