Talk:Windpump

Untitled

Can someone make a thumbnail for the image? It's too big for my PC...

Done.

The visible size of Image:Windpump8414.JPG is fine, but the size in kilobytes is excessive -- 173 KB for an illustration only is too much. --Joy [shallot] 18:05, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Alternative images

This artile already has more images than text, but some alternative images are

• 
  First American style Farm Windpump in China, used to provide water for farming villages in the rugged mountains Henan province.

Why don't they still use them?

With all the pressure to be more eco-friendly, why are wind pumps not still used? Surely using a wind pump is a lot cheaper and easier than paying to use an electric pump. You would think with modern technology, that extremely efficient pumps might be developed, and then once they are in place, you wouldn't have to pay to use them, other than occasional maintainence.

In Australia they are still used where

• It is a permenant need
• being reliant on the wind, is not a problem
• technical issues such as the amount of lift needed

Sorry to say but a lot of the time they need more than occasional mantainence. That's like saying a sailboat doesn't need as much maintainence as a motorboat - it's just different maintainence. And it's easier to get a small motor fixed (that you can unbolt and take into town) then it is to get a licenced rigger to go up a windmill tower and sort out your problem with a rather large fan. Garrie 23:49, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Windpumps in Cornwall

Where I live in Cornwall, England, there were and still are a number of American style windpumps. Cornwall was one of the last places to recieve a full water supply, and as a result many remote farmsteads had their own windpump, because using a well or hand pump did not provide water in the kind of quantities required for farming. I have a friend who used to live in a cottage that had a windpump "out back", which drew water from a well a short way underground. They installed it themselves, and the current owners of the house are still using it. The Pentewan Railway used a water pump at Pentewan, which was primarily used for lifting water from the reservoir and pumping it into the harbour to flush out the silt, but was also used to lift water up into the water tower for the steam engines to use. Providing small hamlets and villages with a fresh water supply was another use, until the water company came along and somehow convinced villagers to pay for their water rather than get it free. At any rate, this might be worth mentioning in the article - I'll come back to it one day and see what I can do. In the meantime, if anyone feels like adding any of this themselves, feel free. --▫Bad▫harlick♠ 00:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge to windmill

In my opinion the windpump is that similar to a windmill that it should be merged into that article, after all the pump is just a windmill with another tool attached. The windmill article also mentions its use as pump. Arnoutf 18:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree, windpumps is a distinctive subset of windmills (he said 4 years later). BTW the tjasker is hardly a popular windmill in the Netherlands, a few years ago there was only one left, and I don't think it really belongs in this article. There are other small windpump-like mills (Bosman molentjes) which are popular. Reboelje (talk) 20:37, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Windpumps are not a subset of windmills. The are distinctive. A windmill is a grinder. A windpump is a mover of water. Both of subcategories of wind turbines. Calling a windpump by the term windmill is a bit like referring to a taxi cab as a type of food truck. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.190.18.116 (talk) 13:41, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Known in the United States as windmills

The title of this article is a misnomer. Further, "windpump" is a term that is relatively unknown and/or unused in the United States. (Batavia, Illinois, is known as the "Windmill City" and the "Windmill Capital of the World" for its six windmill companies.) Even the American Society of Mechanical Engineers refers to such structures as windmills. Such windmills (as they are commonly known) or American-style windmills (to distinguish them from European- or Dutch-style windmills) not only pump water, they were widely used to power feed mills, saw mills, and a wide variety of agricultural equipment—thus the term "mill." As water pumps, they were used on farms, by municipal water works, and in particular by railroads during the age of steam-powered locomotives. PlaysInPeoria (talk) 19:28, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed New Title

A better title for this article is "American-style windmills." PlaysInPeoria (talk) 19:29, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

No it isn't. Most of what is characteristic of them can be traced to European precedents, and they aren't windmills. The historically correct term for all wind-powered machines of this type (pumping and other uses) would be wind engines. Ghughesarch (talk) 19:53, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

• I don't agree. The term 'windpump' is is a good descriptive title and a more generic term - the term 'American style windmill' would only cover part of what this article describes. If you wanted to know about the ones used historically to drain The Fens or The Broads in England or the polders in Holland you wouldn't search for 'American style windmill' as that isn't what they are. In fact, the United Nations use the generic term 'windpump' in the excellent article here However, anyone searching for the term windmill will find a general article on windmills which has a section on windpumps that points to this page. I will create a redirect page for American-style windmill and then there won't be a problem. Richerman (talk) 07:01, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata

Currently the interwiki links on Wikidata for this article mix up two different things:

1. the links on en, ca, es, wa refer to wind-powered pumps
2. the links on cs, da, de, eo, fy, nl, refer to multi-bladed wind turbines, a.k.a "American" windmills, wind wheels or wind motors

These are not the same. The latter does not necessarily have to be used as a pump, it may also be used to power an electric generator or other machinery. Therefore, I'm going to split up the links on Wikidata. --Tetris L (talk) 10:21, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Done. We now have

1. Q1730505 for wind-powered pumps
2. Q15854792 for american-style windmills

--Tetris L (talk) 11:45, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

source about U.S. windpump manufacturers

This NRHP document for Canon Ranch Railroad Eclipse Windmill in Texas contains some good history about windpump manufacturers in the U.S.: William L. Cumiford; Paul D. Hutchison (October 11, 1976). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Canon Ranch Railroad Eclipse Windmill" (PDF). Texas Historical Commission. Retrieved July 29, 2018.. --Doncram (talk) 02:06, 30 July 2018 (UTC)