RWSN began in 1992 as the Handpump Technology Network (HTN) and perhaps the network's most long-lasting impact to date has been through making technical design specifications freely available for a number of public domain handpumps. Today, millions of these handpumps can be found around the world. Some countries have their own standard pump designs that are variants of the public domain standards or - in the case of the India Mark II/III - based on those held by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).
The RWSN standards on this website can be used by anyone and are used by many handpump manufacturers - if your organisation is looking at buying handpumps then make sure that they conform to the relevant standards. Many pump failures are caused by poor quality manufacture.
Click here to find all our standards.
To understand the history of how these standards were developed and how handpump standardisation (the short-listing or regulation of what handpump types are permitted in a particular country), have a read of the following:
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