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[vjek]

I'm running into some strange behavior, and hoping someone may have an explanation.

I've embarked on a very cold glacier biome (9907°U) and am trying to setup an ice mining operation to create large amounts of ice for construction.   The goal here is to build a large ice palace out of constructed ice.

I've designated a pond, and have set up a working ice creation area (poured from above), but when I mine it, the ice "boulder" appears momentarily, and then vanishes forever.  It appears during mining, for a few ticks, then is gone.

Anyone know what's causing this disappearing ice?  For reference, if I create the ice with dfHack liquids, it works as expected and mines as expected, repeatedly, in the same area.

[CaptainLambcake]

try again in winter?

[Akura]

It's a glacier biome. It should be frozen all year.

One question though. How hell are you filling the ice walls to begin with? The water in the buckets should freeze en route. If it's staying warm enough to be liquid until it drops, maybe it's keeping its temperature as a wall, but then melting once it is mined.

[vjek]

hm, i'll check the temp of the wall, but again, it works with dfhack liquids, it's just using the pond that is different. The well water is from deeper in the fort, (down at the normal 10015°U) but to your point, I've tried it with a well at the soil-level temp (9990°U) and yes, it freezes in the bucket. 
In fact, using the well at all at that temp freezes the water in the well bucket, causing 10[Ice] to be formed repeatedly.  Unfortunately, not the kind of Ice you can use for constructions.

And yeah, it's frozen year-round, so no seasonal issue here.

I've tried pond-forming the ice on top of constructed stone floors and they deconstruct.  I've tried it on a bridge, and it doesn't actually visibly appear on the bridge, but it can be mined off of it, at which point the bridge deconstructs as well.  Still the same problem of no ice "boulders" though.

[itg]

You're mining the ice by channeling from the top, right? Any area considered to be underground automatically warms up to "room temperature." If, say, you tried to mine the ice from the side, leaving an icy roof, the ice boulders would quickly warm up and melt.

[Patchy]

I haven't done an ice mining operation in forever. But from what I remember the wall should produce the ice boulder and it should stay there for use, though it is likely something might have changed since I last tried it. Another note, are you in a glacier biome or tundra biome? There are subtle differences between the two, and lots of people will use either biome name interchangebly with the other. Granted since you are making the ice wall form, I don't think the biome really matters at this point, cause if the area you're making them in is too hot, it shouldn't form the wall in the first place. Long story short... I'm just as confused as you are.

The water in the bucket freezing, I can answer though. The bucket will act like insulation so long as the water is initially drawn from an area that doesn't freeze. This is easiest to note in a tundra with an aquifer, where if you remove the roof over some of tiles immediately adjacent to your well and your dwarf attempts to draw water from them, he/she gets lots of useless ice. But if he attempts to draw water from the still subterranean side, he/she will get usable water, and can carry it to a point in a freezing biome to dump it where it'll immediately form a wall. I've done this to build natural ice wall palaces so I can engrave them vs having constructed ice walls.

[vjek]

Yeah, I can't figure out what is causing it, so I've moved the operation up to the surface, and am drawing the water from the stone layers.   That's working fine.  And yep, it's 100% for sure a glacier biome.  surface temp is 9907, soil temp is 9990, and stone temp is 10015.  The wiki says it will only melt in the stone layer, and that makes sense, given the freezing temp is 10000.  The soil layer is still 10° colder than necessary.  /shrug

For whatever reason, regardless of temperature, either drawing water from soil layers or trying to freeze it in the soil layers leads to unpredictable behavior.

In any case, thanks for the responses.

[Hurkyl]

As an aside, have you considered pouring the ice walls in place?

[fractalman]

If he needs ice walls where its warm, it needs to be in construction form-and so he needs an ice boulder...


hm...  Maybe you're getting a micro cave in and that's messing things up somehow? *shrugs*...
(I can't actually tell if you've fixed the problem or not.)

[laularukyrumo]

From the method you're attempting, I assume you don't have an aquifer. If you did, that would make it quite easy--build a way to pressurize the water and force it above ground to the freezing area, or perhaps just channel down to the aquifer and mine it out. I can't tell what kind of shenanigans you have going on, though.

Also, you said the temp was 9907 degrees urist? Holy shit, that's really really cold. Watch out for cold damage, cause that's a thing.

(For reference, 9907 Urist is -61 Fahrenheit, or -51 and 2/3 degrees Celsius. Hoooly shit that's cold.)

[vjek]

If he needs ice walls where its warm, it needs to be in construction form-and so he needs an ice boulder...


hm...  Maybe you're getting a micro cave in and that's messing things up somehow? *shrugs*...
(I can't actually tell if you've fixed the problem or not.)

It's all good now, pulling from a well in the stone layers and placing the water on embark level +1 (so the pond designation is one Z higher than the embark) works perfectly.  I've made 20 perpendicular pond designations (west-east) and a north-south row of stairs, built some buckets and the ice mining is working great.

And yes, it's chilly. heheh.