Horizontal wheel watermill

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Schematic structure of a typical horizontal mill

A Horizontalrad watermill (short horizontal mill , in particular in the Alps and floor mill , in the Eastern Alps also Floder- or Flotter mill , in English-speaking countries also Clack- or click mill , Norwegians or Norman mill ( English norse mill ), more rarely Löffelradmühle , Greek mill , Turkish Mill or Balkan mill ) is a water mill in which the water wheel lies horizontally (horizontally).

How it works and types

Mechanics and grinder

Typical horizontal mill in an elevated construction

Since the water wheel is horizontal, the wave - the "stick" - is vertical . The grinder is located - usually protected from splashing water by an intermediate ceiling - in a room above the wheel. Either the mill building is raised for this purpose and the mill wheel is outdoors or the building is at least two-story.

Horizontal mills are characterized by their compact design and their very simple and robust mechanics. The shaft is directly connected to the rotor stone, the upper stone of the millstone pair, without a gearbox . Since the drive and grinder are rigidly connected, they run at the same speed - horizontal wheels are among the fast-moving machines . The bearing and with it the entire shaft with the water wheel and runner stone can be raised using a lever mechanism; in this way, the distance between the stones and thus the fineness of the flour can be adjusted.

Sometimes horizontal mills were used as a grinding mill for other purposes, where a vertical shaft and a high speed were advantageous, such as a stone mill (ball mill).

Water flow

There are two fundamentally different types of water flow:

Free jet / impulse wheel

In the case of impulse horizontal wheels, the impact water is directed onto the wheel through a channel ( "Fluder" ) with a steep gradient (at least 30–45 °), more rarely also a closed pipe. The wheel itself lies freely in space, the water jet hits the blades of the wheel tangentially as a free jet and sets it in rotation. By swiveling the channel to the side or another guide device, the jet can be deflected and the power of the water can be regulated.

Technically, this mill wheel is a partially operated impulse turbine , a preliminary stage of the modern Pelton turbine . The wheel only uses the kinetic energy of the water. More developed wheels have spoon-shaped profiled blades which, compared to wheels with straight blades, allow better utilization of the energy of the jet.

Since the effect is mainly based on the high speed and less on the amount of water, this type is mainly used in mountain streams with relatively small or strongly fluctuating water volumes, steep slopes and correspondingly faster currents. Impulse wheels are widespread in mountainous regions because of their particularly simple design. The performance of a single wheel is poor; such mills therefore usually only supply a few residential units or only a single farm.

  • Watermills

  • Simple wheel with straight blades ( Huxter Mill , Shetland Islands )

  • Watermill near Halmstad, Sweden

  • Two bucket wheels (Croatia)

  • Stockmühle in action (Neuwirtmühle, Kaning , Carinthia / Austria)

  • Video (Neuwirtmühle)

  • Water wheel in the Irish National Heritage Park

  • Watermill in the Irish National Heritage Park

A special form of water flow is used in the so-called Aruba mills ( Arubah in Hebrew = chimney ), which can be found in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East : The impact water brought in through an aqueduct with a slight gradient is brought in vertically through a brick shaft. In this pressure shaft , a static pressure builds up downwards , which is only converted into speed in a nozzle . This reduces frictional losses that the water would suffer if it were to gain kinetic energy over the length of a channel. Aruba mills thus reach the highest drop of any historical mill.

Tub / reaction wheel

Inlet channel of an ancient Roman mill with a horizontal reaction wheel in Tunisia

In this rarer type, the wheel lies tightly enclosed in a stone or wooden tub / barrel ( English tub , French cuve ) at the end of a chute. The flow and shape of the shaft cause the water to swirl like in a vortex . As in the Aruba mill, the shaft is used to build up pressure, but the pressure is not converted into speed via a nozzle, but is reduced in the water wheel itself and converted into mechanical work.

Technically, this type is a fully loaded reaction turbine , a forerunner of the modern Francis turbines . Early reaction water turbines such as the Fourneyron turbine or the Henschel-Jonval turbine were based on this type of water wheel and also had a vertical shaft.

