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[davidc]

I'm not ready to fight what's in the cavern. I drilled down to what I believe is the second cavern layer (50-level). My dwarves are dying of dehydration right now. I'd like to set it up so that they can access the water without dying to monsters that may be in the cavern right now.

How should I go about doing that? Maybe I could pump to a reservoir using strong dwarves and a floor grate in the piping? I'm not sure how I could go about walling off a section of the floor so that swimming monsters couldn't get through, to encapsulate the water (and then the path to it)...

[Arx]

Wells can reach an indefinite distance downward, so the simplest and fastest solution may be a well in a room that can be sealed against flying Forgotten Beasts.

Alternatively, you could dig a tunnel 1Z below the lowest level of the cavern and run the water through it to a well, hopefully barring all but FBs that both swim and fly, which may or may not exist:

Code: [Select]

Well
  V
  | _______
  |        \~~~~~~/
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
_____________


[taptap]

You likely need booze, not water. Unless your surface is very hostile, you could gather and brew plants there, else you can do the same in the cavern (pig tail, cave wheat, plump helmet, sweet pods are all brewable). You can embark without drink and without available water that way.

Wells can reach an indefinite distance downward, so the simplest and fastest solution may be a well in a room that can be sealed against flying Forgotten Beasts.

This is wrong to the best of my knowledge. There is or was a limit of 20 ? z levels down or I made a mistake in that fortress. 

[Arx]

Wiki says it's indefinite.

Booze can help a ton with dehydration as well, definitely. It's a little illogical, but I've survived multiple poorly-planned winters with it.

[PatrikLundell]

The way I do it is to locate the cavern with the water and then plug the exploration hole. When I know where the water is I dig a little "lake" out of the rock beside the lake (but out of reach from the cavern), plus an air locking drawbridge pair. When the drawbridges are hooked up (and preferably tested), I breach the cavern lake and let the water in and plug my entrance. When the new lake is full I close the drawbridges, remove the plug, and build a local well as well as a water collection zone. When I need to top up the water I let it in through the outer drawbridge, close that one, and then let it in through the other one.
Because of an oddity in the flow physics you can have the surface of your artificial lake one level below that of the cavern lake if you fill the lake through a downwards hole (e.g. a staircase). The advantage to that is that you'll get a steady flow into the lake until it's full, rather than until it reaches the same level as the now partially drained cavern lake.
After having this in place, you can expand on it by another well higher up (obviously over a different tile of the lake, and you can do all the digging and building except the breach while the lake is filling up), and a longer term pump stack to actually move the water up.

[Niddhoger]

While wells can reach down an indefinite amount, the bucket still has to travel up/down.  This is relatively quick, but with 50-100 levels you really start to see lines forming behind your well. 

Also, dehydration is really a booze problem.  Healthy dorf's only drink water if there is no booze within reach.  Well's are mostly for dwarven healthcare- you need clean water to clean wounds and give to patients (injured dorfs only drink water).  Dorf's will also wash themselves off through wells. 

[utunnels]

Dwarves can survive desert without any water, if they bring some plump helmet with them.