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[Josiwe]

Hi, I want to build a waterfall that falls through my fortress about 10 z-levels to a collection area where I can pump the water away. However, my vertical shaft would pass through a farm plot. It's 5x2, muddied underground. I would like to channel one tile out and place a grate for the water to fall through.

Will doing that interfere with the plot's ability to grow food / use potash fertilizer? Also please correct me, but I understand that the surrounding tiles will not get wet as there is no "splash" effect, only mist which evaporates.

Also, I've seen mention of using waterfalls to wash dwarves. Is that legit or a community joke? If legit (I have people covered in blood, vomit, and mud) how do I make them walk through the falling water - traffic designation?

In terms of drainage, I was thinking of simply digging a tunnel to the edge of the map and carving a fortification in the last tile. Assuming one continuous stream of water falling from above, is this sufficient or will I risk flooding? I'm actually building 4 single tile waterfalls to fall from an aqueduct a few levels above ground, down through the fortress around the main stair shaft. Should I build say 6 tiles of edge drainage or is 4 enough?

And finally, would there be any performance improvement in building pumps to speed up the drainage or is letting it flow naturally about the same? I can get power down there if necessary.

Thanks!

[Dave Mongoose]

If you've placed the farm plot already, I think you will need to remove it before you can channel out a square (best to wait until after harvest). This won't interfere with function, and you are correct: there shouldn't be a splash.

People are mostly talking about washing dwarves in the new version (0.31.xx) because otherwise blood, mud and vomit gets tracked everywhere. If you want to replace mud/blood/vomit coverings with water coverings, washing them should work but you would need to 'surprise' them with it - they won't walk through the water even if you activate them and station them underneath it.

If you're pulling the water from an infinite source like a brook, then fortifications would work ok - I would go with more than the number of waterfalls, since I think liquids flow slower through fortifications than they do through open spaces. Pumping would clear the drainage out faster, and might be a safer option.

The safest way to run a waterfall is to circulate the water - have a pump stack bring it back up to the top so that it's impossible to have more water coming down than going up. This option would probably need 'top-ups' from time to time, since it's common to lose a bit of water to evaporation.

Oh, and I've heard that if you have an underground river on your map then there is a risk that tower-caps will grow in your pipes and block water flow - building roads through your pipes will stop them from growing there.

[Josiwe]

Thanks. I have over 4000 food at the moment and I rarely use more than 4 of my 8 plots, so I'll just deconstruct them at the end of the season.

I will build the stack to circulate the water as you suggest - I'm assuming the idea is to also build an inlet from the brook to initialize it and top it off, then seal that out via floodgate. (Of course I discovered a lovely sphalerite vein in the shaft I just dug...)

No underground river so I'm safe there. Well, time to see what dwarven engineering is capable of!

[Josiwe]

I ended up building this and had some issues. I had a single tile tunnel under each bottom grate leading to the water reclamation pump, and my bottom floor was getting lots of splashing. It probably wouldn't have flooded but my dwarves might have been swimming through the dining room. I expanded the tunnels to 3 tiles wide with a 3x3 directly under the falling water, and that solved it - I guess when the bottom tile was at 7/7, some of the falling water moved laterally instead of vertically before the 7/7 spread into the reclamation tunnel.

Now I have mist throughout the fortress and all my dwarves have recently been comforted by a lovely waterfall. I have to turn on the input pump to "top it off" for about a minute once a year. Thanks for the advice!