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[Iapetus]

Can anyone give me some advice on how to get through an aquifer?

I've managed it before with thin aquifers, but this one is at least 5 layers deep.

The north half of my map freezes in winter, so I've been using the freezing method, but I've lost about 20 dwarves so far to freezing accidents, and its gettin increasingly awkward to widen the access pit and move the walls, now that the thing is so deep.

[Dunamisdeos]

I had an 11z deep aquifer once.

I used DFhack after making through 8z and running out of space.

[wierd]

Double slit method.

[PatrikLundell]

The double-slit method (can be found on the wiki) works well. If the aquifer is deep you're down into stone, and then you can use smoothing, which is a LOT easier than building walls, as smoothing doesn't cancel as soon as there's a little water on the floor.
You can also spice things up a little with the portable drain method (my last one punched a 3*4 hole down some 7 or so levels into conglomerate using smoothing and the double-slit method for all except the last level, where a portable drain was used for the last bit.

[Slogo]

This is a repost I made elsewhere recently for avoiding freezing issues...

• Dig Downstairs on the top most layer for every tile of the aquifer you want to dig out. Give yourself at least 4 extra tiles of width for each aquifer layer (i.e if you want a 3x3 entrance on a 1 level aquifer you would dig out a 7x7 square).
• Dig Up/Downstairs on the layer below
• Wait for the aquifer breach to be 7/7/
• Channel out the topmost layer one row (or column) at a time.
  
• Don't let dwarves mine tiles that other dwarves are standing on, I like to only have 1 miner for the channeling because of this
• When one row/column is dug out, move on to the next.
• For the final row dig in from the outside in.

This works is for a few reasons. By digging downstairs then up/down stairs like this the aquifer lay will be considered "inside" and won't freeze automatically. This protects your dwarf for the first step and ensures the tiles fill to 7/7 which prevents dwarves from pathing into them willingly. Digging up/down stairs will remove the possibility of a ramp on the tile on the lower level. This again prevents any form of willful pathing to the lower level and is just a basic requirement of clearing out space so you can pierce the aquifer. The last part, removing the downstairs, changes the tiles from indoors to outside and causes the water to freeze based on ambient temperature. Since the dwarf doesn't stand where they are channeling they won't be encased in ice.

The last precaution is to use one miner at a time for the channeling, although rare they can dig out a tile from under another dwarf so you want to avoid that.

The last last step is to make sure you build a retaining wall before spring.

Otherwise for the freezing method it helps (but is a bit annoying) to be generous with the starting size of your breach. You lose 4 width and 4 height every z-level you go down. At some point the distance you're going to go down is just not going to be possible to breach with a pit-style breach and you'll need to resort to the double slit method to punch the rest of the way.