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[Taritus]

While I was building my fortress I thought, 'I need a well,' and so did most of my dwarves apparently.  So I dig a channel from my river to the location where I built my well.  Worked fine and all.  Till my well filled up and flooded everything.  Yeah, had no idea that could happen.  So, is it not a good idea to build a well with a river as a source?  Also, is there some way I can fix this?  Like, some way to divert the water from my well?  Will water run off screen, or will it just pile up at the edge?

[Proteus]

There is a system of fluid dynamics implemented in DF

If you fill a channel with water from the brook the water will (upon openign of the flood gate) try to rise to the same level as the brook
So if you, for example, build the room with the well one level below the water level of the brook it fill flood the well room as well as, given enough time and missing doors and drainage systems, the whole level of your well room as well as any level below.
What you obviously should try to do is, to build the rooms for your well at levels above the water level of the brook

AFAIK you can also stop the tendency of the water to rise to its original level by using water pumps. I have never tried this but, if true, the use of water pumps would mean that you can safely build wells below the level of the brook.

[Untelligent]

EDIT: Whoops, I was looking at two forums at once (the other of which is completely unrelated to this) and I could've sworn I was looking at the other one. I apologize to anyone who saw that.

[Taritus]

Eh, pumps would be great, but my well is one Z above the hole I've dug for the bottom of the well.

[Narmio]

As people have said, a well connected to a river will fill to the level of the river's flowing water.

As this is almost always "the surface", which is not a good place for a dwarven well, you want a system you can turn on and off.  To do it properly, you'd also want to be able to drain the well reservoir back into the river or off the screen, but there's no real need to do that, the water won't go stale.  It would help if, say, someone fell into the well, though.

[Taritus]

So, if I do dig a tunnel to the edge of the screen it'll drain continuously?

[Skanky]

You can't dig on the edge of the map.

[Taritus]

Damn.  So, any other alternatives?  Could I somehow throw a door or wall in the way of the little tunnel I have dug?

[Wolfius]

You can't dig out the last tile at the map edge.

You can, however, use the same method that flood-farming uses, and build an evaporation room. I'd also have an "airlock" system for filling the well cistern. And a locked lever room. And doors on the well-room.

ie

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So, water enters from the river, and you open the leftmost floodgate(1) to fill the "airlock"(pictured empty), close the first 'lock, then open the second(2) to fill your cistern, and close the second lock; the cistern here dips in the middle to concentrate water as the level lowers through use.

If Timmy McEmo falls jumps down the well, you can open the cistern pit lock(3) to drain your cistern into the evaporation room, while the Cistern Floor Lock(4) provides access should Timmy's corpse now wash down into the evaporation room. The Evaporation Room Lock(5) + locked door provides double security and access to washed crap from the cistern.


EDIT:
Just make sure the evaporation room's floor area is atleast seven times the number of tiles in the cistern, so all that 7/7 water can spread out to 1/7, otherwise it won't evaporate.

[Bryan Derksen]

You can get by with a bit less than 7 times the cistern volume in your evaporation room, as little as 6/7ths the volume. As long as there are always some tiles with a water depth of 1 they'll evaporate, it'll just be slower.

Water will flow off the edge of the map at ground level, so if you've got lots of water to dispose of you could pump it out. As noted earlier, you can't dig through the last row of tiles at the edge of the map so you can't dig a drainage tunnel below ground level. Or you could just dump the water into the great outdoors and let it evaporate, assuming you don't mind a little muddy ground out there.

[kaypy]

On drainage: You can also stick a dwarven atom crusher on the bottom level, if you want to be able to get rid of water fast.

On solving the flooded fortress problem: You may be able to cause a collapse to drop a plug of natural stone into the tunnel feeding water to your well. (I am assuming you dont have any floodgates there) You will need 2 z levels of natural stone above the waterway though. Once there is no more water coming in, then you can drain it, pump it out, or whatever.

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Cave-in

Note that stone can be held up by stone underneath-and-one-square-away

Be careful digging it out. Under normal circumstances I would recommend a support and lever, but if your fortress is full of water you are probably in a hurry to get it back...

Dont remove the floor on top of the waterway or water will start coming out there as well. The plug will fall through the floor and nicely plug both the channel and its own entrance.

[chris_acheson]

You can use a pump to regulate water flow.  From the wiki:

Pumps can be used to eliminate pressure. If you allow water to fall two levels down into an enclosed area, and then pump it from one level above that, the water which comes out of the pump should have 0 pressure, rather than 1 pressure. You can even deliver water to the second-lowest level of your fortress safely in this manner. Of course, there is a downside - you still have to power the pumps. Due to the source water's pressure, the pump must be powered instead of dwarf-run (the tile the dwarf would stand on is filled by the pressurized water). Additionally, the power cannot be hooked up to the walkable tile of the pump, because the water will simply flow directly up it! Your vertical axles or gear assemblies should be placed above the unwalkable tile of the pump, and there must not be a channel over the walkable pump tile. (Water can only flow straight upward, not up and to the side at the same time)

http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Water_pressure

The reason this works is that the non-walkable tile of the pump blocks the flow of water the same way that a wall does, and the pump won't operate if the tile that it's pumping to is already filled with water (7/7).  The water in the destination channel won't go any higher than the level of the pump.

[Porpoisepower]

I usually use a combination of doors hooked with levers to stop over filling, and a pump, just in case something contaminates the watersupply.

[Shurikane]

A pair of floodgates can do the trick easily enough if you place your well close to the river.  Dig towards the tunnel, and create an artificial pool underneath where your well will go.  Install your floodgates so that the interval between the two is a little less than the pool's capacity.  Link the gates to levers.

Open and close the first floodgate to retrieve a "load" of fresh water.

Do the same on the second lever to deliver it to your well.

It's an affordable solution since you're not likely to be in the need of water very often.  Just make the pool and the canal larger at your leisure if you prefer a fire-and-forget strategy.

[Randominality]

i was a tad annoyed cos when i was building a well from a brook i thought to make it fun id dig a shaft to the bottom z-level from the brook then dig a shaft up to my fortress at the same level as the brook and put the wells on top of that. For some reason the water only went up to the z-level below the brook so i couldnt build wells there - i had to just dig a tunnel from the brook to the well to get the water to the right well.