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[madmenyo]

Hey,

I am trying to setup a well that keeps filling up automatically with a pressure plate. What i am trying to do here is just have my hole filled then when it flows over a pressure plate i want the flood gate to close. Is there any way i could trigger the pressure plate to close when pressure is on it? I see a common design is to let it flow out when the pressure plate gets hit but eventually this will fill the flow out reservoir and my fort is going to flood.

What i previously had was a lever system, 1 lever to let water flow in and one lever to let it flow out which sucked and overflowed my well area a couple of times when i was not fast enough to turn off the floodgate. I could settle for a well above ground but it is way cooler to have a couple of subterranean wells.

Another option i am considering is just to dig out a huge reservoir and just use the levers method to fill it up once every couple of years. I'm unsure however as to how fast water dries up. But i'm sure there should be some kind of system possible that just keeps filling it whenever it's needed without disposing loads of water to caverns and such.

Thnx,

[Sphalerite]

You can avoid having mechanisms entirely by using a pressure break.  If you make the water flow through a diagonal passage at the highest level you want your cistern to reach, the water will be depressurized by the diagonal passage and won't rise above that level.

[madmenyo]

WHAT! But that is cheating!

I will give this a try and see if it works. I rather use somekind of "legit" system though.

-edit-
Yeah works like a charm.

[slink]

Thinking back to when I last built such a thing, I think you need two pressure plates.  I think pressure plates just toggle the state of the gate.  One triggers at water level 7, or 6-7 if you want to be safe.  This closes the floodgate.  The other triggers at 4, or 0-4, and opens the floodgate.  If a lever is also attached you can correct errors in the state of the floodgate, to get it going correctly.  A larger reservoir and a small supply pipe helps to even out the changes in water level.

[xeniorn]

Should be easy to do this way - but I haven't tried it though.

Say your cistern is 5 levels high, and there's a short hallway on lvl 5 (top level) with the floodgate that controls the water input and a pressure plate that controls that same floodgate. On the other side of the cistern, there is a crevice on the wall with another pressure plate - which controls both the input floodgate and a floodgate located at lvl 4 which controls the flow of water through the overfill drain.

Now, you'll need to have a lever to control the input floodgate to start the cistern for the first time. Once you do that, water will start flowing in and fill the first 4 levels of the cistern. When it reaches lvl 5 it will activate the control pressure plate on lvl 5 - opening the drain at lvl 4. This will reduce the water lvl on 5, deactivating the plate and thus sending a "close" signal to both the input floodgate and the drain on the lvl 4, stopping the flow of water.



Hmmmh, when I started writing this I thought I had solved the refilling problem as well but I seem to have erred there.

But this setup allows you to have just 1 lever you pull whenever there isn't enough water - you won't risk overflowing your fort since it will automatically stop once full. To be on the safe side, make the drain hallway lead to a large enough area - as wide as your cistern so the water that flows out safely evaporates before going anywhere further.

EDIT: it seems slink beat me to it. But according to wiki, pressure plates will always "open" stuff when activated and "close" them when the weight is removed from them, so you can't make it so that the one on the 0-4 opens the floodgate since it will send the close signal when the water is below 4.

[Sphalerite]

I think pressure plates just toggle the state of the gate.

Not quite correct

A pressure plate sends an 'open' signal when it goes from being not triggered to being triggered and a 'close' signal when it goes from being triggered to being not triggered.  So, if you have a pressure plate set to trigger at water levels 0-4, it will send an 'open' command when the water goes from 5/7 to 4/7, and a 'close' command when the water goes from 4/7 to 5/7.

The danger with this approach comes from the fact that pressure plates only send this command once, and floodgates have a time delay.  When a floodgate gets an open or close command, it waits 100 cycles, ignoring any commands it gets in that time, and then responds to the command.  If a floodgate gets an open command, and then a close command within 100 cycles, it will ignore the close command and stay open.  Because the pressure plate only sends a single 'open' command, this can result in the floodgate staying open even while your fortress is flooding.  Doors are a bit safer since they open and close instantly rather than with a delay.

Pressure plates also have a 100 cycle minimum on time.  A pressure plate which switches on will then stay on for at least 100 cycles before turning off.  This helps a bit with the problem with floodgates getting commands too quickly and staying stuck open, but I've still seen automatic water-regulating systems stuck open or closed.  This is why I prefer water pressure regulation systems that don't require pressure plates and active mechanisms.

