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[Kneenibble]

I am having some trouble with the waterfalls I am trying to install in my dining room and meeting hall.  Mainly that they keep flooding the place.

The waterfall involves several basic 2-pump stacks.  I started with a single tile, covered with a grate, which served as both the intake for the bottom pump and the drain for the actual water.  That flooded quite quickly, so I changed it to six grated holes.  That also floods quite quickly.  The hole can only be so big, because grates do not support each other and I don't want any open holes in the floor.  You know exactly what these sick beards will do with them.

Because it is difficult to describe accurately, here are screenshots:

Top level with the output pumps:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Main level, with dining hall and meeting area, intended for the actual waterfall:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The top level of the cistern underneath:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyone have some experience to relate about indoor waterfalls of this nature?  How big a drain do I need?  What can I change?

[taptap]

How is the water supposed to drain when you drain the water into the source? How full is the cistern? (I can't see any obvious mechanism to prevent flooding - I always build an overflow in my cisterns = empty top level in cistern, but this would hamper your drawing water from the cistern in this setup.)

[Kneenibble]

How is the water supposed to drain when you drain the water into the source? How full is the cistern? (I can't see any obvious mechanism to prevent flooding - I always build an overflow in my cisterns = empty top level in cistern, but this would hamper your drawing water from the cistern in this setup.)

I thought of that -- at first the cistern was almost all 7/7, so I drained it down to 3/7 and 4/7 and tried again.  Still flooded.  ;___;  A little less aggressively, but still did.

[taptap]

I thought of that -- at first the cistern was almost all 7/7, so I drained it down to 3/7 and 4/7 and tried again.  Still flooded.  ;___;  A little less aggressively, but still did.

Yes man, you set this up quite convoluted and oversized. You economized on keeping functions separate (drain/source) but wasted a lot of resources on building and powering pumps decentralized instead of using them simply to connect one below and one above target reservoir. From the above reservoir (they could be way smaller than what you made as cistern) you could just use natural flow to bring the water to the different places and let it sprinkle from the roof and collect it again below.

[Kneenibble]

The cistern was there already, made at such a size so that I could have wells in several rooms spread out on that level: and also because I like having a huge cistern.  I'm adding on the waterfalls now as an afterthought, twenty years into the fortress.

Changing the fundamental design is probably more work than it's worth by now.  I got the idea from the wiki, which shows exactly this design with a single grated tile for the intake/drain.  http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Waterfall#Design_example  I just need to know how I can fix what I already built.

[taptap]

I would stop the system for a moment and go step by step (in pause) through the process to look what happens. And I would try with even lower water levels.

[Crashmaster]

That wiki plan seems designed to flood.

There is too much water coming out of the pumps in my opinion. I would re-engineer the top floor so the pumps output though diagonals to de-'pressurize' the waterfall sources.

Still has less then ideal drainage though.

[Loci]

That wiki plan seems designed to flood.

No, the wiki plan will never flood because it only uses a single-tile reservoir... that's all that's necessary for a mist generator. "Improving" it with a much larger reservoir means more water will be pumped up before the previously-pumped water has had a chance to settle back into the reservoir, causing flooding.

To fix it, you need to significantly reduce the flow. Use a diagonal passage to neutralize pressure from the pumps, and split the resulting water into three or four different waterfalls. That should reduce the flow to 2/7 for each waterfall, which your reservoir can hopefully absorb.

[Kneenibble]

No, the wiki plan will never flood because it only uses a single-tile reservoir... that's all that's necessary for a mist generator. "Improving" it with a much larger reservoir means more water will be pumped up before the previously-pumped water has had a chance to settle back into the reservoir, causing flooding.

To fix it, you need to significantly reduce the flow. Use a diagonal passage to neutralize pressure from the pumps, and split the resulting water into three or four different waterfalls. That should reduce the flow to 2/7 for each waterfall, which your reservoir can hopefully absorb.

Ah, it makes sense now.  My faith in the wiki was almost shaken by this seeming betrayal.  Thanks for the useful advice about diagonals, both of you.

So on the top level I tried building a wall right in front of the pump's output, with a channeled space to either side of it, hoping that it would trickle down instead of gush.  Instead, the flow of the pump was 100% blocked and no water came out at all.  Back to the drawing board...

[Aranador]

It is possible to make a reservoir-less perpetual no-spill mist generator that uses only a single bucket-full of water.  I know it used to be on the wiki, but the general idea was that a loop of pump stacks where each pump was on the same Z level, positioned to 'catch' the output of the previous pump as it fell, would pick up the one unit of water and pass it around before it could fall more than the 1 Z-level - but because it did fall that one level, it made mist.

I used to do it all the time, using a windmill or 2 to drive it - but it seems I never get wind any more (a side effect of liking to embark in hot savage jungles it seems)

[Kneenibble]

Okay, thanks for the help -- breaking pressure with a diagonal solved the problem.  Without pressure the water will fall safely into a 1-tile drain without splashing.  MIST!