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[BoG_]

So, for the first time in my DF career, I decided to get ambitious. I'm absolutely still a newb, though, and I screwed up. My ultimate goal is to make a majestic dining room/meeting hall in my fortress with a small waterfall descending into a pool in the center. I found a setup that worked temporarily. I made three long tunnels, each with a channel on one end, and a single connection to the river on the other. This connection is made diagonally at a corner, as I figured this may slow the flow. At the end of a long tunnel, I made two branches to take some water to the other two channels. On the level immediately below, I put one block channels underneath. On the third level down, I mined out a cave, then made a 5x5 channel underneath that. So, the whole thing takes up four z-levels. The original plan was to have my dining room two levels below the river, but the room flooded. I guess this should have been a sign. The level immediately below looked fine, so I made the dining room there. It's been functional for a few seasons now, providing a cool, misty environment for my dwarves to eat in. Sadly, the room is beginning to flood.
Do I have any options to stop it? Is this perhaps a problem related to building this room in a peat environment? And, most importantly, any tips on making the dining room of my dreams?
I should also add, as a n00b, I don't have any experience messing with water. This is the first I've ever tried to re-route it. I've never used and flood gates or anything.
Thanks for your help!

[toomanysecrets]

For your next one, I would make a plan before you start building/digging and make floodgates at any point that you want to expand or modify later, plus to give you the ability to shut it down and drain it. Hatch covers and floodgates need to be linked to a lever obviously and you will want to mark them with notes (press N) so you'll remember which lever does what.

Also, where did you drain all this water to? Draining into a cavern is eventually a FPS killer, it is much better to have a tunnel that goes to the edge of the map and drains off the map (through a fortification on the extreme edge of your embark square).

As far as feedback, sounds like your design worked, kind of hard to envision it but you really only need a small channel off of a river to get the water you need. Now that you have built one waterfall you know how slow water drains through a 1-tile-wide channel/tunnel; a short path to the destination is desirable.

[Triaxx2]

Yeah, sounds like you forgot a drain. You need a hole in the floor to drain it through. I like a big drain, up to 3x3, channeling out the edges and leaving the center as a stair case. The bottom of the pond has a Grate over a channeled hole and a tunnel dug in multiple directions all emptying into to drain. No diagonal pressure relievers. with it draining like that and the grate over the top means it can drain into the caverns forever, and not much can get up. And anything that does, can't get through the grate.

Also it's Shift-N for notes. Just because casing isn't always clear.

[BoG_]

I don't think I completely understand how grates would work. If I install grates, do I need to dig one z-level below them, or perhaps install them over a channel? or will the function properly if I simply put them on the floor? My one concern is that doing this won't solve anything. I think my issue is that the cavern below, into which the water drains, was overflowing. Will I need to dig out to the edge of my map to drain? That won't be a huge problem.

[weenog]

A grate on a floor doesn't do much.  You'll want it to be over open space, typically but not always via channelling.

You can't dig all the way to the map edge.  If you want to dig a drain like that, you need to dig it 1 tile short of the map edge, then smooth the last tile which you can't dig, then carve fortifications into the smoothed tile.  After that, liquid can flow through.

[Triaxx2]

I tend to drain into a cavern, but usually only one with water in it already.

[Panando]

Another way to drain into caverns is to bring the drain down to the cavern, then build an aqueduct to the cavern edge, exploiting the fact that underground, you CAN build walls up to the map edge. This eliminates the water spreading, and reduces the gamey feel of draining off the map edge.