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[bucket]

I decided to challenge myself a bit and embark on a freezing area with a volcano. I was hoping the lakes would thaw at least a few months out of the year, but no such luck. Really, my only concern is drinkable water.

I know that ice will melt directly above a layer of magma, but what about ice boulders? I was considering making a channel for magma, then a dumping zone for ice boulders over that, then a well on top. Will this do what I expect or will the boulders stay frozen?

I know there are other options (e.g. pumping magma up to the lakes or digging straight to the caverns) but I was hoping for something a little less involved for now.

[ShinWalks]

I don't think mined-out ice melts to give usable water, unfortunately. Could be wrong, though...

[BurntIce]

I am reading the series of your thread title, and I wonder if you will be building a section of The Wall?


"When ice melts inside a fortress, it becomes water, but the water does not leave mud when it evaporates. Melted ice is of no value as a water source." -- http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Ice

[khearn]

Just dig down to the caverns. They'll probably have water.

[ral]

I agree that the easiest thing would probably be to just look for caverns with water. (You can crank up the chance of caverns having water in worldgen so that all or almost all of them have water if you don't mind genning a new world.)

Another thing that works is causing ice to cave in. If you dig out a dry area for a pool below some ice, and then dig around the ice above  it to make it cave in to the pool then the lowest z-level in the cave-in will melt. Personally I find this to be a pain though.

[Lagslayer]

You could always build a room above the ice and fill it with magma, then drain the water to an underground room.

[Lav]

"When ice melts inside a fortress, it becomes water, but the water does not leave mud when it evaporates. Melted ice is of no value as a water source."

Can't you clear that "melted" status by putting the water through the screwpump?

[Lytha]

How about leading some magma into the z-level below your precious murky pools. If you don't fill the magma plumbing to 7/7 and have the magma flow around, it should melt the ice in the z-level above. Then you can install a well up there, or try to lead the water downstairs; subterranean water won't freeze to ice. This may be a bit problematic though, since there's magma in the way.

I see a problem with that though. I don't think that a snowstorm refills a murky pool back to 7/7, so after a while, your murky pool may become dry.

In that case, you really should either use your aquifer or the cavern water for the well. This means of course that your water will eventually become polluted by forgotten beast poop and goo.


Or, you could utilize the fact that only two buckets (2/7) are needed to create a solid block of ice, which should then melt into 7/7 water. (Semi-)automatizing this would be painstaking micromanagement and very tedious and be a potential deathtrap to many dwarfs due to the involvement of magma and ice - so heck yeah, go for it!

[Farmerbob]

Since Magma evaporates and layer ice always melts into 7/7 water, you can set up a perpetual supply of water from a frozen murky pond.

This is not a quick fix, though with good miners and mechanics / masons it won't take terribly long to set up.

Tunnel lava under your frozen murky pool, be sure that no more than 1/2 of the pool will be melted by the lava.

Set up a series of magma pressure plates and floodgates under the pool

Set up a series of water pressure plates and floodgates underground but linked to the pool to drain liquid water.

Use the water pressure plate system to activate drainage of the magma under the pool, to allow magma to evaporate and water in the pool to re-freeze.

Use the magma pressure plate to activate drainage of the water in the small compartment underground to allow it to drain and make room for the next melt.


Basically a really complicated pump.

You only want to unfreeze half the pool during normal pumping operation - just in case something doesn't work, you can melt the whole pool, and allow it to refreeze and refill fully.