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[Lortath]

Hi! Dwarvens scientists
I search in the wiki, in forum, but didn't found anything.

On my new main fort (on a evil mountain, surrounded by a lake), i found a strange thing...
So, when mining tombs for useless migrants dwarfs. Near -10, in rock i found ''Cancel stone designation, damp stone''

Why? Damp stone IN my fort? I think its a underground lake (I didn't break the first cavern, but i found that quite strange). So, its an useless tomb zone. I kept mining and found conglomerate (puddingstone), after fews seconds, water was coming. I barricaded the corridor with a door.

I didn't remember seeing aquifer on my embark.
It's a bit confusing....what can I do with that? (Water reactor, infinite water for well..)

But an aquifer -10zlvl ? Under a mountain?
If needed, i can post pic.

Thank you, Lortath

P.s: I'm sorry for the crappy english. You can correct me any time

[shlorf]

Bleh, i just killed my answer by pressing a wrong button anyway here's the gist.
While aquifers are normally in soil, there's a few sedimentary layers that can be aquifers (sandstone, puddingstone, conglomerate). I'm not sure if it shows up on the embark screen if that layer isn't an aquifer everywhere, you might have also missed it in case you did embark on multiple biomes with different layer structures. Conglomerate goes over multiple z-levels so be careful when digging around below that area.

[sdrawkcabcM tsirU]

Things get a little jumbled when you embark on mountains and volcanoes, with aquifers often appearing far below the top of the mountain. It makes sense when you consider how mountains are formed, at least the kind formed by plate tectonics.

[zephyr_hound]

The answer's in the word "puddingstone" - it's a large cluster stone that has a chance of being a small localized aquifer. Puddingstone occurs in conglomerate, so if your mountain's got a conglomerate layer it's not a surprise to find a puddingstone deposit. And since puddingstone isn't a layer stone, it wouldn't show up on embark.

[Quietust]

The answer's in the word "puddingstone" - it's a large cluster stone that has a chance of being a small localized aquifer. Puddingstone occurs in conglomerate, so if your mountain's got a conglomerate layer it's not a surprise to find a puddingstone deposit. And since puddingstone isn't a layer stone, it wouldn't show up on embark.

Puddingstone cannot contain an isolated aquifer - it merely supports an aquifer that is already present in the surrounding conglomerate layer. By comparison, any other mineral inclusion that appears within an aquifer will block the aquifer, providing a safe path through it (on that Z-level anyways - if it's multiple layers deep, you'll have to hope for inclusions on each level).

[Hans Lemurson]

You now have an infinite water source inside your fortress!  Celebrate!  One of the nice things about stone aquifers is that you can smooth the stone to stop it leaking.  2 useful pieces of information though:
-Aquifers do not leak diagonally, only into adjacent squares(or the square directly below them)
-Smoothing aquifer-stone will stop its leaking, but ANY disruption to it after that will cause it spill forth again.  NEVER ENGRAVE AQUIFERS.  Also, if you try to dig into an aquifer-wall that you've smoothed, water will star pouring out BEFORE you finish your digging job.  Fast Digging and fast Stone-Smoothing are the two most important skills when dealing with aquifers.

In general though, take a cautious stance.  Don't do any aquifer-related projects unless you already have a drainage system in place or can seal-off a flooded area from the rest of the fort.  Aquifers aren't inherently dangerous, they simply allow you to do irreversible damage to your fort.