Hand Crafted Water Wheel

February 2, 2023

In late 2012 a private golf course near Houston, Texas was in the process of a facility expansion including a new 9 hole-par three surrounding a small lake. The Owner, a creative visionary, imagined this required industrial pump-house building could be a feature rather than a distraction to the otherwise pristine short course.


The pump-house became known as the Gristmill and the Heritage Restorations design team began to design a stone Gristmill that would fit the surrounding landscape and allow room for the fertigation system and equipment. A proper Gristmill needs a water wheel, so from the very inception of the Gristmill a water wheel was the key exterior feature to the building. To complete the authentic a feel of the whole campus a creek was designed and constructed to provide a water flow capable of turning the water wheel.

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A dovetail for each of the 50 paddles is cut into the top face of the rim. The 14″ x 36″ paddles are also glued from 3 to 4 individual boards and mirror the negative dovetail cut in the rim with the positive counterpart on each end.


The second rim is glued in the same method as the first and the paddles slide between the two rims each locking into place with a 1.5″ extension beyond the exterior rim wall. The extension helps reduce the rim drag in the water making the wheel as efficient as possible with a given water flow.


20 spokes are constructed, 10 for each side, and intentionally appear to interact with the 12 visible dovetails at random intervals so to not draw too much attention to the rim connection design and details. The spokes tapered toward the middle and fastened to a custom fabricated steel hub behind a machined brass compression plate with 60 carriage bolts and square nuts. The assembly slides over a 6″ diameter steel axle and balances with 16 3/4″ set screws used for truing an fine adjustment.


The final result is a 5,000 lbs 19′ sinker cyprus under-shot water wheel turning at just under 4 rpms with 2,800 GPM of water flowing through a 42″ wide rock shoot providing serene views from what has been consistently rated, the number 1 golf course in Texas.

The Glen Barn

By Kevin Durkin • February 2, 2023
Built c. 1870, the Glen barn is one of the largest barns ever built in New York State measuring forty feet wide by one hundred feet long. Heritage Restorations has restored over 200 barns from New York, and it is the largest barn that they have ever moved and rebuilt. The history of the Glen barn is a reflection of the great cultural changes that took place during the 1800’s in America.

The Barn Melting Pot

By Kevin Durkin • February 2, 2023
I am often asked the question of where we get our barns. When I reply, “Mostly from New York,” I am then asked, aren’t there good barns in other states?

Old World Meets New

February 2, 2023
More than any other factor, what differentiated American timber framing from its predecessors in the Old World was when the Old World pioneers came to America, they were confronted with a very different building reality in that the materials they had on hand to build with, namely trees, were vastly different from their experience in Europe.

A Heritage Barn Story

February 2, 2023
In the fall of 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson sailed up the river that would later bear his name. He was in search of a westward passage to Asia, but as the water sweetened and became less salty, it became clear to them that this was not the passage they were seeking. It was fine land though, and he claimed it for his patrons, The Dutch West India Company.

Barn Raising in Japan

February 2, 2023
Heritage Restorations had the unique opportunity to raise one of our restored historic timber frames in Japan! We dismantled and restored an 1840’s timber frame barn from the tranquil fields of upstate New York and re-erected it in the bustling metropolis of Tokyo, Japan.

The Great Epizootic of 1872

By Kevin Durkin • January 5, 2013
People often ask what interesting things we find in the centuries-old barns we dismantle for our barn restoration business. Well, there are a lot of interesting “things,” like the time we found an old pillowcase hidden in a corner of the first barn that we took down that was full of jewelry from a long-forgotten house burglary, and the time we found the bowling ball that my helper claims is the ball that old Rip Van Winkle used before he drank the potion that put him to sleep for twenty years in the Catskill Mountains.

Mott Gristmill

By Kevin Durkin • January 5, 2013
There is something about gristmills and waterwheels that resonates with just about everyone. The gristmill is an American icon that evokes sentiments of home and community, as is evidenced in the gristmill pictures so many of us have in our homes.

Colonel Drake Saves the Whales

By Kevin Durkin • August 25, 2012
From time to time, in my travels in the Northeast, I pass through the sleepy hamlet of Greenville, New York—just another rural American village on the landscape of formerly thriving agricultural communities. Over the last eighty years, such communities have undergone a relentless depopulating, as generations of young people abandoned their agrarian roots and made their ways to urban centers that offered more “economic opportunity.”

LaRue Barn

By Kevin Durkin • August 25, 2012
We found the LaRue barn through a phone call from a woman in northern New Jersey who had heard about our work of moving and restoring barns. She wanted to know if we would possibly want to move an old barn that was in danger of being demolished to make way for a new suburban development.

Middleburg Palatine House

By Kevin Durkin • August 24, 2012
Adjacent to the LaRue barn1 you will find another timber-framed building that is actually an early American house. It was originally built about 1750 in the Schoharie Valley of New York state on a hillside above the Schoharie Creek. The left half measures twenty feet by twenty feet and is the original old house. The timber-framed addition on the right side was added about 1800.
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