Videos: Water Wheel Pumps

Water wheel pumps. Never thought much about them, but they look like they could be pretty cool for preppers, survival, or simply irrigating a garden or wildlife food plot.

Basically you create a water wheel with some sort of paddles, which will allow flowing water to rotate the wheel. Then you conjure up a spiral coil of tubing with a scoop on the end; this scoop dips into the water with each revolution and captures some water. That water works its way through the spiral until it gets to a pipe at the center of the wheel.

From there, it flows through the pipe to fill a small holding pond or cistern, maybe even a large fresh water supply tank, or simply to water a garden or food plot to keep it growing in dry weather.

Pretty cool!

In this first video, do yourself a favor and mute the sound. Unless you enjoy obnoxious music…

There’s not much audio in this video, but it shows another water wheel pump (which has been running for a year) and the duck pond that it keeps full.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.