Water Pumping

The western United States was settled with the help of wind powered water pumps. Windmills, or wind-spinners, were used to pump water for livestock and settlers. Crops were irrigated by the wind powered water pump, bringing water from a reservoir area to flow out to the crops.

Where electrical power is not available to run a water pump, a windmill is the best and most economical option. The cost of operating a windmill water pump has made it feasible for great portions of the West to be irrigated and populated. Typically one to ten kw wind turbines are used for pumping the water. Water pumping wind turbines below one hundred watts are used for homes and telecommunication dishes.

For those who would like to try their hand at making a wind powered water pump, your library probably carries the venerable back-to-nature magazines that could show you, complete with pictures, how this could be accomplished. A perusal of several of these magazines might bring to light some other projects you would like to try. The Internet is also an invaluable resource for such information.

You would be joining an ancient brotherhood, making a windmill water pump. Do you know that the first true windmill may have built as early as 2000 BC in ancient Babylon? By the tenth century AD windmills were grinding grain and the water pump was pumping in Iran and Afghanistan.

We all know what is termed as the world's oldest profession, but I would like to dissent. If a person has no water, what is the only thing on their mind? Right. Water. No one would be interested in buying, selling, or any kind of cavorting without some supply of water. Whole civilizations, thousands of years old, are where they are because of perhaps one little well. The well gave the people what they needed to live, grow, expand, get a religion, sing songs, write books, build, expand some more and go exploring all because of one source of water. Settlers from the East Coast of the United States, an area with abundant water, came over several mountain ranges into what was basically a huge desert wasteland. With a lot of determination, hard work, and suffering, the settlers eventually reached the Pacific Ocean, and along the way, mapped out every river, every lake, every stream, every spring, and every mud hole capable of giving a drop of water, so those coming after would know where they could drink. The settlers, and the children of the settlers, irrigated and planted and made livable areas that eventually expanded into America.