[krenshala]

what has worked for me in the past was a pressure plate set to trigger on 0-3 water.  when water drops below 4/7 the floodgate is opened, and closes again 100 ticks after the pressure plate registers 4/7 or higher.  with a one tile wide water way, and a 3x3 (x3) cistern, I usually end up with the cistern holding about 8/7 or 9/7, and occasionally 10/7, water when the pressure plate is on the very bottom.  it needs a lever to initially open the gates, and to act as a safety shutoff, but a second floodgate not connected to the pressure plate is safer.  i've had it where i used the safety shutoff, then opened the lower gate to drain the cistern (to collect the idiot speardwarf's gear after he drown) only to have the pressure plate override the safety shutoff lever and reopen the main floodgate when the water level dropped low enough. ;(  I've build a second floodgate only connected to the safety shutoff lever since.

safety shutoff lever -> shutoff floodgate (before main floodgate)
safety shutoff lever -> main floodgate
pressure plate (trigger on 0-4 water) -> main floodgate
cistern draining lever -> cistern draining floodgate (optional, but recommended).

make sure you have enough room for the drained water to spread out and evaporate, or have it pumped somewhere else so you can get at whatever is in the cistern you wanted to retrieve.

[slink]

I don't doubt that I mis-remembered it.  It was all the way back in the days of 40d when I built one.  I had pressure plates controlling power to pumps for a fountain.  They operated on the depth of water in the reservoir at the bottom.  I remember that I had a devil of a time getting it to work right, and had to repolish part of the floor of the dining room where the fountain was located because of floods.

I like to put my wells on the level just below groundlevel, and feed their reservoirs by gravity from surface water.  That only works without flooding because DF's waterflow model won't transfer 1/2 unit of water from one side of a wall to the other, so it's not quite legitimate either.  I guess we all go a lazy way some of the time.   

[NTJedi]

I have found it helpful to embark at the edge of an aquifer... then finding secure and healthy water for a well is an easy setup.  Plus most of the map is still mine without the hassles of the aquifer.

[targetstar]

hey im makeing a well aswell, but unfortantly i don't have the ability of pumps or cahnnel cause you know its like 5 storage undergroud surrounded by the other rooms, so i normaly use the buckey brigade tecnic, but unfortantly, only 2 people are doing it at a time even thoguh i have aroudn 20 buckets, and when it is filled people will take water awary from it, any idea how to keep it filled to feed my wounded during seiges?

[NTJedi]

Outside rain water collected in a water tower which is then pumped cleaned into the well...  only need one pump operator until you have a power source.   My previous aquifer suggestion works superb for me.... easy, clean and lasts forever.

[xeniorn]

hey im makeing a well aswell, but unfortantly i don't have the ability of pumps or cahnnel cause you know its like 5 storage undergroud surrounded by the other rooms, so i normaly use the buckey brigade tecnic, but unfortantly, only 2 people are doing it at a time even thoguh i have aroudn 20 buckets, and when it is filled people will take water awary from it, any idea how to keep it filled to feed my wounded during seiges?

Designate multiple 1-tile ponds instead of a huge one. Each pond will be filled by only a single dwarf, but DF doesn't care if it's all technically the same pond, it just sees all the designated pond areas.

[Nameless Archon]

In building a gravity-fed (auto-refilling, no mechanisms required) well:

It is important to remember that some intruders can swim (and that if it hasn't been fixed, water can push creatures through fortifications). I find it very useful to implement a vertical u-bend in my plumbing. Then, atop the top of the stairs on the fortress side, I place a grate, to prevent access from the exterior. This seals the fortress water supply from intruders, while retaining the automatic-filling gravity solution. Water (pressurized) can be piped anywhere needed from that access point by tapping the plumbing from above safely at a diagonal.

Building the plumbing out of stairs in order to avoid trees blocking the pipes makes it permanently error free - trees can't accidentally grow in them.

With an enemy-free well also comes the ability to add enemy-free fishing, since you can use the same source of water to supply ponds/cisterns for both. Remember that fishermen can do their work through a grate, so you can put in a few around the well and above your cistern, and dwarves will (sometimes) catch fish from your cistern.

[NTJedi]

**Side Question**

I have some buckets with water inside them... which I know has problems with making\using lye.   Can I use these buckets with water to make some wells OR would this bring a different problem??

[GoldenShadow]

the lye problem is fixed in the latest versions, Dwarfs will dump water on the floor, emptying the buckets before putting lye in them.