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[mrhanman]

Against my better judgement, I decided to embark upon an area with an aquifer because I couldn't find a location without one that also had flux stone.  I dug out my entrance, and then one z level down I encounter damp stone/sand.  I went ahead and dug out the next level down, and it looks like I already found the aquifer.  I read the wiki article about aquifers, but I'm still kinda clueless as to how to proceed.  Are aquifers like an underground river a few tiles wide, or is the whole z level an aquifer?  Can I just go around?  Is there another way through?

Thanks for the suggestions.

[nenjin]

Aquifers are a whole layer of tiles that when exposed produced infinite amounts of water into the adjacent tiles.

After reading the wiki solutions to getting through aquifiers, I just said screw it. You can modify the raws to remove aquifers completely (and you can do this with saved games raws IIRC without regenerating the world.)

I know it's not dwarfy, but it's a very easily solution when you've got the perfect embark that's being ruined by a giant aquifer. There are little to no side effects that I'm aware of....although it may have a small impact on the animal diversity in that biome.

[mrhanman]

Well, I really didn't want to cheat to get around it.  I was hoping to learn how to properly deal with aquifers, but it's more complicated than I initially assumed.

[rhesusmacabre]

Not just a whole z-level but several z-levels (I'm currently about 8 levels into one). You might be able to find a way around it if your site covers more than one biome, but don't count on it.

Concentric rectangles or screwpumps are the best solutions, in my opinion.

[mrhanman]

I don't have the materials for screwpumps presently, but what do you mean by concentric rectangles?

[GhostDwemer]

You drop a big square down one level into the aquifer, then using that material, drop a smaller square down the next level, and so on.

[Sphalerite]

I don't have the materials for screwpumps presently, but what do you mean by concentric rectangles?

You don't have any wood?

[rhesusmacabre]

All the pump components (block, screw, pipe) can be made of wood, and most sites have that. If not, you can deconstruct your wagon for 3 logs.

The "concentric rectangles" technique involves:

   •channelling out a large rectangle of the aquifer,
   •dropping down a hollow rectangle of earth into the aquifer layer to create a barrier,
   •removing the water from inside that rectangle,
   •repeat as necessary.

[GoldenShadow]

This method take a long time, but it will work.

First thing,  dig out a living space and get your farms going. Unless you brought tons of food and drink, you will use up your provisions before you can get past the aquifer.
Chop enough trees to make a carpenter workshop, use it to make wooden blocks, wooden pipe sections and wooden enormous corkscrews.
Turn on Architecture labor on all your dwarfs, and turn on pumping labor on everyone except the miner and carpenter.

Build 2 pumps side by side, dig a channel in front and behind them. The water will be pumped out of both tiles. this gives your carpenter a space to stand and escape from after he builds a wall in the adjacent square. Once thats done, disassemble the pump in front of the newly created floor and rebuild it down the row, make a new channel. Continue until you have a row of wooden walls imbedded in the aquifer layer.  As long as you only work on 2 channeled tiles at a time, and both are being pumped out, you will have very few suspended wall constructions.
Once you think I've gone far enough, turn your operation by 90 degrees and continue. then another 90 degrees , etc until you complete a full circuit. DO NOT channel out the center tiles until you are placing the very final wooden wall in the circuit.

If the aquifer has multiple layers, do the same thing, but instead of pumping the water into a channel, you have to keep a pump on the upper level to dispose of the water. Its the only way to get rid of the water once you are nearly complete.

I've managed to get through 2 layers of aquifer with this method with as small as a 4x4 top hole and a 2x2 lower hole. Its very delicate, if you channel the wrong place, you can screw yourself. Rule of thumb is to never channel out the middle tiles until the perimeter wall is one block from being finished. It can be done, but I literally spent 20 minutes real time resuming suspended construction. there was too much water spawning. You want as little surface area as possible for your pumps to work against, every channel you make increases the amount of water produced.  On the 2nd layer, you will spend a lot of time constructing and deconstruction walls and floors to control where the water can go. Also, Do not dig out the corners. aquifers don't produce water diagonally, but water can flow diagonally.

[rhesusmacabre]

Things get a lot simpler once you reach the rock layers. There you can just "smooth" the rock to hold back the water.

[HiEv]

I recommend reading the Aquifer entry at the Dwarf Fortress wiki.

The "concentric rectangles technique" is called the "cave-in method" at the wiki.  The larger the square you start with, the more levels of aquifer you can penetrate this way.  (If I did my math correctly, 5x5 is the minimum for one level, then add +3x+3 for each additional level of aquifer.)

It should be noted that if you are in an area with multiple biomes, some biomes might not have an aquifer, or if they do it will be on a different level.  If they are on different levels you may be able to use that to get around the aquifers without having to go through them.

The number of levels the aquifer covers varies, sometimes only one level, sometimes multiple levels.  On my current map it's only two levels deep.

If probing the aquifer (using up/down stairways as described in the wiki) shows that it is more than one level deep, then you might want to use the technique described in this post (use the method in the "spoiler" in that post for all of the aquifer levels except for the last level, then use the method described in the main part of the post for the last layer of aquifer).

Hope that helps!

[GoldenShadow]

The cave-in method may not work if youa re using soil. It will turn into aquifer tiles.

[NecroRebel]

The cave-in method may not work if youa re using soil. It will turn into aquifer tiles.

The cave-in method does work if you're using soil. It does not turn into aquifer tiles. It does change types to be whatever soil the aquifer was made of, but it doesn't have the aquifer flag, allowing you to dig through it safely.

[khearn]

I've recently used the "two slit" method, which is linked to from the end of the wiki page. It has the advantage of being able to penetrate as many layers of aquifer as you need to, without requiring a larger area for more layers. The cave-in method (and most others) requires that you know how many layers of aquifer you have before starting, or you may not start with a big enough area.

Once I got through using the two slit method, I wanted a 3x10 area for a dodge pit, so I came back up from below using the drainage method from the wiki. It took a couple of mistakes (and a couple of miners washed into my caverns and drowned) before I figured it out. But once you get it working, it works really well. But you do have to get below the aquifer first. And you also have to have a good place to drain a lot of water to, such as a cavern that connects to the map edge.

Aquifers aren't that bad, once you learn to deal with them. They do slow down your "Phase II" of a fort (Phase I being the initial few rooms to get everything inside and get a few essential shops and farms set up). But they do open up a lot more good embark locations. The vast majority of locations near rivers have aquifers. I used to gen a standard sized world and search for locations with a search that excluded aquifers (among other requirements) and often only find a half dozen embarks that matched. But by allowing aquifers, half the map ends up green.

You can also just edit the raws to remove them from all types of rock. I put that in the same category as turning off invasions. Sure, you can do it, but you're not really playing the same game.

[nenjin]

I've been embarking a lot near towns lately (trying to build an adventurer fortress) and it seems like human civs prefer building over aquifers. Or more appropriately they like building on major river systems which have aquifers underneath them.