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[Moogie]

I've never tried this before. I've embarked at a nice juicy major river and I want to dam it so I have a dry canyon to build in. The river freezes in Winter, and I was able to build a wall near the river's mouth. But the river just kept on flowing in spring, regardless.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Is it because I used wood walls, or...?  I also used raising bridges at the map edge to bypass the whole 'too close to the edge' restriction.

Do I need to dismantle it and use floodgates instead? Also, the river is only 1z deep, but do I need to build walls on z=0 as well?

Thanks for any tips.

[escondida]

The river freezes in Winter, and I was able to build a wall near the river's mouth. But the river just kept on flowing in spring, regardless.

Did you dig out a lot of the ice walls? If not, they melt back to 7/7 (maximum water per tile) come spring and will take a while to drain on the far side of the wall. Also, perhaps an obvious question, but are the raising bridges raised?

Is it because I used wood walls[...]?

Walls of any material would be fine. You could've built them out of ice if you really wanted. Not related to your plumbing problem, but block walls (blocks are most efficiently made from rocks, though you can use wood) are superior in almost every way to rough, raw-material walls.

I also used raising bridges at the map edge to bypass the whole 'too close to the edge' restriction.

Do I need to dismantle it and use floodgates instead?

Bridges work fine as flow-stoppers. Side-note: you would probably benefit from building the whole wall from raising bridges linked to a single, convenient lever, so that you could turn your river off and on at will (-:

Also, the river is only 1z deep, but do I need to build walls on z=0 as well?

You need to build your wall at the level of the water. If it freezes in winter, that means channelling down into the ice.

[Moogie]

Ok, well something else is wrong, then. The wall is built at z=-1 where the actual 7/7 water flows. It's been multiple years since I built the wall, so it's definitely not residual water from the channeling. I've moused over all around various tiles near the walls and it's all 7/7. Nothing is spilling over the top, either, though I do see occasional white splashes (I guess?) though there's nothing there when I try to 'k' on them.

It just acts as if the wall isn't even there. No redirected water, no little pockets getting drained or over-full. Just ignores it completely.

Any other suggestions? The river is definitely flowing from the south and draining at the opposite side of the map at the north/east.

[bloop_bleep]

Sorry for being off-topic, but I've never seen a major river embark before. That thing is HUGE.
Maybe you should try making the dam two tiles wide next winter?

[KittyTac]

That dam dam was too dam weak to dam the dam river, dam. 

[mikekchar]

If I'm understanding your picture correctly, the tile 4 from the bottom on your dam looks a bit suspect.  I'm not quite sure why the wall stops and what it is connected to.

[PatrikLundell]

@bloop_bleep: A major river can be up to 46 tiles wide (leaving one tile of bank on each side). Rivers are visible on the world map pre embark, although I'm not sure if it starts at minor rivers or (medium) rivers. Brooks and streams are visible only on the region map. I've also made a region manipulator tool that allows you to manipulate your immediate future embark to get and width river.

And I agree with mikekchar that there seems to be a hole in the wall. I'd guess the three southernmost tiles is the (raised) bridge.

[Fleeting Frames]

I'm not familiar with the tileset, but blue sand tiles indicate underwater buildings, yeah, so unless he made 1-tile bridge out of cobaltite I'm thinking it's suspended wall. Maybe last builder got interrupted by something.

[Moogie]

It is a raised bridge. Definitely raised, I double-checked before uninstalling the lever.

Well, I'm not sure what the problem was, but after a lot of messing around (including attempts to delete the source tiles, which wouldn't work, even when I did 'source clear' to supposedly remove all sources from the map) I took a different approach and did a flood-delete with 'liquids' instead. Doing so showed me the river filling back up from the south, as expected. And also...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

These two little guys that I hadn't spotted before.

So my best guess is this: The east segment was draining, but it was happening incredibly slowly due to two feeder waterfalls supplying replacement water.

I still can't remove their source tiles manually (does that plugin even work?) so I'm going to bridge over there and dam them up next winter, too.

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys! And here's a full-map view of the river, for those curious about its monstrous size.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Fleeting Frames]

...You're in mid-winter of your third year and only now looked up?

I, well, wow.

Got to admit, I hadn't expected that answer. Though using liquids to find holes is a nice idea.

Hm, if you had only 90° turns to surround your fort you could get a neat concave + shaped tower.

PS: The source gui/liquids talks abouts are unique river source tiles, labelled as such, which are only seen if you embark where the river starts. There's kind of a hair pattern too them, 1 wide lines leading to river start that all start with 1x1x1 river source floor tile.

[bloop_bleep]

If you mess up with your waterworks, it'll be too late before you can even FIND your shutoff lever. Step carefully.

[Moogie]

If you mess up with your waterworks, it'll be too late before you can even FIND your shutoff lever. Step carefully.

Psh, safety measures are for elves.