SANAE IV: Home for the next year

It has been around three months since being stationed in Antarctica at SANAE IV. A team of nine people living on the ice, with the research base found at Vesleskarvet a nunatak surrounded by pure white snow and ice. A nunatak is basically a ridge of a mountain protruding an icy landscape.

Our team consists of various technical people to support the maintenance and continuous running of the crucial equipment at base, whether it’s for water supply, heating and electricity. All the team members are responsible for shovelling snow into the snow smelter, the smelly as it’s known here at SANAE. Our water for general use, showering and cooking comes from the melted snow. How is this achieved? The smelly consists of two big steel tanks under the ice with access hatches above, and in between a pump room with heater elements to melt the incoming snow where it is then pumped up to the base. The access hatches in where the snow enters by shovel. It is a very exhausting exercise to shovel snow to be able to open the hatches and then to fill the tanks. So we make use of a bull dozer to assist with heaps of snow that can then be pushed into the open hatches.

SANAE IV base is powered by three continuously running Scania diesel generators, that are synchronised to load share when demand is required for water pumping, heating etc. These beauties are the responsibility of the diesel mechanic and the electro-mechanical technician to service and maintain them for optimal performance.

Our waste management is under the control of the instrumentation technician, where bacteria is used to breakdown waste. The toilet system works in the same way as found on the research vessel and in aeroplanes, by means of a vacuum flushing plant.

Each room on base has under floor heating, which helps a lot during the cold winter months. Well, we’ll still experience the dark coldness awaiting us. There is a virtual walk through available on the SANAP website, follow this link to load the 360 virtual tour: http://www.sanap.ac.za