Reaction wheels are also suitable for smaller slopes with larger amounts of water and then develop a correspondingly high performance. Despite their comparatively complex construction, reaction water wheels were already known to the Romans and were particularly widespread in the western Mediterranean region.

Geographical distribution and particularities

Remnants of horizontal mills are common in Scotland and the northern and western islands. A restored and intact Clickmill is on the Orkney island of Mainland . Others can be found at Shawbost on Lewis , in Ferrycarrig (reconstruction), on the Shetlands ( Click Mills from Huxter ) and at Westing on the Shetland island of Unst .

Ireland

There are three known mills in Ireland.

  • Ballykilleen
  • Drumard
  • Carriggrenan Mill in Little Island, County Cork

The Belfast Chronology (a dendrochronology) showed that the vast majority of all mills in Ireland were built between 630 and 930. Two thirds were constructed between 750 and 850. Previously it was assumed that the type of mill only spread to Ireland through the Normans .

Sweden

Siggamåla's watermill (Skvaltkvarn) dates from 1822 and was originally located in Ellshultabäcken in Älmhult until it moved to its current location about eight kilometers south of Tingsryd in Kronobergs län in 1875, right on the border with Blekinge . The 10-square-meter mill was in regular operation until it was shut down in 1918. In 1950 it was bought by the Almundsryd homeland association and kept operational. The waterwheel consists of eight short, straight boards attached to the lower end of the vertical drive shaft. The axis directly drives the millstone above. It rotates at 24 revolutions per minute, the grinding capacity being 4 kg flour per hour.

Early horizontal mills

Early horizontal mills were discovered in China , France , Greece , Ireland , Norway , Persia and Romania . They show a different technique than the Scottish ones. The excavation of the Saxon layers in the town of Tamworth in Staffordshire found a much older mill with two horizontal water wheels. The European horizontal mills probably date back to the 3rd century BC. Perhaps the first reference to such is found in a somewhat indistinct Greek epigram by Antipater of Thessalonica from the 1st century BC. Chr.

  • Norse or Click Mills

  • Horizontal mill so-called click mill on Orkney

  • Click mills in the Shetlands

  • Norse Mill by Breaclete

Horizontal and vertical mills were common in Greece until World War II . In the museum of Dimitsana in the Peloponnese there is a horizontally operated flour mill . While the general construction is similar to that in the Orkney and Shetland Islands , there are differences in the construction of the water wheel. Greek mills have a small number of curved or angled blades made of wood or metal. The wooden wheels recorded on the Shetlands have an even smaller number of blades, which, however, often do not form an angle to the vertical. Wheels from Norway and the Faroe Islands have, similar to the Scottish ones, few and straight blades. The Huxter (Shetlands) wheel shown by G. D. Hay has nine flat boards that are at a small angle to the vertical. The Faroese mills have eight flat boards that are either at a small angle or vertically. Irish wheels have around 20 blades and are similar to Iberian and Persian. K. Williamson believes that the Faroe Islands' wheels came from Norway. Presumably they were similar to the Norwegian example of G. Goudie. The wheel has eight slightly curved blades at a small angle to the vertical. Some mills of this type have also survived in Sweden.

EG Curwen sees the development of the horizontal wheels starting somewhere between China and southern Europe, from where they came to northern Europe by an unclear route. This is disputed because the dates, 1st century BC. BC in Greece, 7th century AD in Ireland and later in Scandinavia are only correct if the find in England is left out. Curwen also notes that the northern European wheels turn clockwise and those in the south turn counterclockwise.

LC Hunter points out that until a few decades ago horizontal water wheels were in use in the southern Appalachians . The North American "tub-wheel" has flat blades made of wood, but differs from the others in one important detail. The wheel runs in a round container that inhibits the flow of water. Tub-wheels are bigger than the wheels of the Shetlands. A table by O. Evans lists wheels up to seven feet in diameter. Compared to that, the three feet or so for Shetland mills is short. Hunter refers to tests by the French engineer J. F. d'Aubuisson de Voisins (1762-1841) in the first half of the 19th century.

