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[zchris13]

Gunpowder+elephants=elephant cannon. 'Nuff said.

[profit]

There are ways of ventilating rooms in such a fashion as to minimize moisture loss. Don't ask me how, I'm not an architect. But it can be done.

There are ways of doing it but it requires carbon dioxide scrubbing systems or heat pumps.

IT CANNOT BE DONE with 14th century technology.

Air must be changed with outside air. All Water vapor in air will be lost at that point.

Sorry.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Would any types of cloth, pre 1400 AD, work as a moisture filter?

[profit]

Would any types of cloth, pre 1400 AD, work as a moisture filter?

Yes, but it would also block air.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Would it totally block the air, though, or just hamper it's flow?

In other words, if the cloth structure were large enough, could it allow a small amount of dwarfs to survive in perpetuity, or would they all perish?

[mickel]

I can't imagine that a 100% effective moisture filter would be possible, even today. But there are certainly things you can do to preserve moisture, and there probably were before 1400 too... How do bedouins do it? Living largely under ground would make you less vulnerable to the extremes of temperature that are one of the great dangers of deserts, not to mention the sand/snow storms.

And plain vanilla storms too, of course.

I imagine having a kind of "airlock" with curtains in front of the exit would go a good way toward keeping moisture in. I could be wrong though.

[profit]

Would it totally block the air, though, or just hamper it's flow?

In other words, if the cloth structure were large enough, could it allow a small amount of dwarfs to survive in perpetuity, or would they all perish?

I am sure it has air leaks, but the cloth structure scaled up would allow water loss in the same manner as air leaks would occur, Slightly increasing water loss for volume of air because of osmotic principles.


Although curtains, airlocks and all that would work  they also restrict the airflow inside the underground area, which would have to be balanced carefully or the subjects of the cave would die.  Heck, even if there were no curtains, airlocks, or anything like that the CO2 levels of a cave could rise to toxic levels.

But... There may still be a way to get some water from the air without creating a closed system.

Technically if you ran really cold desert air through a cavern at night cooling the rock temperature to say 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  You MIGHT be able to run 110 degree desert air through the same cavern and have some of the water in the air condense out.

This of course all depends on the dew point and such of the air, but it is a way it could be possible using sub 1400Ad technology.

Also if you only allowed the main portions of the cavern to experience cold night time air, evaporative losses would be lowered significantly.

[scale_e]

What you guys seem to be missing, is that these measures aren't supposed to negate moisture loss, just minimize it.

That said, I'll concede some of the points on still-suits and door-seals just to end the argument about it, (as I said, I'm not an architect so I can't push that one any further) but can I get a yea or nay on the death-stills. (you know, what I started this thread for)

TLDR
Death-Stills, yes or no?

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

 vanilla storms

These in good biomes.
Vanilla ice-cream instead of now.
Vanilla-snow-men on good glaciers.

[Granite26]

TLDR
Death-Stills, yes or no?

No... Much like ethanol fueled cars, the cycle isn't going to produce any appreciable net gain

[Fossaman]

Dwarves like growing plants underground, right? So use those as CO₂ scrubbers.

Anyways, what about condensers? Run the air over cold stuff before letting it out of the fort. Desert temperatures are extremely cold at night. So you have a shaft that goes to the surface with air pipes coming out of its walls. The shaft doesn't connect to the fort, but it exposes the air pipes to the nighttime cold without letting any moisture escape. The water collects in the bottoms of the pipes, and can be made to flow to some sort of cistern. If I can think of that after ten minutes reading this thread, dwarves could think of it. And methods of pumping air definitely existed in DF-appropriate time periods. Bellows work just great.

[Felblood]

Many of these underground farms produce mushrooms, which may make the problem worse, rather than better.

[profit]

Dwarves like growing plants underground, right? So use those as CO₂ scrubbers.

Anyways, what about condensers? Run the air over cold stuff before letting it out of the fort. Desert temperatures are extremely cold at night. So you have a shaft that goes to the surface with air pipes coming out of its walls. The shaft doesn't connect to the fort, but it exposes the air pipes to the nighttime cold without letting any moisture escape. The water collects in the bottoms of the pipes, and can be made to flow to some sort of cistern. If I can think of that after ten minutes reading this thread, dwarves could think of it. And methods of pumping air definitely existed in DF-appropriate time periods. Bellows work just great.

Underground plants do not produce oxygen because they do not capture solar energy via photosynthesis. 

The condensation idea would work fine though.

[Mel_Vixen]

They can do thought different kinds of chemo and radiosynthesis which in some rare cases also produces oxygen.

[Flashzom]

I have to disagree and say that death stills ARE reasonable, but only to dispose of enemies corpses. To specifically breed animals for the purpose of extracting their water is obviously terribly flawed, otherwise if the energy transfer is from coal, then it really doesn't matter because that wouldn't be nearly as scarce a resource as water.