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[MelloHero]

Alright. I've tried a few different ways to do this, and none have been satisfactory. I've finally arranged all the ductwork for my water-feature in the meeting/dining hall, including what feeds the well. This includes mist generated from two mini waterfalls on either side of the mayor's throne/dining table, which feed channels that go through to the center of the room, feed the well, and then drop down for a second misting in the museum. However, all the times I've added H2O to the mix, the pressure has either flooded the fortress, or it's just been a bare trickle, forcing my dorfs to go out and fend off the carp while they drink from the river like wildebeest. I've currently got the main channel that connects to the river connected by two diagonal single-tile channels to a nearby stream, in order to keep the hydrostatic pressure that troubled me so at bay. I assume adding more channels would increase the volume of water flowing into the system, but what's the best way to do that: a series of single-square channels, all connected by the corner, or one diagonal connection to the stream leading to a straight path into the feeding channel? This channel currently, even with the two diagonal connections, still is no more than 1/7 deep. Suggestions? I'd like to solve this without pumps, if possible.

[martinuzz]

Make use of pressure plates. Make an 'intake' reservoir that fills up from the river, and closes off the connection to the river (floodgates linked to pressure plates) when it's water level is more than 6/7.
Or make a floodgate in your dining room museum that shuts off intake when the system overflows (trigger at water 1/7)

Question: where does your excess water go? Chasm? Since you don't want to use pumps, I assume you are not pumping it back up into the river.

[Quatch]

make your outflow bigger than your inflow. Surround the waterfall tiles with a ring of grates to catch splash. Make the reciving pit of the waterfall 2 z levels lower than your dining hall, rather than 1.

check the wiki for the water repeater feature that can generate steady tiles of 4/7 water, which shouldn't overflow your current exits.

[MelloHero]

@Martinuzz: The water drains out of a cliff face. Looking at flow, it seems that the channel going into the fort isn't flowing fast enough. It's 6/7 and 7/7 where the channel meets its tributaries, but leading up to the spot where the water drains into the fort it tapers off to 1/7, almost as if it were flowing back out the intakes, like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

                            7           77777
                          6            6 7777
                        5             7  7777
                      5             7    7777
                    6             7      7777
                  6             7        7777
▲               6             6        77777
1123344435566666677777777  7777
▼                                       77777

I'm guessing I'll dam up the intake around the "2" and dig a new channel without a downstream outlet (the lowermost 7 on the left, next to the stream). Good? Bad?

[Untelligent]

For the record, if you put text diagrams in Code tags, the characters line up.

[Huin]

Incidently - I've run into problems with pressure plates controlling floodgates before. Because of the lag between the plate triggering and the floodgate closing, there is a risk that the plate can "un trigger" whilst the floodgate is still closing. This leads to the floodgate and the pressure plate becoming out of sync. The same thing can happen with opening.

At least, that's my take on it. I've had problems with a cistern, well below river level that flooded a section of my fort - even though the cistern was regulated by a pressure plate.

If in doubt, have an override floodgate, and maybe a secondary floodgate with a manual lever control (where the lever is in a flood-safe location) so you can shut things off if they look to be going south.

I wonder if there's also some utility in using floodgate/bridge linked to the same pressure plate in regulating the water flow, as their "closed" state is inverted from each other.

Edit: maybe something like:

Code: [Select]

=======
.B.^.X.
=======

Where B is a bridge, ^ is a pressure plate, and X is a floodgate. You'll want a lever to reset the bridge and floodgate if they desync with the pressure plate - but this system should be more or less fail-safe (unless someone/something destroys a floodgate and/or bridge).

[MelloHero]

I dammed the current intake and built a new intake shaft, fed straight-on by the river with two diagonally-accessible "bends" to remove pressure but keep volume. Works beautifully.