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[shadowclasper]

so I had this idea for an automate protection for a well. Pressure plates.

So the idea is that you set up low traffic designations on these tiles (to ensure they are not casually walked over) and then you link them to a grating at the bottom of your well (leading into an underground watersource such as a lake obviously)

If done right, what -should- happen is that stepping on the pressure plate should open up the grate for the dwarf seeking to get his water.

This won't work obviously if the dwarves are telepathic and don't even bother to go to the well if it can't reach the water below, which could be a problem with this design.

[wierd]

I don't understand the problem with wells.

Then again, I only ever use them for sanitation, as dwarves really should never be drinking water anyway.

The way I deal with wells, is to have a 2 level cistern that has only the bottom level filled with water, and only to 4/7 deep. That's enough for a bucket to work correctly, but too shallow for a dwarf to drown if they drunkenly fall in.

Inside the cistern are steps leading back up into the fortress.  The cistern is automatically filled at 4/7 using a pressure plate linked to a floodgate, which is in the floor above the 4/7 water, so it pours down, allowing more efficient use of pressurized water to fill the cistern. Before passing the floodgate, it gets sprayed through a "filter" made of fortifications, ensuring aquatic terrors of the deep never make it to the cistern.

I don't have any major problems to report with such setups, but I tend to only make them for the hospital zones where clean, fresh water is a requirement for proper function. (Though dwarves often abuse their hospital privileges to take baths in the hospital.)

Really, you don't want dwarves near the wells anyway. "Filth" from bathing builds up around them in my experience. (Why I try to keep dwarves out of the hospital if I can-- sick dwarves wit open wounds aren't something that should make contact with said filth.) Dwarves walking through the filth will get filth on them, then be driven to bathe, leading to an endless queue of dwarves at the well to get clean, and subsequently dirty again.

Using a simple showering system, or dunk tank, works better for cleaning, as the filth is easier to deal with that way.

I haven't had a dwarf drown in a well in a very long time...

[NonconsensualSurgery]

Creatures cannot destroy grates from below.

Water will also travel through a U-bend and come out only one tile lower than it started.

So, a U-bend under the caverns protected by an invincible grate, with the well drawing from one side of the U.

[shadowclasper]

Creatures cannot destroy grates from below.

Water will also travel through a U-bend and come out only one tile lower than it started.

So, a U-bend under the caverns protected by an invincible grate, with the well drawing from one side of the U.

The idea for mine is that you just dig down and have done with it, no need to risk dwarves to drowning.\

also, I make 'bathing' chambers usually. So it's a place near my meeting area and another with LOTS of wells. With only one well in the hospital. This way when dwarves go bathing, they tend to do it in areas far away from my infected.

Also placing a nice little 'this area is for low traffic' around the hospital well and 'high traffic' around the bathing wells helps too.

[wierd]

I just don't see the need for elaborate pressure plate sensors for wells, when simply keeping the water at 4/7 prevents drowning if they stupidly fall in. (And they will eventually fall in. They are idiots.) That's "waist deep" on the dwarf. They would have to be unconscious to drown in that.

If the dwarf can get to the well, and use it, they can fall in. It's that simple. (Or at least that's been my experience.)

Having a way for Urist McDumbass to get out of the cistern and back into the fortress solves the problem neatly. Also, any dropped items in the cistern are pathable at 4/7.

Using traffic designations seems like a good idea, but I hate drawing them. For whatever reason my dwarves seem to ignore them whenever I do put them down anyway.

My solution has been to plunk them into a slow moving current chamber underneath a meeting area to wash them when they get too dirty.

(Room above has meeting area over a bridge, since they can be drawn over constructions. In the room below, inefficient pressure provides a slow trickle, which leads off the map edge through a fortification. Dwarves fall in, filth washes off, accumulates near the drain far away.)

Sadly, flowing water is deadly to FPS.

[shadowclasper]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Cleaning
and
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34407.0

suggest that just setting up one of these in a major meeting area or snaking it around the main areas of your fort will basically make a constant mist cleaning system. If mist actually cleans off contaminants and such?

[wierd]

The problem with a normal bathtub is that it quickly fills with all kinds of funk, and ends up being a bigger problem than its worth. I don't rightly know if mist actually cleans dwarves or not. Due to mist usually involving flowing water, and flowing water == FPS death in the making, I usually avoid it.

The screwpump based mist generator is interesting though. I wonder if it could be built under the flooring of the dining hall, to pump mist up through the floor without actually risking a waterfall?

I may have to experiment.

[shadowclasper]

The problem with a normal bathtub is that it quickly fills with all kinds of funk, and ends up being a bigger problem than its worth. I don't rightly know if mist actually cleans dwarves or not. Due to mist usually involving flowing water, and flowing water == FPS death in the making, I usually avoid it.

The screwpump based mist generator is interesting though. I wonder if it could be built under the flooring of the dining hall, to pump mist up through the floor without actually risking a waterfall?

I may have to experiment.

water has to fall in order to generate mist. The reason it works for this is that it's sucked up the moment it falls before it can splash out of the square. You get mud below the pumps if you don't put in statues and such. What I'm thinking is having a series of these in rotation set up so that dwarves regularly pass through and get doused in water.

