Ir. D.F. WoudagemaalIr. D.F. Wouda Steam Waterpumping Station

Made by: Nicky Bosman, Lisa Knol and Michelle Apperloo

History

• Wouda Steam Waterpumping Station The Waterpumping Station was built during World War I, by H.P.

Berlage, A famous Dutch architect from Amsterdam.

The Station was named after the Chief Engineer-Director of water- management: Dirk Frederik Wouda

.

IntroductionAround 1940 the Northeastpolder (Noordoostpolder) was drained. To keep the deap-seated polder still dry today, the pumping stations

fulfill an important job.

The Northeastpolder is kept dry with the help of three pumping stations:• The pumping station Vissering (Urk)• The pumping station Buma (Lemmer)• The pumping station Smeenge (Kraggenburg)

BUT: At the northside of the Noordoostpolder is the place Lemmer and in Lemmer there is a famous steam-waterpumping station from 1920!

• The Bumagemaal (= pumping station). You can see in this picture that the Bumagemaal is very

small, compared with Woudagemaal.

The Woudagemaal. Maybe you can’t

see it in this picture, but the Wouda-

gemaal is at least two times bigger than the Bumagemaal.

The Ir. D.F. Woudagemaal (Lemmer, Friesland)

This is a real old-fashioned Steam-waterpumping station and it’s still working. The ir. D.F. Woudagemaal is the biggest, still working, steam-waterpumping station in the world!

On the 7th of October 1920 it was officially opened.

The ir. D.F. Woudagemaal is not only a steam-pumping station, but it’s also an important monument. And not just a monument, it’s even on the Unesco World Heritage list!

• Architecture

The Wouda Steam-waterpumping station is not only a building with afunction. It’s also a building with lots of architectural highlights. Forinstance the remarkably high chimney pipe, 60 meters, draws yourattention. The building itself has very strict and tight features. This isremarkable because it’s a very striking building, that doesn’t want todraw much attention. The interior of the Machine Hall also has the clear features of the

Amsterdam building-style. Characteristic for this building-style are the steel pipes and the colours used.

• Machine hallThe Machine Hall is not only famous for it’s beautiful architecture.

This is also the place where the gigantic machinery of the Steam

Waterpumping Station is housed. There are four huge steam-pumping machines.

The steam used to be generated by six coal-fired boilers. They were in a separate building, the boiler house. This was for the protection of the Steam machinery, these machines could be polluted by the dirt from the coal-fired boilers. These boilers are now replaced by (newer and cleaner) oil-fired boilers

• World Heritage

The Ir. Wouda Steam-Waterpumping Station was officially opened on the 7th of Oktober 1920 by the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina. It was not untill 1998 that the Pumping Station was added to the World Heritage list of UNESCO.

In the same year the Steam-Pumping Station was put into force

again, due to heavy rainfall in Friesland. The Station managed to prevent a flood from destroying Friesland. It is a building with enormous cultural and scientific value to the Dutch history.

‘Still works fine!’

• The machines need four hours to warm up, but after that, the 80-year-old machines can go on for days.

• On the first picture you can see the pumpingstation while working. The second is the machinehall as it was in 1925.

FunctionWe now know that the ir. D.F. Woudagemaal in Lemmer is the biggest,

still working, steam waterpumping-system in the world.

It is true that there are also modern steam waterpumping systems in Friesland now, but still the Woudagemaal is used when the water gets to high in the northern part of the Netherlands. The function of the Woudagemaal has not changed over all these years.

It takes four hours to get the Woudagemaal started, but when it starts going you’ll see something amazing. The Woudagemaal is enormous and the capacity is around four million litres of water per minute!

Because the respectable Wouda waterpumping station has a practical function in the Frisian hydrological regime, there is a standard technical crew that controls and maintains the steam pumping system regularly.

The machines work extremely fine, just like they are brand new. It’s no wonder that the Unesco has the perfect conserved steam waterpumping system on her list.

The Waterstation today…

• The waterpumping Station still works fine, but they don’t use it very often anymore. There are newer systems nowadays. The Wouda Steam-waterpumping Station is still one of the most powerful water management stations in the Netherlands and they use it about 4 times a year. This depends on the amount of rain that falls in a certain year in the Netherlands.

Learning proces

• From the newspaper:

“The Station was put into force for three days, especially for a learning

process. Twelve man from the watermanagement-department are

learning how to cope with the largest working Steam-waterpumping Station in the world. It would be a shame when this knowledge would get lost”

Visitors

• If you would like to visit the largest working steam-waterpumping station in the world:

that’s possible!

Since 2001 the building is open for visitors.

In March, April and Oktober: Tuesday till Sunday, at 13:30 and15:00 o’clock

From May till September:   Tuesday till Saturday, at 10:00, 11:30,13:30 and 15:00 o’clock

Our visit

We can really recommend the tour, it’s really nice to see the building

itself. As you read in the “Architecture” part, it’s a building with great

architectural features in it. Unfortunately we didn’t go there when the

Steam-waterpumping machines were working, that would be really great to see science and culture blend in together. But our visit was nice. The machinery is so impressive, as you can see on the photographs. The building has had such a big impact on the daily life in the Netherlands. It’s hard to imagine that one building can keep Friesland from flooding.