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[Exitstrategy]

I've been playing DF for a few months now, and consider myself to be decent at avoiding running forts into the ground within a few years. Unfortunately, I have started to have a serious problem with refuse now that I can manage a fort for more than a few years.

Does anyone know of an efficient/interesting way of dealing with refuse so that I don't have to keep piling it outside my fort?

[Catsup]

minecart stop it into a pit that has a hatch over it. The hatch may be linked to a pressure plate triggered by dwarves in front of the minecart, or may be 1 Z level below the minecart level and manually opened and closed. Just make sure you seal off refuse from being dropped in somehow when retrieving refuse for use.

this should solve both your problems of refuse being in the open and having no where to store refuse.

[Jenniretta]

Use as much of it as you can- bones for bolts and crossbows, skulls for totems, hair, shells, hooves, etc. for crafts and decorations, and hides for leather. Anything you can't use will rot away with time, if that's too slow dump it into a 1x1 Garbage dump zone, minecart into a 1x1 area, drop it into magma or water that freezes, or build an atom smasher and remove it that way, etc.
Most of the refuse is actually usable, though, at a craftdwarves workshop, and you can deal with it by trading it all away or firing it into a goblins hide.

Even tattered clothes can be sold to caravans for a fraction of their original value.

[vjek]

Miasma will not escape out of a diagonal path.  So  you can build two diagonally adjacent walls in any corner, and designate the single tile inside as a garbage dump, and then set your (o)rders to dump everything.  No need to have a refuse stockpile or an area larger than a single tile.

After everything is dumped, if you ever need bones (or other items) for whatever reason, just unforbid them and the dwarves will pull them as needed out of the garbage dump.

If you want it extra nice, put a pet-proof door on it to prevent the flies and vermin from escaping.  If you need a diagram, let me know, and I'll post one.

[StruckDown]

I usually fill my obsidian cast with refuse before I make obsidian. That gets rid of everything.

[i2amroy]

I usually fill my obsidian cast with refuse before I make obsidian. That gets rid of everything.

Actually magma-safe materials should be able to be retrieved once you dig out the obsidian. Also non-magma safe materials have a chance of surviving directly proportional to how long they are exposed to the magma before being obsidianized (so if you go water->magma then most won't survive, but if you go magma->water then they have a good chance of survival).

[doublestrafe]

Build a minecart quantum stockpile for refuse 1z under the surface. Channel out the tile above it, then build a floor where you channeled out. The stockpile is now considered "light" and will not generate miasma.

[StruckDown]

I usually fill my obsidian cast with refuse before I make obsidian. That gets rid of everything.

Actually magma-safe materials should be able to be retrieved once you dig out the obsidian. Also non-magma safe materials have a chance of surviving directly proportional to how long they are exposed to the magma before being obsidianized (so if you go water->magma then most won't survive, but if you go magma->water then they have a good chance of survival).

That's odd. I go magma first, and have never recovered anything. Then again, I guess I never throw out magma-safe materials.

[Ultimuh]

I usualy atom-smash refuse and whatever mundane boring things which clutter up my fortress.

[laularukyrumo]

Bone crossbow bolts are a godsend, they're cheap to produce and great in metal-short embarks, or even just for training. As far as stuff you don't want, yeah, I'd recommend making an atom smasher--sadly, you can't make a stockpile overlap with a bridge, but you might be able to rig a minecart quantum dump to drop it into a magma tile. Tattered clothing is also, as suggested, a great way to buy out entire caravans, and I recall at least one incredibly dwarfy story of someone slaughtering the HFS with a massive pile of dirty laundry delivered via retracting bridge. It was glorious.

[spook54321]

I usually fill my obsidian cast with refuse before I make obsidian. That gets rid of everything.

Actually magma-safe materials should be able to be retrieved once you dig out the obsidian. Also non-magma safe materials have a chance of surviving directly proportional to how long they are exposed to the magma before being obsidianized (so if you go water->magma then most won't survive, but if you go magma->water then they have a good chance of survival).

That's odd. I go magma first, and have never recovered anything. Then again, I guess I never throw out magma-safe materials.

That's what he said, though he worded it a bit weird.

Simply put, If it is in the magma for a while (If the magma and your refuse are in the same spot then water is applied) the item is not likely to survive (unless magma-safe).  Some items take longer to melt/burn than others, though, so it is possible to have them survive if they are not in for a lengthy period of time.

If your refuse is in your water, then magma is applied, the item is not exposed to the magma for a long time.  This greatly increases rate of retrieval.

[Exitstrategy]

Hmm... I've never even used the quantum stockpile method before. I may as well give that a go. Thanks for all the tips guys.

[EBannion]

Bronzebanners 2 was the first fortress I really consciously planned for trash disposal. I ended up digging a shaft down like 90 z-levels into the magma adn then making it a dump on like four different floors, so that they wouldn't need to walk very far regardless of where the trash was.

I haven't had any dwarves fall in to it, but I did pit a few horses and some small animals into it and they were hilarious - they burst apart from the fall after getting coated in magma, so then burning body parts flew all over the place.

I also had a soldier have some trash fall on him (not in that dump, there was a zoning problem) and break his leg and his head and his spine. Must've been some heavy goblin toes.