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[Awessum Possum]

I embarked on my world's only volcano, this has resulted in an awesome ice fortress in the far north with every metal a dwarf could want. I knew when I embarked that this was a saltwater area, so I dug down to the caverns. Having secured what I assumed was fresh water I felt safe and grew indolent, until now.

Urist McHauler cancels give water: No water source.

Come again? I thought caverns were always fresh? If they aren't fresh, is there any way I can make it fresh? Does freezing desalinate?

(And yes, the dwarf could reach both the bucket and the water)

[Telgin]

Doesn't it say whether it's salt of freshwater if you inspect a water tile with the loo'k' command?  Does that say that it's saltwater?

Do you have a zone for the water source?  It's been so long since I did without a well I don't recall if it's necessary to establish one or not for this sort of thing.

[wierd]

Salt is a contaminant, and contaminants are quite pernicious.  A thimble full of saltwater in a freshwater ocean? Now its a saltwater ocean!

To desalinate:  abuse screwpumps, or flush with a freshwater river (new to current release)

Basically, construct a cistern that has *never* come into contact with water, *ever*. Pump water into the cistern.  Magically, through an as yet unknown magical principle of screwpump technology, the salt is not carried, and the cistern will be full of fresh water.

Just ensure that no salty water of any kind comes into contact with the cistern. (This means DON'T let dwarves wash at the well! Salt water contaminants on clothes washing back into the well head contaminates the well, BOOYA, now its salty!) If salt contaminant hits a wall or floor tile, it will always be salty from that point on.  To wash dwarves, use benign 1z waterfalls and mist generators.

Alternatively, use DFHack to remove all the contaminant flags from water. (Added because of stagnant water plague in previous releases; stagnation creep was 'fixed' with the moving water code, which also keeps rivers that spill into oceans from being tagged as salty. Prior to this, freshwater was very rare indeed on coastal embarks! To address this, dfhack added a tool to cleanse water supplies.)

Screwpump desalinator is the best non-cheaty method left for you, unless you have an underground river you can exploit.

[VerdantSF]

*nvm, above post says it all *

[kesperan]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Screw_pump

A bit of info about how to use these machines to create infinite fresh water from salt water, as mentioned above.

[Awessum Possum]

Sadly no river, I will set up a cistern and take the necessary precautions. I give you this offering as a sign of my gratitude.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

!!Bacon!!

[Drazinononda]

Unless something has changed that I missed, water touching a natural floor or wall in a biome with saltwater will turn salty, regardless of any contaminants; the workaround used to be to build (not just dig) a cistern, with constructed floors and walls, which would not resalinate the water as a dug cistern would.

[wierd]

As I said, it must have *never* come into contact with water, ever.


This naturally excludes "cistern dug on tile that was adjacent to salt water", because that would be a cistern that had previously been exposed to water.

Also, the "any tile ever exposed to salt contaminant will always be salty forever afterwards" further excludes the prospect.

*nitpick

[Flarp]

Unless something has changed that I missed, water touching a natural floor or wall in a biome with saltwater will turn salty, regardless of any contaminants; the workaround used to be to build (not just dig) a cistern, with constructed floors and walls, which would not resalinate the water as a dug cistern would.

I believe this was acknowledged as a bug in DF2010, and is not present in the more recent 2012 releases. As long as you dig a cistern away from any naturally-occurring bodies of water, you should be fine.

[slothen]

(This means DON'T let dwarves wash at the well! Salt water contaminants on clothes washing back into the well head contaminates the well, BOOYA, now its salty!) If salt contaminant hits a wall or floor tile, it will always be salty from that point on.

This can't be right.  Salt water contaminants are not 'water.'  And besides, if you're using a well, the contaminants are washed onto the floor and later cleaned usually, the contaminants aren't washed into the bucket and lowered into the well.