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[Hesuchia]

Hey I'm pretty new to the game (been playing a couple weeks now) and have been spending most of my time trying to figure out the best way to organize stuff. Most of my dwarves by this point are complaining that there's no well, and I don't have a hospital yet because I want to build a decent expandable plumbing system first, in case the water becomes tainted by some disease or corpse. I've been relying on guides on the wiki for general layouts, but I haven't seen any newbie friendly reservoir tutorials.  I read stuff like "you can use pressure plates to automate filling the reservoir" but I'm not sure how to go about it.  The "well guide" wiki page appears to be incomplete in those sections for a couple versions now .

I was hoping somebody had some tips on building a self-cleaning plumbing system.  I have a channel dug out and paved that will eventually power a mist generator over my hospital, but I think they'd enjoy a well too.  Draining seems like it'll be annoying, since I've got my fortress in the center of the map and don't want to dig into a cavern and open that can of worms just yet.  The mechanics are my biggest concern though, especially pressure plates to automate filling it.

The mkv25 site points of interest are usually really hard for me to follow since people do such elaborate stuff.  Any good tips/layouts/guides/comfort?

[Garath]

I usually don't really bother about automated refilling. If it's 4x4 and 5 or more deep (channel the middle, stais along the sides), it takes a LOT to empty it to a point where you can't last another season. A cystern, once filled from anything but a murky pool, though pumped murky pool water is fine, and topped off with floors etc and wells, will NOT be contaminated. Even someone jumping into it won't contaminate it unless the person is also bleeding. In that case, make a place to evaporate/drain the remaining water. clean and refill. draining/evaporating works just fine in a dug out area as long as it's big enough or you controll the amount of water that gets there per cycle.

Note that no dwarf should get a bad thought from not drinking at a well as long as there is booze, and cleaning not happening at a well is a minor problem. IMO, a well is only of importance once you have a hospital set up, since injured dwarfs only take water and water is needed to clean wounds.

[Hesuchia]

Heh yeah I keep running short on booze.  I start to brew more and it gets cancelled/suspended for some reason or another.  I have my kitchens/still kind of far from the farms, following the quickstart guide, but I'm planning on putting more plots nearby, which needs irrigation. And then I'm an optimalist so automated and controllable irrigation sounds lovely, and then I'm back where I started .

Clean water isn't too problematic: my power station for the mist is already connected to the river: just gotta channel that last block and pull the floodgate lever.  I'm mostly scared of those horror stories where some syndrome powder overflows with the water and can't be cleaned without spreading it.   If I were to make a long drainage tunnel to the edge of the map, would it need a lot of slopes to keep gravity throughout the entire tunnel or would the initial gravity (from a channeled hole in the bottom of the cistern probably) give it constant pressure until it empties?  Or should I maybe even build pumps to drain faster?

[Garath]

I don't know the embark, but farms on soil (clay, sand, peat, the like) don't need irrigation. Furthermore, once irrigated, your farms stay irrigated, so don't put too much effort in making your farm easily irrigated, instead make your farm easily accesible.

[orius]

I don't go with a very elaborate system, because they take a lot longer to set up.

My resevoirs tend to be several z-levels deep, usually 4 or 5, and usually aren't more than a 5x6 rectangle.  The resevoir's uppermost level is usually at the level right below the entrance level, and goes down to the bottom of the main habitat levels.  One of the side walls has a stairwell for access if the resevoir ever needs to be cleaned, the access to this comes out near the well and is hatched over.  The stairwell then extends below the bottom of the well and into a narrow passage that leads to the upper wall of a cavern that's been carved into a fortification, this is the drain for the resevoir.  The passage is usually blocked with a floodgate near the stairs, and it helps to pave it over so the mud that gets in there from draining doesn't start growing trees which will block water flow.  I usually fill it with a pump (to clean any possible stagnation) or directly from a river, I favor putting the resevoir near an aquifer, punching a small hole into the aquifer and pumping whatever I need out of it.

