horse goad

In the beginning, the water was pulled up from the shafts with wooden barrels. Later, wooden hand pumps were used. These worked in the same way as cast-iron pumps, which can still be found today at old village wells.

However, in order to be able to handle really large masses of water, so-called horse-drawn galleys were used in mines. The basic principle of a horse göpel is that a standing shaft (usually a thick, round tree trunk), which was supported on a hollowed-out stone in the ground, was turned by horses walking in a circle around the shaft. At the top of the shaft was a wooden wheel with a ring gear. This ring gear moved another wheel standing vertically on the wheel, to which was attached a shaft running horizontally. The shaft finally set in motion a pump cross or a crooked pin, to which the pump linkage standing vertically in the shaft was attached. According to the documents, there was also a horse-drawn göpel for lifting water in Düppenweiler in the area between the (old) Barbara shaft and the artificial shaft. The remains of this horse-drawn gope were uncovered during an excavation by Dr. Gerhard Müller and his team of helpers in 2005 and 2006. Here it concerns in particular the floor covering of the Göpel.

The göpel used in Düppenweiler was very probably built during the mining phase 1767 - 1772 by the then operator Baron von Zandt from Münchweiler. Apparently, however, the capacity of the göpel was not such that it could have been used to quickly lower the mine water, although it did have dimensions of 12 x 12 m and an outbuilding was still attached. For this reason, an attempt was made in 1776 to use a fire engine to raise the water. The horse-drawn gaff subsequently fell into disrepair, but still existed as a ruin in 1786, the time of the French operator Odelin. Odelin finally had the old horse-capstan torn down and built a shed in its place. The Düppenweiler horse göpel is to be rebuilt as a reconstruction in the next few years.