In the morning visit, the team also went to Kanti Bai chagan bai’s house, a mason in the village Sadra. The family welcomed the team warm heartedly. He discussed about his work, the tools that he uses at construction site, methods that have been used over the years in the village and modern machines that exist for easing the work. Major issues discussed by the mason were travelling long distances to work place, carrying heavy load of bricks on head, strain on the wrist and palm due to carrying tasla for a long time duration during plastering, water wastage in sprinkling water on newly plastered walls and long time taken in sieving manually as compared to modern sieving machines that separates sand from pebbles effectively. Children gave innovative solutions to mason’s problems. One of them was using a pulley to lift bricks to higher floors. Another was using a belt to hold tasla thus freeing the hand. Given below is the description of problem and its solution in detail. Problem: Water wastage occurs in sprinkling water on newly plastered walls. Currently they use a pipe to sprinkle water on walls three times a day. Water is sprinkled unevenly and is wasted. Solution: One basic solution is to use a nozzle on the pipe. The shape of this nozzle resembles that of a shower head. This would lead to even water sprinkling. Another solution would be to use a machine similar to a sprinkler used in watering grass in fields. Here the head of sprinkler contains holes in the upper hemisphere (as shown in the figure) and water pressure is regulated according to the size of the room. Using this we could sprinkle water simultaneously on all the four walls and the roof also minimizing its wastage. Problem: Masons have strain on the wrist and palm due to carrying tasla (which weighs around 20 kg) when plastering walls. Solution: The team has proposed a hand support for transferring the weight to the shoulders. There is a plate made of plastic which provides support from elbow to the wrist, two bands for clamping it to the hand: one near wrist and another near elbow, two straps: one running from elbow to the shoulder and another movable strap from wrist to the shoulder. This movable strap provides mobility to the arm in lifting the tasla.
