I've had a little expiriance dealing with aquifers in past, so I at least know where to start. I had the miners dig out a collumn and bridge over to it so we can set up a support system ontop, it dosen't take long. Next, the carpenter, under my guidance, gets to work setting up a crane system to support the collumn one we tunnel under it, I have him rig it up to a lever nearby (although out of the way of posible flying debries ofcourse). The miners channel under the collumn and the bridge is removed, leaving it completly hanging from the support.
Finally, the miners channel a hole down, into the aquifer, which as expected, immediatly fills with water.
Click! Thwak! BOOM!!
A complete sucess, the aquifer has been punctured.
Now I'm not sure weather to be confused or amazed. It seems the plug falling into the aquifer caused all the water in the chanel to be blasted out upwards, this I was expecting, what I wasn't expecting was for it to FREEZE MID-AIR! That's right, the escaping water has frozen solid into some sort of armok dambed ice sculpture!
As strangly beautiful as that may be, it's deffinatly not safe,we can't dig through the aquifer tunnel until we break this thing up, guess we better start chisseling.
After much tediousness in placing and removing floors to try and mine away this dambed ice feature, we are finally left with a nice clean tunnel through the aquifer, now lets put in some stairs, it's bloody freezing out here!
ARMOK DANGIT! Turn's out were dealing with a multi-level aquifer! Theres no more dirt left up here to make a second plug and I can't make heads or tails of what the carpenters rambing on about using pumps, dosen't he know aquifers are infinite?
Suddenly, idea. When the plug fell in and the water got blasted out, it flash froze right? well why don't we freeze the aquifer! Well not the aquifer exactly, more we channel out the area around out future staircase and then wait till it frezzes and use the natrual ice as a wall.
We quickly put my plan into action. It works! we finally have a path through the aquifer and a clear route to presious stone. Praise the miners! (and me ofcourse).
It's now the 16th of Malachite and the stairs have been put in, we have couvered up the hole to the surface with whatever dambed materials we could find, the astetics don't matter, it will soon be buried in snow anyway.
I should mention, we had a few close shaves and nearly lost the miners when trying to freeze the aquifer, that thing freezes up fast! Fortunatly, no one was harmed, I've no idea where I would find another miner out here.