JF d'Aubuisson noted that horizontal mills were the order of the day in southern Europe. He distinguishes two types. Those in which a jet of water hits the wheel, as in the Greek or Nordic mills, and those in which the wheel was turned in a tub by swirling the water. He points out that the water jet propulsion was more common in the Alps and Pyrenees . On rivers such as the Garonne or the Aude, where there is a lot of water but little gradient, tub mills (Moulins a cuve) were used.

The type of mill is known as a Flodermühle in the Eastern Alps, especially in Carinthia . Famous are the functional Apriach stick mills near Heiligenblut am Großglockner , the mills on the Mühlenwander- and Kneippweg Kaning near Radenthein as well as the restored stick mills near Kals am Großglockner and the Flodermühle exhibited in the Maria Saal open-air museum . The cave mills at Le Locle on the Col des Roches ( Switzerland ) were originally horizontal mills . Horizontal mills can be seen in the villages of Fang and Chandolin . Both are driven by the Fang torrent. The Chandolin mill was restored in 2000. In Norway, a partially restored mill of this type is preserved in the Kjerratmuseet north of Oslo . In the Parco dei Mulini in Bagno Vignoni there are the remains of four horizontal mills that used the water of a thermal spring one after the other.

See also

literature

  • Ralf Kreiner: The pre-industrial turbine mill: an adapted and resource-saving technology . In: Dorothea Schmidt, Reinhold Reith (Hrsg.): Small businesses, adapted technology ?: Hopes, experiences and disillusionments from a social and technological historical perspective . Cottbus studies on the history of technology, work and the environment. tape 18 . Waxmann-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-8309-1176-9 , p. 17–40 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Berthold Moog: The horizontal watermill: history and technique of the first prime mover . Ed .: The International Molinological Society (=  Bibliotheca molinologica . Vol. 12). Sprang Capelle, 1994, ISBN 92-9134-017-0 (English).
  • AT Lucas; The Horizontal Mill in Ireland In: The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Vol. 83, No. 1 (1953), pp. 1-36
  • Finlay MacLeod: The Norse Mills of Lewis 2009, ISBN 978-0-86152-362-7 .

Web links

Commons : Horizontal Water Wheels  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Ralf Kreiner: The pre-industrial turbine mill (see literature).
  2. ↑ Ma'had al-Waṭanī lil-Turāth: The quarries and the ancient city . In: Azedine Beschaouch, German Archaeological Institute (Hrsg.): Simitthus . tape 1 . Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1993, ISBN 3-8053-1500-7 .
  3. ↑ Johannes Mager, Günter Meissner, Wolfgang Orf: The cultural history of the mills . Wasmuth, 1989, ISBN 3-8030-1806-4 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h The Horizontal Waterwheel. (No longer available online.) Scottish Industrial Heritage Society, archived from the original on Aug. 20, 2008 ; accessed on April 12, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / sihs.co.uk
  5. ↑ AT Lucas: A Horizontal Mill at Ballykilleen, Co. Offaly In: The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Vol. 85, No. 1 (1955), pp. 100-113
  6. ^ MGL Baillie: A Horizontal Mill of the Eighth Century AD at Drumard, Co. Derry In: Ulster Journal of Archeology Third Series, Vol. 38 (1975), pp. 25-32
  7. ↑ Colin Rynne: Archeology and the Early Irish Watermill In: Archeology Ireland Vol. 3, No. 3 (1989), pp. 110-114
  8. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lZBVrYSKIA Video
  9. ↑ https://www.guidebook-sweden.com/de/reisefuehrer/reiseziel/skvaltkvarnen-siggamala-historische-wassermuehle-siggamala
  10. ↑ Fig
  11. ↑ see nn: Fil: Kvernkall.jpg and http://www.kjerraten.no/index.php?1=molla
  12. ↑ Parco dei Mulini - Bagno Vignoni ( Memento of the original of November 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 4, 2012 (Italian). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eutoscana.it