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[Uristocrat]

I've seen some pretty cool Dwarf Washes and now I'm designing my own.

My question though, is, how do you deal with contaminants?  From what I hear, they tend to pile up and they never, ever go away.  Supposedly they'll collect on top of my grates and such, but this is not ideal.

What I'd like to do is wash the damn things off the map, but there are complications there, too, because I'm not sure that I can pump them anywhere.  Do I just have to make a channel that goes waaaay down into the caverns and off to a free edge of the map?  How can I design a channel that won't allow my dwarves to get washed into it, but which will allow contaminants to be obliterated (*can* dwarves be washed off the map?  I may have to investigate this for !!science!! ...)

Or maybe an atom-smasher can smash contamination?

These are the sorts of questions going through my head right now and I'm wondering if anyone already has a good strategy for obliterating it that doesn't involve the dfcleanmap cheat tool (which is, admittedly, awesome).

[Starmantle]

I know it's cheap, but isn't there a utility that does this?

dwarfcleanup?  Something like that?

I wouldn't normally consider it, but these contaminants really hurt FPS and I don't know if there's even any other way to actually remove them from the map.

[CaptRory]

Rain cleans contamination too right? If you built one dwarf wash at the entrance to your fortress, outside, it'd take care of some of it itself.

Having several washes would probably help the contamination problem. Another is setting up several wells with only one access point and a draw bridge that lands on that spot. Dwarves wash at the well then you Atom SMASH! the contaminants left behind.

[eugene]

My dwarven shower/waterfall drains of the map in a cave layer, but the contaminant do not pass through the artifact floor grate I have installed to keep out the beasts. A long tunnel without grate would not work either because the contaminants stick to the walls.
I am not sure whether the atom smasher would work, bridges retain their contaminants when you operate them. The atom smasher I partly use to dispose of goblin bodies was pretty bloody until I used the clean map utility.

Maybe contaminants wash of the map edge, but a dwarven washer directly on the map edge is not a very secure arrangement.

[slothen]

I've observed that while contaminants do not pass through grates, they are rather quickly "cleaned" and thus eliminated by idle dwarves.

[Sphalerite]

I have found that when water flows next to walls, contaminates in the water can end up stuck in the walls.  Passing a stream of water through multiple diagonal channels seems to result in most of the contamination stuck in the channel walls.  This doesn't destroy the contamination, but does seem to capture it and prevent it from recontaminating dwarves or water.

Bridge-based atom smashers don't destroy contaminates.  Burning objects do destroy contaminates in adjacent squares, so if you had the water flowing onto a burning graphite bar in an iron bin that would do it.

[Davichococat]

I've heard that if you mine until the edge of the map the water go away from your map. This may make contaminated water go away. You will probably need some source of infinite water(rivers, ocean)... Needs much design though...

[varangian]

I've seen some pretty cool Dwarf Washes and now I'm designing my own.

My question though, is, how do you deal with contaminants?  From what I hear, they tend to pile up and they never, ever go away.  Supposedly they'll collect on top of my grates and such, but this is not ideal.

What I'd like to do is wash the damn things off the map, but there are complications there, too, because I'm not sure that I can pump them anywhere. 

I set up a wash pool at the entrance to the dining room which also doubles as the panic room so whenever there was a siege/ambush alert most of the dwarves would go through it. Various nasty smears accumulated in the pool so I set up a pump from the pool to a downward stairway leading to a long dead end corridor a level below. Pumping the water out also pumped out all the gunge and although some water ended up in the passage below the gunge seemed to vanish in transit. I read on the wiki that a pump turns salt water into drinkable so perhaps it also magics away goblin blood in the same way.

[Maynot]

While on this topic, what would be the best way to build a series of pumps to route water from an underground source?

Lets say I want to pump water from z-level 20 up to z-level 1 and then have it run down a common stair that leads back into the caves.  Would building pump rooms like  WWWW then WWWW and alternate be sufficient?
                       WP + W        W+ P W
                       WWWW        WWWW

[Uristocrat]

While on this topic, what would be the best way to build a series of pumps to route water from an underground source?

Lets say I want to pump water from z-level 20 up to z-level 1 and then have it run down a common stair that leads back into the caves.  Would building pump rooms like  WWWW then WWWW and alternate be sufficient?
                       WP + W        W+ P W
                       WWWW        WWWW

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, an ordinary pump stack will suffice.

[ltprifti]

i'm new, what are contaminants and should i not have my dwarves wash at the well i have?

[mrbaggins]

A well work fine but becomes dependent on the dwarves cleaning themselves rather than a "dwarf dip" that they can (if placed well) be forced to use.

[CapnUrist]

I recently discovered an interesting fact: My dwarves still use the staircase down into my fort, even though it's at the bottom of the river and there's water pouring down in into a drain.

I'm considering letting it flow just to keep them all clean (and wet).

[varangian]

i'm new, what are contaminants and should i not have my dwarves wash at the well i have?

The usual line of contaminants consists of blood (dwarf/goblin/elf/troll etcetera) and pus from wounds that get infected. Some of the more exotic enemies may also splash poisonous ichors and the like around. The latter can be directly harmful to any dwarf who picks some up but the main problem is that, if they don't get cleaned, dwarves can rapidly acquire 10 pages worth in their inventory detailing the location and original owner of each smear of blood they've accumulated. This can have a negative effect on the framerate. Although dwarves will clean themselves at wells and other water sources (worth having a few of those) any domestic animals won't and will also accumulate blood smears, so some kind of mandatory bath system can be useful to keep the game going at a reasonable rate.

[TolyK]

I have just had a great idea. Two, actually.
Idea 1: Well+Atomsmasher
(Atomsmasher guarding a well)
Idea 2: Mist room/washer+Pump+atomsmasher
(basically have a washer to get contaminants off dwarves (somehow...) and have the tile to the first pump guardd by a smasher