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[agvkrioni]

I need water for winter. There are caverns down below, 130 levels below my dwarves' dining room. The caverns are dangerous and I have to seal them off. But I want to construct pumps that push the water up. Never having dealt with something like this, I assumed I could put a pump (powered by one of those perpetual-motion-water-pump-wheel machines) at the underground lake*, attach copper pipe** and run it up to the dining room area***. But I have a couple questions.

1* Would I put the pump on the Z-level above the lake (i.e. the shore), or in the lake?

2** I've never built pipe, but I assume you can assign direction, right? So I'd put a pipe on the output section of the pump, then just attach a vertical pipe section continuously each z-level above the other til it reached its destination?

3*** How would the output look? Should I channel a little reservoir/pond and the last copper pipe section would just end, pushing water up into the bottom of the pond? Or would/should it spit out horizontally pouring down into a reservoir|\|?

4|\| How do you stop the pond from overflowing? Can you block the ends of pipes with a level-controlled floodgate/hatch, etc?



EDIT: Oh crap, can you not just build sections of pipe?

[NecroRebel]

1. You'd put the first pump on the z-level above the lake, the second pump on the level above that, the third pump, on the level above the second pump, the fourth on the level above the third, and so on, up until you put the 130th pump on the level above the 129th.

2. You can't assign directions to pipes. Actually, you can't build pipes at all; pipe sections are used exclusively to build screw pumps, and the only way to raise water above the level where it occurs naturally is with a series of pumps. The most common and efficient arrangement of pumps to raise water is described on the screw pump page on the wiki.

3. The last pump in the pump stack would pump into the top level of where you want the pond.

4. Water will not rise above the level that a pump is on, so the pump stack will simply stop pumping any more water once the pond (and the output tiles of every pump in the stack) is full. It will resume automatically if or when the pond drains even the slightest amount so long as the stack is powered.

[agvkrioni]

So every single pump has to be powered then? all 130?

[NecroRebel]

Yes, but the way the pump stack works if one of them is powered all of them are (though you will need 1300 power to power them).

[agvkrioni]

Now I just have to figure out how much power the perpetual motion waterwheel machine generates. I've got the plan on the wiki so when the time comes I'll just build it and add more ... waterwheels I guess. Or pumps and waterwheels. Whatever. We'll see.

[i2amroy]

Now I just have to figure out how much power the perpetual motion waterwheel machine generates. I've got the plan on the wiki so when the time comes I'll just build it and add more ... waterwheels I guess. Or pumps and waterwheels. Whatever. We'll see.

A two waterwheel Dwarven Water Reactor (DWR) generates 170 additional power, so you would need at least 8 of them to power the whole thing. I also know that there have been a few higher value DWR designs floating around that work at the same efficiency of the smaller ones, but I don't know if they have ever been posted to the wiki.

[WealthyRadish]

Are you sure that the first source of water is that deep? I'd explore the higher caverns a bit more before making a pump stack this large. It's rather uncommon for a cavern layer to not have water somewhere, and it'd save a ton of hassle... unless this is an aboveground tower fort or something. If it isn't, dwarf power should be enough to pump from the highest cavern.

[Triaxx2]

One pump and a mine cart track works just as well. Pump the water up one level, filling a reservoir which is crossed by a mine cart track. Have the cart guided down, what will surely be a long, twisty track, then push it across the water. It should dip one level, passing through at least 6/7 deep water, and be stopped by a non-dumping stop on the far side, then guided back to the top onto a stop that dumps into the pond. Piece of cake.

Power can be applied to set it on automatic after it's first push, sending itracing down the levels, through the water and then back up, over and over again.