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[Gorpheus]

In my 2 years of playing Dwarf Fortress I have only just srltarted building wells, as I usually just rely on brewing and brooks for drink and stuff.

I have built two wells, and both times I channelled straight down above a cavern lake in a single tile wide shaft. Whenever I do this my miner(s) fall into the water and die. How can I stop them from dying?

[TeleDwarf]

make sure he has something to stand on while digging. For example dig an an up/down stairwell next to the future well shaft. Then when miner will dig  channels - he will stand on stairs and will not fall down

[Fireborn]

As for straight channeling: If the dwarf can't stand anywhere else, they will stand on the tile they're channeling.  This removes the floor, leading to him falling.  TeleDwarf brought the fix for that.

On wells, I tend to build a designate cistern, usually with four wells attached and near/in my hospital.

If pulling from a surface source, I build a pump set to fill stairs down to a tunnel leading to the cistern.  It is important to understand water pressure, as one of my early forts drown because of this method.

Set up as

Code: [Select]

O_O
_>_
O_Oon the first floor. I use a tile set, so I've forgotten what the ASCII is for wells and downstairs, so forgive if they're wrong.

To prevent the "muddy water" thought, it should be at least two z-levels deep, or at least the spots directly under the well.  As I'm silly, I tend to go at least three, with up-stairs lining the bottom to prevent mushrooms if it ever runs dry, and a drainage chute in case I feel the need to get in, all smoothed, and punch the whole floor of the 6x6+ chamber out after smoothing it's walls.

And actually describing this has made me want to revisit water as a defensive measure...

[Azerax]

updown stairs down 1 z level, dig out an 1x4 area. go back up and channel out 2 holes, 1 square apart down into the z level, make them wells.  mark them as a pond.

[mlwestman]

How I do wells (may be overly complicated):

1. Mine out a room 11x11 no more than one z-level above your stream, brook, or other water source (can be lower than water level, though).

2. Dig up/down stairs into the wall of your new room and down 6-7 levels, ending in an up stair.

3. Channel your well placement.

4. Mine out a new 11x11 room and a 2-wide tunnel to your water source, leaving the last bit un-dug to avoid FUN.

5. Channel a 2x4 section of your tunnel close to your cistern.

6. Place floodgates across your tunnel just past the new channel. Place grates across the channeled area.

7. Channel out one layer of your cistern.

8. Build a lever at well level and a pressure plate set to activate at water 3/7 at one edge of your cistern on the current floor. Link both to both floodgates. Pull the lever.

9. Mine from your cistern to the channeled and grated area.

10. Channel out the floor of your cistern, except for the pressure plate.  Mine out the area under the plate.

11. Continue channeling down until you reach the bottom of your staircase.

12. Go to the water source and channel the tiles between it and your tunnel.

That should work, although I had to dam my current fort's stream because the tunnel was too long. Attaching floodgates to my pressure plate allows the stream to go back to normal when my cistern fills.

-Oh, my first post after reading/lurking for a while.

[Sutremaine]

Teach your Miner to swim first!
Or you could let them channel out under their feet so that they fall onto dry land, and then have them channel out a water source beneath the shaft. But since they'd have to dig themselves back up, you might as well use that escape hatch as access.

Seriously though, dig out a 1x1 stairwell which your miner can stand on when channelling the shaft. If you turn the down stairs in Fireborn's design into up/down stairs and run them up to the ceiling, you can get eight wells out of one scaffold stairwell.

[Necrisha]

Depends on how many extra haulers I've got. I'm usually bringing water down levels so I channel/mine out at least a 3x3 reservoir (average at a 7x7 for mature fortress) about 3-6 levels deep, digging an access tunnel in the bottom and walling off once complete. Either I'll dig fill tunnel into an aquifer/stream/river not taking out the final vital dirt/stone till I've added a floodgate hooked up to a lever for control. If there is no aquifer/moving water source for easy filling I make a smaller one (3x3 to 5x5) and designate as many individual mined out squares at the top as ponds, and make sure I have enough buckets for number of fill jobs this will generate. This works both from surface pools and cavern water though much slower. It's a baad idea to rely on the cavern's lake as the main water source as any flying creature (read FB) could easily enter your fortress through the well. Unless there's an artifact piece of furniture and a cave in trap involved.

[Matoro]

I usually channel through cavern roof above cavern lake and put the well there.

Oh, I learned that fliers can fly through wells if you do this. It was FUN.

[Necrisha]

Yeah. I stopped doing that after a run of 4 consecutive games ended by an FB with deadly dust- the 4th one occurring within the same season as the well opening was dug. The sad part was that it was before any of my dorfs mooded as I was playing a isolated low population game.

[vjek]

Personally I just build the well 1 Z level above the top of the aquifer.

[Nasikabatrachus]

My current fort's first well was in a room over a cavern lake. There were some troubles with forgotten beasts, so the dorfs had to put in several iron doors between the central stairwell and the well room in case too much fun arrived.

I don't like having so much infrastructure too deep in the fort, however, so the ongoing major project is an internal plumbing system. If everything goes according to plan, Uzzuglar will have an internal cistern near the surface, refillable from the fort's brook, and a 2 z-level deep well that services the first floor's dining hall and adjacent hospital. A pump over the cistern will fill the well chamber to just below surface level, and bridges will control the flow of water so that, in the future, water can be diverted to a siege-drowning chamber or simply emptied into the caverns.

[Gorpheus]

Thanks guys, ictried the stairwell next to the shaft suggestion and it worked!

[Button]

I like to use a cistern and a minecart water-loader, similar to the magma loaders you may or may not be familiar with. Auto-refilling cistern with no cavern access!