Uploaded on 2020-04-11 by Vincent van Oostrom

In the Western part of the Netherlands, we highly depend on ditches and canals, in lower parts (polders) leading to pump houses. On the picture you see a little pump house near Wilnis / Mijdrecht in the Netherlands. Without those pump houses, water will rise in the lower areas and villages and cities will submerge! Pump houses are not very distinctive buildings, so a lot of people don't realize how important they are today. Before the age of electricity wind mills were used to pump the water out of the lower areas. A lot of wind mills were needed for the same performance a little pump house can do nowadays. Although a lot of wind mills disappeared, in the landscape there are plenty of them left, to see and understand how they worked together to pump the water (sometimes in steps) from the lower parts to rivers or canals. Nowadays pump houses are controlled from a distance with modern software to monitor the pumping systems and weather data is being used to control how much water must be pumped from the lower to the higher area.