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[palin88]

I need to run some tests, but I'm imagining using a pressure plate rigged to detect water as an emergency shut-off valve on a pump to prevent overflow.

[Yahivin]

I had a similar issue. The pressure generated by the water above does not appear to be proportional to the amount of water above. I had a similar dining room set up and the water above 7 in a 1x3 shaft and 2/3 in the 1x3 shaft above that. Those 28 units of water generated enough pressure to fill my entire dining room and hallway, of area much greater than that, near instantaneously. When the rooms filled the water above was not reduced at all even though it was separated from any other sources.

On the plus side you could generate infinite water from a small reservoir and probably power lots of water wheels.

[Rhodan]

Here's what I do to work the well next to my dining room deep below the river:

code:

#~###########
#~######  ^ #  # Wall
#~######__H_#  ~ Water
#~### %%~~~~#  % Pump
#~~~~~#######  H Well
#############

Pump can't pump water above their own Z-level, so the water will never flow into the well room. The pump is powered by the river, the gears and axles running down the same shaft as the water.
The machinery freezes up in winter, but the water beneath the well is plenty to last through the season.

[ November 18, 2007: Message edited by: Rhodan ]

[Doctor Lucky]

AFAIK, water behaves realistically, if slowly, to pressure.  Magma, incidentally, does not, according to Toady: It's "chunky" and doesn't try to equalize surfaces.  I've had cases where I've drilled into stable reservoirs from above and not had my tube flood, but that might be a bug.

For those recommending pouring water off the map edge:  In my experience, you cannot build, dig, or otherwise designate the edgemost squares of the map, so I think you'd be out of luck trying to tunnel out the side.  Of you tunnel to a chasm, you can dump stuff off the bottom of the map.  Similarly, if you find a cave river and come in from above, you can dispose of stuff, as in my experience rivers flow to chasms eventually.  Or perhaps just off the map in some cases.

I haven't yet tried building an above-grade channel, using walls as levees to get water above-grade to the edge of the map, but I'm priming the pumps right now to do that.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I've got a largish cistern (5 square diameter cylinder 9 z-levels tall) with a siphon pump running from the bottom level to a surface outflow.  I'm about to roof the surface areas in an attempt to prevent them freezing in winter.  The cistern is fed from grates under my entrance area (emergency measure in case I screw up) and also from a long series of tubes from the cave river, for an infinite source.

This oughta be messy.

DL

[Shadowlord]

Personally, I drain excess water into the end of the brook (where it flows off the map).

Here's a screenshot of a small part of the screen showing the drain and brook:

[Here's a link to the image in case the image doesn't show]

The draining water comes from the north down that tunnel, and falls into the brook, where it flows off the map with the rest of the brook's water. (The bars keep dwarves from trying to run into the drain tunnel)

[ November 19, 2007: Message edited by: Shadowlord ]

[ November 19, 2007: Message edited by: Shadowlord ]

[Stormcaller]

quote:and also from a long series of tubes

Required joke: Your fortress has the Internet?

[Sean Mirrsen]

I almost flooded my fort in the first year when I tried to make an underground farm under an aquifer. It was a sandy desert, too, which froze in winter, so there was no water source except the aquifer.
Was kinda stupid really. I somehow thought that a pressure plate rigged to trigger on water would close a floodgate. Heh.
I made a floodgated 1x1 room, and dug a staircase up into the aquifer. Water came down, and I blocked it. So far so good. I make a pressure plate to "shut off" the floodgate if water gets out of  the area, and order the lever pulled. I flood the farming area, but when I ask someone to pull the lever again, everyone decided to go eat, and water rose too high. "Meh", I thought, "I gotta make a drainage system. The brilliant solution was to tell a miner to dig a trench in front of the door, that would later be expanded into a multilevel drop to a reservoir below. And covered with grates. Yeah.
Because of funky digging the miner got trapped in the room, and because of my pressure plate, the water that escaped as he opened the door held the floodgate open. The miner was stranded in a room that was quickly becoming a watery grave. Frantic attempts to save the miner included:
- ordering the lever pulled, to no avail - pressure plate held the gate open;
- ordering the construction of grates at the mason's, more on that later;
- ordering another miner to complete the drain, which proved impossible because of poor planning - water flooded the area where he would have to dig;
- ordering the trapped miner to build a wall to block water was attempted a bit too late - water too deep;
- ordering the same miner to dig himself out was attempted even more too late - miner was drowning;
Finally, ordering the other miner to breach the already-full room wall saved the miner who was winded and would probably not live another 5 seconds. The miner was kinda washed out of the room, and dropped sleeping. I tried to contain the flood by digging a channel across the corridor, which helped for a bit, but before that was executed, I ordered the deconstruction of the pressure plate - which I should have done from the start. A speedy carpenter/mechanic crossover happily escaped death by drowning when the miner was chipping the last bit of floor that separated him and the plate, and deconstructed the plate. Then pulled the lever.
The flood stopped, but I had my main staircase flooded, because the water could not be held by a single 2x1 trench at that point. In this whole time, the mason whom I ordered to construct the grates did a great job - he ran all the way from z -2 to z -6, through the walled-out aquifer and two corridors 5 screens long, and returned the same way with one chert stone. He took the single most distant stone he could possibly reach from his workshop, just because it was 4 tiles below. Another stone was 7 tiles to the left of the shop. Toady REALLY should do something with that distance calculation thing.