Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Grumman]

I'm starting a new fortress by the ocean and thus need to breach an aquifer. I haven't had success in the past with the pump and seal method, and there's no ore or magma to use, which leaves the cave-in method. Does the material dropped have to be waterproof rock, or will soil work?

[Dorf3000]

It works just fine, I've punched through a 2-layer aquifer with soil caveins.  That's usually the only type of 'rock' you have above an aquifer anyway.

[Tarran]

Though there is a bug that turns collapsed layers into the aquifer layer. I've seen it first hand. Screwed up my plans so hard I quit that fort.

[Grumman]

It worked, I'm through my first aquifer. Not only that, but I've got a ready-made moat for defence and since I had to do it on the beach itself, I get a nice little waterfall generating mist each time a wave comes in.

[bowdown2q]

I've had issues with salt water regardless. Doesn't make much sense that the aquifer is salt....  That aside, breaching the aquifer layer is easiest if you just find a mineral deposit and put a shaft through it.  That's one of the reasons I always embark on at least 2 biomes.

[Grumman]

I was trying to embark on a forest next to a Good ocean, with a river, so including a third biome with no aquifer seemed to be asking too much...

...or so I thought. I've restarted (due to being stuck between the ocean on one side and an aquifer at least 6 z-levels deep on the other), and this time there is no aquifer at all on the ocean biome.

[Roderick Jaynes]

Ooh, my best experience breaching an aquifer in 2010 was one where I managed to find enough dry soil to get me down to the top level of the cavern, so my dwarves had a perilous wooden gangplank to walk across in order to get into the fort. Unfortunately, a Troll in the cavern kept spooking them and cancelling their jobs, then the game crashed. 

[LordSlowpoke]

I have a problem semi-related to this and I doubt it deserves it's own thread, so here does:
There's this two-layer aquifer I want to break. I made a 3x3 hole in it, then poured magma (from a pipe, ofc) on it, but upon breaching the central stone, I got water in the same spot again.
Is it some kind of an unconfined aquifer that I fail at breaching or what? Because I guess that pouring enough magma over it should give me a chance at getting past it.

[Grumman]

There's this two-layer aquifer I want to break. I made a 3x3 hole in it, then poured magma (from a pipe, ofc) on it, but upon breaching the central stone, I got water in the same spot again.
Is it some kind of an unconfined aquifer that I fail at breaching or what? Because I guess that pouring enough magma over it should give me a chance at getting past it.

What you need to do is dig a 5*5 or larger hole in the first layer (using staircases is sufficient), fill it with magma, and then dig out the central 3*3 section of your obsidian plug, and the same 3*3 section from the layer below, then fill the bottom layer with magma to create more obsidian. Then you can dig out the central 1*1 section of that obsidian plug and the layer below, and you're through the aquifer.

If you were going to dig out the 6-layer aquifer I spoke of earlier, you'd end up with the following:

Code: [Select]

Aq#     X     #Aq
 Aq#    X    #Aq
  Aq#   X   #Aq
   Aq#  X  #Aq
    Aq# X #Aq
     Aq#X#Aq
        X