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[Yiab]

No, it's not innuendo.

About 40 z-levels underground at my embark location, there's a lake which is large enough to touch all four sides of the map. I wanted to drain it entirely of liquid (I'm like that). First, I set about making controlled cave-ins to block off the sides of the screen - now there is a natural wall within three tiles of the edge on all sides. Next I built a pump stack to the surface (actually, I only built it to the bottom of my existing pump stack, but same thing) and began pumping.

More than a year later, I've completely drained about 1/3 of the screen, and the rest is sitting around 4-5 of 7 water. The reason the water's not flowing? Treeshrooms. There are so many growing so fast, that they've blocked the water from my pumps. I send in my handful of tree-cutters, and they proceed to get me lumber. Even after I've removed all the trees I can without anyone drowning, the water is still barely flowing at all - it's moving so slowly it evaporates before it reaches the bottom of my pump stack. Mind you, this will still get me a dry lakebed eventually, but I'd like to get things moving faster if possible.

Any suggestions for dealing with the underwater trees?

[zilpin]

Nope.
Wish they could be prevented.

Why not drain the lake into HFS instead?
Lot less work than pump stacks.

Pretty sure you can safely create a "Hell Drain" using the following steps:
1) Find the blue beauty.
2) Carve fortifications.  After the stone around them is revealed, dig out the fortification if everything around is solid.
3) Repeat (2) until you hear screams.

Haven't tried this in df2010 yet.  Hope the killer clowns can't get past fortifications.

[Satarus]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some of the clowns can.

[moki]

True. Also, clowns kill your FPS, even if they don't kill your dwarves. Just don't dig into hell unless you're in for some Fun, ok?

[Retro]

Designate the lakebed as an empty stockpile. Apparently trees won't grow in stockpile-designated areas. Then you just have to worry about the ones that are already there.

[Yiab]

That is brilliant, Retro! I hadn't thought of that. Of course, I'll also have to worry about new trees growing in the same spot as a tree I cut down (stockpile designation skips trees), but it should work perfectly for most of it.

As for draining it to HFS vs pump stacks, I'm already pumping magma up more than 150 levels for use all around my fortress, and I'd rather not even go near the HFS until I'm very well-prepared, so I figure what's another 20 layers of pump stack?

[alway]

You can also safely cut down all trees without worrying about drowning. 4 deep water won't cause drowning, and I suspect after the blockages are cleared, the 5 deep will drop quickly, or at least shift around with 4s allowing the dwarves to breathe.

Whether or not the dwarves will be willing to wade into water to cut down those trees is another matter entirely though.

[Retro]

That is brilliant, Retro! I hadn't thought of that. Of course, I'll also have to worry about new trees growing in the same spot as a tree I cut down (stockpile designation skips trees), but it should work perfectly for most of it.

Yeah, but if you cut down all the trees you can, you can just throw a new stockpile overtop and block the new gaps. Works like a charm. Biology ain't got nothin' on the DF interface.

You can also safely cut down all trees without worrying about drowning. 4 deep water won't cause drowning, and I suspect after the blockages are cleared, the 5 deep will drop quickly, or at least shift around with 4s allowing the dwarves to breathe.

It's true that they won't drown in 4/7, but they won't go into it or perform jobs in it either. 3/7 is the highest water level that dwarves will acknowledge as traverseable and do anything in. And having mixed 3/7 and 4/7 shifting water will sooort of work, but cause a lot of job cancellations due to terrain. You'll want to wait until you see the first 2/7 to send the dwarves in.

[Yiab]

I've already had dwarves cancelling tree-fellings left and right from running around in mixed 2/7-3/7 water.

[Daetrin]

I Drained a lake (a small one) earlier today...I cut out a passage to the edge of the map, smmothed/fortificationed it, and then cave-ined to open the lakebed to the passage. Worked really well. With some exra digging you can puncture it at several points to get around blockages. 

[Yiab]

Actually, treeshrooms can grow on smoothed ground. At one point I had one grow in a pump stack and it wouldn't pump until I removed it. After that, I constructed floors on every level. I haven't seen this happen with my magma pump stack yet, though, only the water one.

[Truean]

Water is easier to drain down than pump up. In reality and game, water seeks its lowest point. In game terms, dig a tunnel, and fortifications on the map edge below the pool. This will essentially be your "drain."

I would do retro's stockpile thing. Is it still true that treeshrooms can't grow on constructed floor tiles?

If so, that works here.

If not, elevated treeshroom farms....

[Hyndis]

Its annoying yes, but its just an engineering project. Use pumps and a DWR to temporarily drain the lake dry.

Cut down all trees and pave over the lake bottom with paved roads made out of stone blocks. Once thats done turn off the DWR to allow the lake to refill, and now you never have to worry about annoying tower cap growth ever again. 

[Dorf3000]

If you've blocked off the open sides of the cavern lake you can just pump the water over the dam and it will flow off the side of the screen.  There's really no need to pump it to the surface unless you want to muddy everything aboveground for some aesthetic reason.

Also, even without trees you'll have a long wait to get rid of a large, flat area of water if you pump from just one point.  Water spreading is a lot slower than you think.

[Djohaal]

Makes me think how fun the life of dwarf plumbers is. They need to constantly tend to clogging pump stacks and ducts due to fungal growth.