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[Zankaru]

Am currently trying to make a small lake next to my fortress and having some problems. When I started out at this area there were 15+ lakes around 5-7 depth but now the only water on my map is 3 small lakes in the very top right area (my fortress is almost at the bottom) and they only get above 2 depth during rain.

I havent drained any of the lakes so I dont know where all the water went, anyways, I set up a channel going to a channeled area next to my fortress which I lined with walls and floored, but I cant get any water to it. Whenever I pump water it gets about half-way down the channel then goes into the dirt I guess.


1. Will covering / flooring my channel keep water from seeping into the dirt or evaporating? Or would it be better to dig down to stone then make a channel there from one lake to the other?

2. Is it normal for all the lakes in my area to dissapear? I am in a completely level woodland area, nothing but grass, trees, and all the empty lakes.

[TKTom]

 Whats happening is that water that is 1/7 deep will evaporate before long. Smoothing wont sort that out. You need more water basically. If its under more pressure it will move faster. What's probably happened to the water is that it has evaporated due to heat. Some biomes are hotter than others and the hottest ones will cause their muddy lakes to dry up. They *should* be replenished in spring, or whenever the rain falls. Unless you've turned off weather.

 What is the source of this water that you are pumping? If its a brook or river perhaps you should consider damming it and diverting it across to your fortress.

[Scarpa]

It sounds like you're in a hot biome and the pools are drying out in the summer. Unless you have an endless source of water (brook/river/ug river) I don't think you're going to get a lake next to your fort.

You can create one underground though, what I'd do is setup a system of drains from all the pools to one central cistern while the pools are dry. Then every spring after they fill up you can drain them underground instead of letting them evaporate. You should wait until you confirm they fill every year as I have seen sites hot enough that after the initial evaporation the pools never got over 2/7 and even then for only a few weeks a year.

[Zankaru]

Whats happening is that water that is 1/7 deep will evaporate before long. Smoothing wont sort that out. You need more water basically. If its under more pressure it will move faster. What's probably happened to the water is that it has evaporated due to heat. Some biomes are hotter than others and the hottest ones will cause their muddy lakes to dry up. They *should* be replenished in spring, or whenever the rain falls. Unless you've turned off weather.

I havent touched anything in the DF files, and my area is 'warm'. Could I dig a chamber under the filled lakes and make a series of small chambers with pumps so I can activate each one and pump the water to the lake underground? That way the water should stay above 1 depth right? Not really familiar with pumps, only built 1 so far.

                                        Surface
xxxx................xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxx................xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxx................>>.....>>....>>.....>>....>>.....>>....>>                 W
xxxx................xx......xx.....xx.....xx.....xx.......xxx.....x.................Wxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

X - ground
>> - Pump
.... - Water
.... - Open Space
W
W - Well

[XSI]

Yes, that will work, the temperature has no effect on water underground, so it won't evaporate from the heat.

Dwarves drinking from it(Wells or otherwise) will still deplete it.

[Zankaru]

Yes, that will work, the temperature has no effect on water underground, so it won't evaporate from the heat.

Dwarves drinking from it(Wells or otherwise) will still deplete it.

Awesome, gonna go build it now.

[HammerHand]

Temperature is not the only factor here.  There is also "Drainage," which is a measurement of how much water is lost simply to seeping through the layers beneath it.  A hot, low-drainage area becomes a swamp, while a hot, high-drainage area is more likely a desert or savanna.  Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to check your local drainage rate.

Good luck on your fake lake, though!  I hope you manage to put one together.

[DeathOfRats]

AFAIK, drainage is a world-gen-only concept, as in it doesn't really affect any water you pour on the floor in fortress mode.

[Grendus]

What I've found is that any map that gets hot enough to dry all the lakes will almost never have water. Get used to it. Spring rains never come thick enough to fill the entire lake up to even 2/7 across the entire thing, and they dry out too fast to get the water underground in sufficient quantities. Unless you have a brigade of bucketeers going out to gather the rain water into a small cistern, you'll be living on booze.

[Zankaru]

Here it is almost finished, is there any problems anyone can see that I can fix before finishing? Got alot of other stuff going on and dont want to have to go back to a previous save. I would do that attach thing where you pu the whole Z-level up but I dont know.


Red Box - access tunnel for pump operators
Blue Box (upper right) - chamber dug under surface lake for rain collection
Blue Box (lower left) - chamber for holding water, well to be placed later
Light Blue Arrows - water holding chambers
Green Arrows - water pumps

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Zankaru]

GAH! Screw it! It has rained twice and every lake except the one that I have set-up for the tunnels got water, not even a single tile got 1 depth.

/delete region save

[Hellcar]

Only tiles marked as "murky pool" will replenish water when it rains.
If you channeled out the pool it will no longer collect water.

[Albedo]

<nods>

That, plus you are trying to collect tiny amounts of collected water - your collection pools should be 1 tile big and deep, rather than 10-15 tiles big (including tunnels) and all on the same level.

Dig a 1-tile big tunnel adjacent to the murky pool - don't disturb the floor of it, those floors are the only ones that collect rain, and only if natural.  Dig that down several levels.  Place a door at the bottom of that shaft, linked, and a small cistern next to the door (do the math so it can collect everything in the shaft and not overflow.)  Add another short tunnel beyond that w/ a floodgate/door to the next short tunnel - don't let your collected water approach 1/7 in any tile.  Repeat w/ additional short sections as needed.

Use pumps if you want - but again, don't let the water drop below 2/7, or you'll lose a considerable amount of what you've collected.

[yuhhaur]

Time to exploit the water bug. I remember somewhere in the wiki did mentioned a way to transform your 1/7 water into 7/7 water

[Albedo]

That's via Ice - not this map.