Kalpitiya is still developing and still has a long way to go in the following areas.

• Public electricity coverage is still limited

• Roads are still being constructed

• Public water supply is still to be fully implemented

Ruuk Village had to find solutions to the above three obstacles, and we at Ruuk Village think that we have done pretty well finding solutions to cover the above. let me give a brief explanation as to, how we managed to find solutions to the above three obstacles.

The official road to Ruuk Village has a stretch of about 900m which is soft sand and only a 4x4 wheel can master this stretch. We decided to use our house boat to pickup our guests from the nearby fishing harbor (Thoradiya Jetty), and we managed to turn a weak point to strength. Our guests enjoys this short ride by boat to reach our village, they get a feeling of coming to and Island within an Island.

We have dug two tube wells which are connected to one water pump and we store the pumped water in to a 2000Liter water Tank on an elevated platform. This guarantees enough water pressure to the showers. Cabana's private showers allow our guest an experience of having a shower under the blue sky. This is a private shower experience just behind the Cabanas.

Since the beginning of the project (end of 2013), we have been using a Diesel generator to generate the needed electricity for a limited number of hours (18:00Hrs till 23:00hrs) per day. This was not the best solution and we started looking at all available options. And at last we decided to go for solar power. As a first step it shall only cover the needed power supply at least to a certain percentage.
Since May 2014 we have implemented the first phase of our "Ruuk Village Goes Solar" project with:

• 1 UPS unit

• 3 umbers of 80W solar panels

• Deep cycle battery (12V-150Ah)

We are in the phase of studying the solution and if all goes well we will extend the capacity with a complete off-grid backup system, which shall replace the generator almost to 98%.  Until we deploy a solar driven water pump. We will still need the Diesel driven generator to fill up our water tank. With the current solution we are able to cover the power need during sunlight hours completely (no heavy household items in use). We managed to reduce the usage of the generator to 2 hours from 5 hours daily.

Here are two short vine videos of the installation work done on site.

Part-I: https://vine.co/v/MD5PVVUTKKJ
Part-II: https://vine.co/v/MD5YHl1MLqn