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[Lord Vetinari]

So, I'm going to make a (for my standards, at least) rather complex water network. My fortress is inside a mountain, underground but still at an higher z- level than the bottom of the valley where the river flows. I'm going to pump the water to a reservoir on the topmost level of the fort, than make decorative waterfalls in the main dining room and in the (future) throne room, give water to the wells inside all of the smaller secondary dining rooms, prison cells and hospital, make some usefull water traps and then recollect all the water inside a reservoir at the bottom of the fort, which will have a channel(s?) that will (hpefully) dump all the extra water back inside the river from an hight of at least one z level to avoid water flow from the river to the bottom reservoir instead of the contrary.

My questions are:
- Will this work?
- If the water continuosly flow (even wells will be put on a channel instead of a dead end small reservoir) it won't flood the fort, right?
- Can the river accept back all the extra water or I'm going to flood the valley?
- Is the extra z level of the final dump really necessary? Also, will a single exit channel be enough?
- Is my fort going to succumb to FPS hell?

This fort is rather succesfull, I don't want to flood it. My older forts don't have the same geographical features of this one, so I can't do experiments there either.

[Vehudur]

Ah, pressure...

First, you understand the basics, such as pump stacks and powering them, correct?  If not, read up on those before anything else.

Water (or magma) will attempt to fill up to the level of the source so that it forms a flat surface (a lake).  This means, unless you want your fortress flooding, you have to plan carefully so that this doesn't happen.  Also, remember, pumps pump water really really fast.  You need to account for this huge volume of water, not just a little.

Plan carefully. Without seeing your fortress, that's all I can really say.

A few tips:

Build a shutoff gear somewhere in the power train.  (the power train is whatever gets power from your power source to your pumps) 
If you are using a pump stack, be careful where you put it so it doesn't collapse when you turn it off. 
This should be somewhere it can be accessed, behind an otherwise always-locked door. 
Ensure that your pump stack isn't going to be destroyed by the first building destroyer that walks along.

[hexrei]

So, I'm going to make a (for my standards, at least) rather complex water network. My fortress is inside a mountain, underground but still at an higher z- level than the bottom of the valley where the river flows. I'm going to pump the water to a reservoir on the topmost level of the fort, than make decorative waterfalls in the main dining room and in the (future) throne room, give water to the wells inside all of the smaller secondary dining rooms, prison cells and hospital, make some usefull water traps and then recollect all the water inside a reservoir at the bottom of the fort, which will have a channel(s?) that will (hpefully) dump all the extra water back inside the river from an hight of at least one z level to avoid water flow from the river to the bottom reservoir instead of the contrary.

My questions are:
- Will this work?
- If the water continuosly flow (even wells will be put on a channel instead of a dead end small reservoir) it won't flood the fort, right?
- Can the river accept back all the extra water or I'm going to flood the valley?
- Is the extra z level of the final dump really necessary? Also, will a single exit channel be enough?
- Is my fort going to succumb to FPS hell?

This fort is rather succesfull, I don't want to flood it. My older forts don't have the same geographical features of this one, so I can't do experiments there either.

You can always back up your save before jumping in, but a simple door at the river source with a lever indoors should give you an easy fix if it does flood. I think the river doesn't "drain" logically like it should when you redirect water from it so you could in fact flood the area if any of your refuse water doesn't end up right in the river.

[Golcondio]

I'd like to add: pave your waterworks with constructed floors, otherwise you may get trees growing into them and stopping the flow...

[slothen]

at the top, right at the top of the pump stack, before the waterfall, use diagonal baffles to kill the water pressure at the top.  This slows the pump action.  This is also a good place to put floodgates/doors to cut off the waterfall.  At the bottom of the waterfall make sure the the basin for water collection is a few z levels higher than the level it drains at.  The general rules is go overboard on drainage.  You might want to do the fortifications in the edge of the map trick, then you can build as many as you need.

Lastly, you don't need running water for your wells, and because you'll probably spend time messing with the waterfall a lot and you might want to turn it off to save on fps, make it so turning off your waterfall won't leave your wells dry.

[Lord Vetinari]

Many thanks for the replies and suggestions, I'm working on it. I'll tell you what happens.

@ Golcondio: will smoothing the floor work as well?

@ Sothen: What is the edge map fortification trick? Something related to invasions?
I'm making three lines, one for the waterfalls, one for the wells and one for the traps, that's why I thought about running water under the wells.

[BigJake]

Many thanks for the replies and suggestions, I'm working on it. I'll tell you what happens.

@ Golcondio: will smoothing the floor work as well?

@ Sothen: What is the edge map fortification trick? Something related to invasions?
I'm making three lines, one for the waterfalls, one for the wells and one for the traps, that's why I thought about running water under the wells.

If you mine to the edge of the map, you can smooth, then carve into fortification the piece of stone on the very edge.  Anything going through that fortification will flow off the map.

[Lytha]

Smoothing the floor has no effect on the growth rate of trees. They'll just grow there anyway.

Constructed floors or (empty) custom stockpiles over the waterways are the only way to stop the trees from growing to full size.

[Tfafalcon]

My advice is that you create a closed system, rather then pumping the water from the river and then releasing it once it's been through your fort.
The reason is that pumps are incredibly powerful, and water is fairly viscous in DF. Those facts combined mean that any place where you're relying on the water draining away is a potential flooding hazard when combined with an infinite water source.

For example, in my fort I made a statue garden with a giant waterfall in the middle. I had a pump stack to take the water from a small reservoir under the garden to the top of the waterfall, and a floodgate separating the reservoir from my main aqueduct.
The entire thing worked perfectly until I forgot to close the floodgate one time. The pump stack was able to draw enough water from the aqueduct to create a 3x3 column of water 4 z-levels high, flooding my statue garden (and would probably have flooded my fort too if I didn't have doors to seal of the water.

The lesson here is that you should never give and pumps that will pump into an 'open' space (such as a waterfall) an infinite source of water. Just divide your water-system into multiple smaller units, each only holding as much water as is necessary to keep it operational.

[Shoku]

The plan of flowing water in and out of the river feels a bit excessive, you could just pump the lower reservoir up to the top one.

Now, as for trouble with floods the only question is how low are those wells? When you have any water sitting on 7/7 water it looks for the closest open spot connected to the same body of water but at a lower level. So if you had an open cistern with a well very close to it and some drainage leading a long ways away and then you suddenly dropped tons of water into it the well would probably overflow.

This one time I basically did that but I was draining the water into a bottomless pit. There was so much water that basically all the space in the pit was taken up and my waterfalls overflowed before the water could fall out of the way.

[Vehudur]

Drainage works, but you need to be VERY VERY liberal.  For every pump, I provide 3 tiles of drainage (the passage is 3 tiles high or wide, and I prefer high so pressure helps it along).

That means for my typical 4 pump stack I provide a passage 4 tiles wide and 3 tall, with those floors in between removed so pressure can help it along more easily.

[Lord Vetinari]

I liked the idea of dumping back the water back to the river; I imagine it in Stonsense, with those drains coming from the walls of the fortres... Maybe with statues, as if they were gothic gargoyles.

However, I feel a little ashamed, but it seems that I overlook a -errr- very minor detail: I'm in temperate climate, which means that the river (and the arificial waterfall too?) freezes for 1/3 of the year. I guess that the only viable option is the closed system.

I'm tempted to make a backup and follow the original plan to see what kind of fun results.