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[Uehen]

New to the game.

I do not want to flood the fort,
So can I have dwaves fill a pool with buckets and then use the pool to flood a farm floor with flood gates? How long does it take to fill a pool with buckets?

Would it be easier in the long run just to set up a pump?
Or something. I want a big farm at some point, but will this work for a few years?

[clc02]

Buckets will fill as fast as it takes for your bucket haulers to reach the water, walk back and dump it, not so far if you have a bond right next to a pond, but a bit harder if it's on the bottom z level in the farther corner of the mountain.

Pumps will be faster from a river/brook but ponds have a tendency to empty out fast.  You don't have to worry about overflowing from pumps since you can just tell the pump operator to stop again.  Anything left over will just spread out in your lower levels and evaporate eventually.

edit: Unless your building your farms on stone you don't have to flood the farms for them to work, only have to do that on stone, however you have to flood them in order to use potash to fertilize them.

[Derakon]

Buckets create 1/7 water at a time. They're pretty slow. Combine that with the fact that your dwarves have to be on the z-level above the farms in order to dump water on it, and I'd recommend a manually-operated pump instead. You can activate and deactivate it pretty quickly, so major flooding shouldn't be an issue.

[Uehen]

Is it worth building a sump pump for the fortress.
I would like to use lots of water for nearly everything and I would like it if there was a fail safe.   
Is building a water system running through the fort a good way to provide water wheel power? 

[Magua]

Power is easily transferable, and any river/brook has flow anywhere on it, even in what should be dead ends.  End result: Build the power wherever it's convenient to do so.  For me, this usually ends up somewhere *in* my fort, but it doesn't have to be running through it or anything. 

As for sump pumping: I usually do a setup where excess water gets put into a cistern for whatever other uses I might have, and any water that overflows the cistern goes into a sink.  Sinks include:

1) Any aquifer tile
2) Any bottomless pit tile
3) Any river/brook tile
4) The edge of the map (*sometimes*, a fortification off the edge of the map underground will work (the other times, this will itself flood))
5) A large raised drawbridge with a lever set to repeat.

[gtmattz]

I have found that using a bucket brigade to flood growing rooms is actually fairly easy and not too time consuming.  It is all in how you set it up and execute it.

I use a 5x5 room like so:

Code: [Select]

WWWWWWW
W.....W
w.....W
D.....W
W.....W
W.....W
WWWWWWW

W= Wall
D = Door
. = Floor

and then have a hallway above with a channeled hole which is in the center of the grow room and designated a pond:

Code: [Select]

~~~~~
W...W
W...W
W...W
W.P.W
W...W
W...W
W...W
~~~~~

As soon as i have 1/1 water hit all tiles of the floor in the 5x5 growing room I deactivate/remove the pond zone and let any 2's settle out.  Once I only have 1/1 water in a few remaining tiles I designate the farm plot and go to farming.  This setup is easily expanded on and has worked fine for me so far.

[dakenho]

flooding is actually fairly safe for farming and i do it in every fortress.
Here is an example, build your farm area near a water supply which could look like this
~w  w  w  w  w  w
~w                    w
~w                    d
~w                    w
~w  w   x   w     w
T    T    T
So  the w’s are walls the `~’ are watter and ‘x’ is a flood gate and the d is a door,  b
1.   Dig out the room as shown
2.   place the door
3.  dig out the 1 tile for the flood gate
4.  place flood gate.
5.  link flood gate to lever,
6.   pull leaver
7.   Dig out the tunnel and dig the wall holding back the water.  When your dwarf passes the flood gate pull the lever, when your dwarf exits the room, seal the door.   
8. Wait for the room to fill up with one level of water
9. pull the switch.
10.  wait for the room to dry
11.  build farm
(alternatively you can use two doors instead of a flood gate or two flood gates instead of a door)

[Malicus]

So how do you shut the water off between steps 9 and 10?

[gtmattz]

So how do you shut the water off between steps 9 and 10?

Step 9 (pull switch) is the step that cuts off the water

This is why I stopped using pumps and/or channeling directly into a water source.  Using a bucket brigade insures that I don't run into any problems and cause my fort to flood.

[Dvergar]

I have recently discovered bucket irrigation and much prefer it over flooding.  All of my fortresses have plumbing as a top priority, usually within the first season, but seeing as rock needs only to be irrigated once, and you only need ~25-50 farm spaces for the entire life of your fortress, it is better not to waste the space and time...

Given you don't have ADHD, flooding a farmspace with mechanisms is typically safe, and even if you happen to have ADHD use a pressure plate in stead of a lever.

[sdu]

man it's pretty easy to set up a small "flood-farm" and requires little effort for your dwarves to set up.

You need : 6 Mechanisms, 3 Doors and a source of water ( a large pond hat refils when it rains might be enough )

~ = Water source
# = Dug out area
/ = Lever
D = Door
_ = Area to be channled out 1 z lvl higher (wait until both levers have been linked to doors before you channel!)

                    / /
                 D######
             ###
        #   ###
~_#D#D ###
        #   ###
             ###

You can line up the levers with the 2 left most doors so you're never confused which to open/close.

The yellow and green doors should never be open at the same time but even if you do make this mistake, the 3rd door should stop the flow.

Once you've dug out the area and linked all the levers with the doors you just go up 1 z lvl and channel the square seperating the water from the dug out area.

Why doors and not floodgates? Your mechanic/hauler wont get stuck basically and they work just as well if not better.

[Sheb]

I never organize flood-farm.

At one point or another, I always flood large part of my fortress, I then dry them up and here is your farm!
(Also, I recently discovered that magma remove mud. I just need to find a way to make coffee with magma now.)