[NonconsensualSurgery]

I usually do a 3x3 of stairs in the middle of my fort, with water falling down the hollow center into a drain and other plumbing. Dwarves use this staircase frequently and constantly think misty thoughts. This is perfectly safe by dwarf standards, with only one or two deaths per fortress due to somehow falling down the shaft.

It isn't a very efficient way of cleaning dwarves though. In fact, just looking at it I'm not sure mist really cleans nearby units at all.

Contaminants will be left behind after the first few steps into water. Dwarven bathtubs work best if transit is one-way, if they are fairly wide, and if they flush forcefully every once in a while. I achieve this by using bridges to drop dwarves into a swimming pool, but it seems that even a 1-tile fall into water can be lethal. Maybe push them in with a waterfall, and then a pool that automatically maintains a certain level? Hmm.

[shadowclasper]

I usually do a 3x3 of stairs in the middle of my fort, with water falling down the hollow center into a drain and other plumbing. Dwarves use this staircase frequently and constantly think misty thoughts. This is perfectly safe by dwarf standards, with only one or two deaths per fortress due to somehow falling down the shaft.

It isn't a very efficient way of cleaning dwarves though. In fact, just looking at it I'm not sure mist really cleans nearby units at all.

Contaminants will be left behind after the first few steps into water. Dwarven bathtubs work best if transit is one-way, if they are fairly wide, and if they flush forcefully every once in a while. I achieve this by using bridges to drop dwarves into a swimming pool, but it seems that even a 1-tile fall into water can be lethal. Maybe push them in with a waterfall, and then a pool that automatically maintains a certain level? Hmm.

It seems like the best option might be to create an area that has a shaft going straight down until it touched molten rock and then just constantly flushes down to that point, burning away contaminants.

[Raphite1]

The way I deal with wells, is to have a 2 level cistern that has only the bottom level filled with water, and only to 4/7 deep.

If you only have a single z-level of water, doesn't it come up "laced with mud?"

[wierd]

Mud is deposited when water flows on top of a dry tile. By reducing the time it takes to fill the whole cistern (using pressure) you can make the cistern almost mud-free.  After that, the trick is to never let the water get below 2/7.

A clever trick is to make a single channeled tile where the bucket descends, and the rest of the room at 4/7, 1z deep.  Those tiles will have 4/7 on top of a 7/7. Dwarves can (usually) swim 1 tile before drowning, and then get to the 4/7 water, and then to the stairs. You could spend forever trying to get something like that perfect. Best just to look for a local maximum, and stick with it.

[EvilBob22]

I usually do a 3x3 of stairs in the middle of my fort, with water falling down the hollow center into a drain and other plumbing. Dwarves use this staircase frequently and constantly think misty thoughts. This is perfectly safe by dwarf standards, with only one or two deaths per fortress due to somehow falling down the shaft.

It isn't a very efficient way of cleaning dwarves though. In fact, just looking at it I'm not sure mist really cleans nearby units at all.

Contaminants will be left behind after the first few steps into water. Dwarven bathtubs work best if transit is one-way, if they are fairly wide, and if they flush forcefully every once in a while. I achieve this by using bridges to drop dwarves into a swimming pool, but it seems that even a 1-tile fall into water can be lethal. Maybe push them in with a waterfall, and then a pool that automatically maintains a certain level? Hmm.

It seems like the best option might be to create an area that has a shaft going straight down until it touched molten rock and then just constantly flushes down to that point, burning away contaminants.

A word of warning: I once accidentally built an up stair under a cavern lake, where the stairs also went down to some magma.  The water flowed down the stairs, into the magma, creating obsidian, which collapsed down the the SMR before disappearing.  It took forever before I could do anything about it.  Oh, and the FPS went from 60 to less than 1 (it read a solid 0 for a few hours real-time).

[SixOfSpades]

My solution was rather cruder, but it does have some style. My four wells are 3x3 with a staircase in the center, and 2 levels deep. Any dwarf dumb enough to fall in might be stunned (30-foot drop between the well itself & the bottom of the reservior), but at least they're in easy reach of the exit.

The reservoirs have no inlet. I filled them from the local Murky Pools, and my map is Temperate/Cold, and one quirk is that every year, on the night between Obsidian 14th/15th, all surface water on the map freezes at least momentarily. So even 1/7th water magically becomes 7/7ths.

The z-level between the well itself & the reservoir has walls built all the way around the "bucket shaft" (except for the exit from the staircase), which is important for cleanup purposes: As the well is supported by the tops of the wall tiles on the level below--as opposed to the floor tiles on its own level--that means that blood & other contaminants washed off by dirty dwarves can be safely & quickly cleaned up by building / removing floor tiles (out of soap from the very conveniently located stockpiles). The tiles adjacent to the well are designated as Restricted, so only dwarves that are actually bathing will step on them.

[MDFification]

I try to keep dwarves out of the hospital if I can-- sick dwarves wit open wounds aren't something that should make contact with said filth.

Dwarf Fortress: The game where hospitals are more deadly than goblins.
I personally run waterfalls through my wells, and my cistern constantly drains off the map. This gives an additional happy though to dwarfs who try to bathe, and is in general a good thing to have.
I keep the well slightly outside the hospital, to provide easy access without tracking the filth in. The hallway outside the hospital should ideally be occasionally flooded to sweep filth off the map.