Today I was playing around with getting through and aquifer, have tried a few times in the past but various things kept going wrong. I finaly managed to punch through an aquifer using pumps, and after doing so I kept playing around with the aquifer and found out a few things.
If you don't know the size of an aquifer, it can take a while to get through, as I think erring on the side of making your starting area larger is better then finding out its too small. I have a new apreciation for those players that build under the ocean, which since I have gone through an aquifer I am going to atempt sometime in the future now.
Though I noticed many people say don't do any digging on the level directly under the aquifer, I found out it is possible to dig out that floor with some preperations. As I found out any tile that is not directly under a damp wall tile or unrevealed tile of the aquifer level can be mined out without any flooding. Which means if you strip-channel the entire aquifer level, you can mine however you want on the floor under it, if it is not also an aquifer.
Also I noticed on the wiki it said waterwheels will not get power from an aquifer level, but somehow mine did. This is how my area for getting through the aquifer looked from the side.
Side view
| PP ... PP |
|_| |_..._| |_|
Top view, stretch out the side view, had soil in the outer corners, and waterwheels in the outer channels, going the same diretion as the channels. Before I built the wheels, I did have some people do manual pumping. Though what I found odd, is that since I didn't build my wall right next to the soil wall, was could see movement in the outer channels, but not the inner one that was left over. So I think you just need to add motion of some sort to a channel in the aquifer level to get waterwheels to work.
I also do have one small question, what is the most layers an aquifer can span per layer it shows before embark? As that will allow me to better plan future aquifer peircings.
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Topic: Aquifer tidbits (Read 949 times)