[Hesuchia]

Aha I seee. For drainage, am I able to dig to the outer rim, carve fortifications in the last blocks and drain that way? Or do I have to find a natural cavern that happens to reach the map edge?  This is still my first world so I'm kind of remiss to channel into the caverns before I'm ready.  Especially since I embarked on top of a bunch of metamorphic/igneous intrusive layers that contain a surplus of cobaltite and garnierite but no iron at all >.>.  I did find some galena in my kitchen area, so blunt weapons won't be bad, but that also means wealth is going to be hard to control. I turned off invasions so I can get used to the interface and a feel for the less combative parts of the game though.

I settled away from any aquifers (which was hard, the world was 80%+ aquifer it seemed), a sort of foresty biome with a warm temperature. No flux stones either, but since I have very limited access to iron, the flux isn't too badly missed yet. Just melting down what I can trade for in the meantime and using lead and nickel to build most miscellaneous metal stuff like pipes for water pumps (yay lead-water).   Settling by a natural river is turning out to be a really nice decision though.

I'm also concerned about filtering those eventual swimmer/building destroyers while still keeping my plumbing functional. They can swim through fortifications and wall grates when submerged, especially with flow.  If in a 1-wide pipe I built a fortification, a wall grate, and then another fortification in a row, would the thickness stop them or would they just teleport to the other end?
i.e.

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Top View: =-Wall, F-Fortification, G-Grate, 7-Water
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[Garath]

very simply put a raising bridge in the way somewhere, nothing goes past that. Draining a resevoir can be perfectly fine in a chamber you dug out. as I've said before, as long as it's either large enough or you can partition the water untill the previous amount evaporates.

edit: spelling corrections

[Finn]

Also, nothing can break something above it.  So sucking water up through a grate, either with a pump or pressure, will prevent things from outside getting in.  Same with dropping water down through a grate.

[Darkmere]

Cobaltite can't be smelted into anything.

The fastest, easiest drainage is to dig a path to the map edge, carve fortifications in the edge, and drain off-map. Nothing can get in that way, at least not that I've ever seen. Don't go for a huge system your first try, all you really need is a big dug-out rectangular hole with a floodgate drain plug.

[Hesuchia]

Yeah cobaltite's a pain . It's everywhere on this map though.  Wish I could smelt it into cobalt .

Thanks for the tips.  Dropping water through a grate prevents destroyers too? They can't destroy it from the top? 

[Finn]

No, they can destroy it from the top.  The point is that they have to spawn somewhere.  As long as they have to go up from their spawn point through a construction you are safe.  All of my inputs come up through a grate and all my drains go down through a grate.  The only way anything gets past that is if they spawn inside of it, which never happens.  Monsters spawn at the edges of the map.

[Triaxx2]

Water fascinates me, for some reason or other, so I tend to play with aque everything more than I really should. Several projects (Not large enough to be Mega projects) include: Constructing an aqueduct all the way from my fortress, then wo z-levels down to ocean to pump water up and into a constructed holding tank, then down underground so I can be assured to have water. followed by a water return part way down to allow maintenance access to the aqueduct itself. Of course this being DF, it promptly froze, flooded over and now I have trees growing on it.

The simplest thing to do for water however is to locate a water source (Rivers are best, steams are okay, brooks are annoying.) then dig a large room, and use the 'i' menu to designate a pond zone. Dwarves will then spend time throwing buckets of water down the well into the new hole.

An alternate and slightly more complex plan, but the best way if you have a murky pool, is to channel a hole two spaces away from the water source and then dig out what you want. now, in the two spaces between the hole and water, construct a screw pump (b>M>s) then ensure it's pumping the correct direction. Now 'q' over it and press 'Enter' to set it to manual pumping. Now a dorf with pump operating (p>l>engineering) will come over and begin pumping. Murky pools will drain quickly. The others aren't effected.