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[JRHaggs]

My axles/gear assemblies all say "Active", they show the correct "Total Power Needed", but they only show 100 "Total Power".  I have six water wheels attached, to this system, but they don't seem to be stacking. What am I missing?

The water wheels are in series. Roughly:

   G -  - G -  - G - 
   |       |       |     
WWWWWWWWW

I tried searching the forum and wiki, but, alas, I was thwarted.

edit: Does there need to be a space between the water wheels? WWW WWW as opposed to WWWWWW?

[Cattani]

Also relative to my interest. Never got the hang of powering structures right.

[Agent_Irons]

Power distribution is a little weird. You need enough power to power everything before the whole thing will grind into gear.

I think you might be having trouble with your waterwheels. The flag for 'running' water is a little..finicky? Try separating your waterwheels from the main gear train and looking at them individually, if you can do so without dropping them.

[escondida]

What direction is the water beneath them flowing? Assuming the following layout (key at bottom of post), and that the *center* tile of the water wheel is channeled out...

Code: [Select]

z:
 ☼
 |
WWW
...the level underneath should look like this:

Code: [Select]

z-1
...
###
~~~

And the water should be flowing either east or west.

Code: [Select]

Key:
☼ = Gear
| = axle
W = water wheel
. = open space or walkway or whatever, doesn't really matter
# = wall
~ = water

Also note that you can widen the channel and have several waterwheels parallel to one another. A waterwheel provides support for any other waterwheel whose central tile touches its own.

[Melting Sky]

It sounds like some of the wheels aren't in flowing water. Flow is really weird in how it works and is the most likely culprit when trouble shooting water wheels. Have you connected levers to the gear assemblies or done anything else that could cause them to disengage?

[JRHaggs]

The water flows from the bottom left, where it is drawn from a stream, to the upper right, where it flows down through my fortress producing great joy and limitless satisfaction.

The water wheel on the right is producing 100 urists and, in concert with the gear assembly and pair of axles to which it's connected, consuming the expected 17 urists. The water wheel on the left is producing 0 urists while consuming the 16 urists expected of its components.

I have deconstructed and rebuilt the left water wheel to make sure I didn't foul something up.

I'm baffled.

edit: also, by this point, I've completely deconstructed the setup described in the OP. At this point, it's really just trying to figure out how the hell water wheels work.

[Larix]

Your description suggests you're pumping the water from the stream. Is this correct? Pumped water doesn't flow, it "teleports" and can thus fail to power waterwheels, which require "flow" to work. Try to increase the drainage rate, so that there's 4-6 water instead of seven in most of your channel. That tends to work.
Or try it with direct "flow feed" instead of pumps.

[RealFear]

I think you'd need to understand what the game consider's "flowing" water to be.

The last time I used water wheels, I had a sytem where there was a big pit with water wheels suspended in the middle-ish.
Then I'd flood the pit slowly, and that would create enough "flow" to make the wheels spin.
When it was flooded I'd simply pump/drain the water out, resetting the pit, and also causing more "flow".

Each cycle would last a decent amount of time, and got me by, it also got me a shit-ton of power from a relatively small area.

[JRHaggs]

The water is channeled from the stream, not pumped. The rightmost square of water at the top of the image is the top of a 10 or so z-level drop. It feeds two 9x1 waterfalls and two wells.

I think you're right; I don't understand DFflow.

I demolished the one that was generating power, and the other one still was doing nothing.

?

[escondida]

Pumped water can definitely flow (see ThatAussieGuy's Mechanical River of Power for a spectacular vindication of this. I've implemented my own successful takes on the River of Power a number of times.

Where is the water going after it passes under the last wheel? If you want to induce flow, it probably needs to drain somewhere, such as off the edge of the map or into an aquifer. Once you get the flow going, you can shut off the drain to reduce lag and the water should still flow.

[Darulio]

Pumped water can definitely flow (see ThatAussieGuy's Mechanical River of Power for a spectacular vindication of this. I've implemented my own successful takes on the River of Power a number of times.

Where is the water going after it passes under the last wheel? If you want to induce flow, it probably needs to drain somewhere, such as off the edge of the map or into an aquifer. Once you get the flow going, you can shut off the drain to reduce lag and the water should still flow.

To expand on this, I was able to create "Flow" using a closed system with a dwarf operated screwpump; it would pump water right back into itself and flow in a circle, mostly through pressure. Produced power just fine.

[ltprifti]

it takes some tinkering; i had a 100 windmill wind farm and it took an hour to make sure the gras and axels to disperse the power was all correct; one mis-alignment can mess it all up

[Di]

Any continuous body of water that touches the map edge is considered flowing even if it's 7/7. Waterfalls are not continuous.

If you're into it, there's also an ancient magic ritual, when you drain reservoir through the map edge, then block the outflow with door and refill it to get unmoving flowing water.

[GavJ]

You can use pumped water, it just has to be draining quickly enough that the spots under the wheels a re not 7/7, despite the water being pumped. I.e. it needs to be draining near enough and quickly enough to outdrain the water source. Otherwise the water will teleport past the wheels and not power them.

A foolproof way to do this is to just build your wheels within a few tiles of the edge of the map, and the edge will drain water easily fast enough to outpace a pump for a little ways out, enough to get a wheel always running.

You can drain off the edge undergroudn too - can't dig the last tile, but you can smooth and fortify it, which lets water drain past.

[blue sam3]

Pumped water can definitely flow (see ThatAussieGuy's Mechanical River of Power for a spectacular vindication of this. I've implemented my own successful takes on the River of Power a number of times.

Where is the water going after it passes under the last wheel? If you want to induce flow, it probably needs to drain somewhere, such as off the edge of the map or into an aquifer. Once you get the flow going, you can shut off the drain to reduce lag and the water should still flow.

To expand on this, I was able to create "Flow" using a closed system with a dwarf operated screwpump; it would pump water right back into itself and flow in a circle, mostly through pressure. Produced power just fine.

You don't need the dwarf. Just hook the waterwheel up for perpetual motion magic.