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[einstein9073]

I am building a tower out of ice. Yay for temp-immune constructions.

How can I design and build a reusable ice farm?

The only idea I had was to dig and flood an above-ground pool large enough that the resulting ice would last my masons through the cold season. (Maybe an entire embark tile? 48x48?) BORING

I want to be able to cause water to flow somewhere (preferably near the tower), then freeze. I then want the water to STOP so my dwarves can mine and harvest the ice safely. I then want to be able to reflood the freezing area for a second (or more) harvest.

I have a brook I can tap and fill an underground cistern with liquid water to have liquid water available to pump. But how can I engineer a farm that is both safe for dwarves and usable more than once a season?

[Hyndis]

Easy way would be pumps.

Make the pump so that the source is underground, thus liquid water. Have it pump above ground, like into a channel. Each pump creates 1 block of ice. Put many pumps side by side and link them to a lever. Pull lever, you get a line of ice outside. Pull lever again to turn off the pumps, mine out the ice, and then do it again.

If you want to do larger amounts of ice all at once you will probably need to get magma involved.

An alternative solution would be a bucket brigade. Lots of 2x1 pond zones with a well nearby, and lots of buckets. Dwarves haul water from the well and dump it into the pond. Water turns into ice. Mine out the ice.

[Epacsten]

Channel out a 10x10 hole, and a 25x25 cistern below that. Add more layers to suit your needs. Connect the cistern to a water source and use a pressure plate controlled door to cut off the source when it's full. Use pumps to fill the hole. When the water freezes, dig it out, use the ice, and refill. If your cistern is sourced from an aquifer, you have infinite ice until winter ends.

[expwnent]

I do this with bucket brigades. Here's an AutoHotkey script that can help a lot for setting up ponds:

Code: [Select]

WinWait, Dwarf Fortress,
IfWinNotActive, Dwarf Fortress, , WinActivate, Dwarf Fortress,
WinWaitActive, Dwarf Fortress,
Sleep, 100
Loop, 10 { ;this is the number of ROWS
Loop, 2 { ;this is the number of COLUMNS
Send, {ENTER}
Sleep, 100
Send, {ENTER}
Sleep, 100
Send, p
Sleep, 100
Send, {SHIFTDOWN}p{SHIFTUP}
Sleep, 100
Send, f
Sleep, 100
Send, {ESCAPE}
Sleep, 100
Send, {RIGHT}
Sleep, 100
}
Send, {DOWN}
Sleep, 100
Loop, 2 { ;this is also the number of columnns
Send, {LEFT}
Sleep, 100
}
}
It worked in 40d. I've been having some trouble with it lately, so it may take some tweaking. But it sets up ponds MUCH faster than you can manually. And having multiple ponds means you get multiple pond fill jobs, because you only get one pond fill job per pond, regardless of the size of the pond.

Just be ready for a zillion job cancelled, inappropriate building and job cancelled, no water source messages.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Heart of Ice. Something I built on a glacier once.

Two chambers; upper one can be filled or drained of magma, lower one is ice. If you want water out of it, the level below the ice needs to be rock (i.e., can hold liquid water). Water will freeze into a solid block at well less that 7/7, so you can mine out half the chamber, flood with magma to let it melt, then drain and let it refreeze.