Print

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

[Jamiescott]

I'm playing 0.34x on a mac with macnewbie (in case it matters) and am relatively new to the game, but I thought I understood that water only moves easily orthagonally and with difficulty diagonally, but not at all through solid stone. I am playing a cliff face with a river outside (not an underground one) about 8 z levels below the cliff. There is a sand layer near the top of the cliff that I dug through. The river (in the portion where I dug) is lined with gneiss and has a nice outside bend where I can easily divert a channel for my well (I did this once before successfully). That whole layer has flooded. I don't know if it happened suddenly or gradually, the first I knew of it was when my miner ceased work due to "dangerous terrain". I had gotten a damp stone warning previously, which I respected, allowing the job to be canceled, though I couldn't see why the stone was damp. I examined the river edge very carefully, stone by stone, and there are no diagonals in contact with the river and no breaches. Then as I flipped up through the levels I noticed the sand layer near the top was blinking the blue "damp stone" warning too, 5 z levels above the river! But that didn't bother me. I figured it was just a weird bug, but I stopped digging there anyway. At that point there was no water in the fort, just some damp stone along the edge. The one thing I did differently this time from when I successfully diverted a river before was I dug the channel up to the containing wall and then left it for a time without smoothing (I had other things I had to take care of).

So, my question is, does the water come directly through porous stone after a sufficient amount of exposure (there were also small veins of fire opal, tetrahedrite and native silver in the area contacting the river)? or is this a bug? I did read something about porosity and aquifers, but I couldn't find anything about water moving *through* stone, just that aquifers are found *in* porous stone. Would smoothing have prevented this fun?

[WanderingKid]

My guess is you found an aquifer, and it was above your miner.  Smoothing won't help.  Defeating an aquifer requires the usage of a few techniques, most of them involving significant water pumps.

To find out specifically what soil types can contain an aquifer, reference this:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Aquifer#Where_they_are_found

[itg]

Just to clarify, smoothing aquifer stone walls will stop the water from flowing, but you can't smooth the ceiling, of course.

[WanderingKid]

Just to clarify, smoothing aquifer stone walls will stop the water from flowing, but you can't smooth the ceiling, of course.

Thanks for the clarification, yet I have a bit of confusion.  Does wall smoothing increase incrementally like building walls do?  Even under pump using the doubleslit, you rarely can get more then a bit of a wall put up for the aquifer pierce.  I don't believe designations work under the same process.  While it may actually work, I can't see how it could happen.

That said, I believe only 3 aquifer layer types can be smoothed: Sandstone, Conglomerate, and Puddingstone.  I know the sand, clay, and loams are out.  Are there any others?  I can't test peat at the moment.

[Garath]

peat functions as soil and definately isn't some kind of stone, so it can't be smoothed

[Jamiescott]

Thanks for the answers. Is it possible for the river itself to also be classed as an aquifer? Because I'm quite sure I didn't mine down through one and the damp edges are all along the river, nowhere else in the fort except for those weird ones 5 z levels above the river in the sand layer—but they are also only on the edge where the river would be if it were up that high. I mean it's sand, an edge of damp sand and then just open sky on that level. The damp sand is the cliff face that plumets directly down to the river surface 5 levels below. It would be the river bank if the river were on the same level. Meanwhile down below where the river actually is located, it's all gneiss except for the few veins. I didn't designate anything below the river level, and found no damp stone in my stairwells away from the river's edge. If I had punched into an aquifer from above and the river's bank were breached, wouldn't the aquifer drain the river, instead of flooding the higher level where I channeled for my well?

[WanderingKid]

At this point, can you upload the map?  We're guessing a lot here about the possible problems and we're working blind.

Zip the folder containing the fort up and upload it to dffd.wimbli.com, then come back here and post the link.

[Jamiescott]

Sorry I can't, and I realize I may never get an answer because of it, but I foolishly deleted the region. I didn't even take any screen shots of the river's edge which would have been easy to do. I guess the sudden appearance of the flood put me in panic mode and I stopped thinking clearly. It only occurred to me that I might get help from the forums afterwards. *sigh*

[jcochran]

For future reference, damp rock indicates one of two things. One of them is an aquifer and the other is being adjacent to a tile containing water either horizontally or overhead. And the effects of digging that damp rock depends upon what's making it damp.

If it's due to an aquifer, then you are going to get liquid water flowing.
If it's due to any other source of water, well .. it depends upon how you dug. For instance, you can dig a horizontal tunnel underneath a river, lake, ocean, any body of water and not have a drop of water leak into your tunnel provided you don't breach the "invisible floor" on the Z level above. You'll get lots of 'damp rock detected, job cancelled" messages while digging said tunnel, but it's perfectly safe. If however, the water source is adjacent to you horizontally, you will get flooding.

But given what you said originally, I agree and it looks like you hit an aquifer.