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[katana]

Will only existing water be filled with rain? A hole I made to collect rain and irrigate my farms isn't really gathering rain, instead it collects grass.

[Illanair]

I'm fairly sure it's because the rain isn't concentrated enough. A "drop" of water will create a 1/7 amount of water, which will evaporate quite quickly if not raised to 2/7or higher (at which point water stops evaporating)

If you're looking for an easy way to irrigate farms, I can only suggest to use a flowing water source (river, brook, lake) or punch a hole in a murky pool to muddy the ground. (Unless you're above ground farming?)

[shlorf]

Only murky pools collect rain water. And only their bottom tiles. The best way to collect the water would be to dig a hole into the wall of the pool from the side and put a floodgate there (actually a raising bridge might even be better in case of building destroyers jumping/flying into the pool). Build a narrow tunnel to your cistern behind that hole. Once it stops raining check the pools water level and then open the floodgate/bridge to fill your cistern. Once the water is underground and higher than 2/7 it should be safe from evaporation.

[DaneAxe]

Following on from Shlorf: I've found that draining the surface pools completely will result in them staying dry indeffinatly due to rain evaporating too quickly. I've no !!Science!! to back that up though.

The fastest and most relyable way to irrigate farms is to plug a tunnel to a river or an aquifer. With colder climates you can get very asthetically pleasing ducts without putting your miner in harms way by digging strait into the river when it is iced up. Then simply wait for it to thaw and then open your floodgate.

[Ibid Straydrink]

Following on from Shlorf: I've found that draining the surface pools completely will result in them staying dry indeffinatly due to rain evaporating too quickly. I've no !!Science!! to back that up though.

This, of course, depends on your biome. If you head to a tropical moist forest, for instance, you'll find in raining so often that draining an entire pool can be inconsequential. With PerfectWorld, which allows you to control rainfall concentrations, I've wound up with biomes where it rains literally every 2-8 minutes.

[celem]

More conjecture here:

From comparisons of several pools all in the same biome (adjacent on the map) I have concluded that its the original footprint of the murky pool that is important.  Pools that I breach and then seal when empty by building a wall in the hole that i made appear to refill after a year or so (rainfall dependant), all the way back to 7/7.  I have two pools however where the sealing wall is not in the original location but a tile or two down a tunnel, this increase of the pool's floor appears to prevent it from refilling.

All these pools were drained completely and left to evaporate, they all hit 0 water at some point before being sealed up

[shlorf]

As it fits the threads topic and i don't want to make a new thread, is it possible to get water without mud from the caves somehow? Every bucket i pull from the cavern lake is filled with water laced with mud. I tried pumping it into a constructed wall and floor cistern but somehow the mud got through. Do even diagonally water-touching tiles have to be constructed?

[Karlito]

Whenever a water flow touches a tile it becomes muddy. It's because you've got a lot of dirt just sitting around, or something.

[Sutremaine]

You need deeper water for a bucket to be filled with 'water' and not 'water laced with mud'. There has to be a level with just 'Water n/7' and 'Open Space' displayed when you 'k' over it, so that means at least two levels of water.

[shlorf]

Ah sweet, i had something like this in mind so i made my cistern 3 levels high once it's completely full it should give me clean water then.

[Hans Lemurson]

I'm currently playing a fort in a desert where all of my water comes only from precipitation and ice.

I'm in a "temperate" desert, so the murky pool at the surface wasn't in danger of evaporation unless I killed it.  You have to be very careful about not accidentally "killing" your water source.  If your pool ever goes below an average depth of 2/7, then it will begin to slowly evaporate.  This is important because most rainstorms will NOT be able to refill an empty pool above the "critical" depth.

I began by first calculating the proper size of my internal cistern to get as much water out of the pool as possible (in case deserts did evaporate any standing water) without killing it.  I dug out a 6x5 cistern on the level below the pool (which was 60 tiles in size), and then tunneled over a bit and dug an upwards ramp into the wall of the pool.  My calculations were correct, and the cistern filled up to 7/7 and the pool remained at about 3/7.

Recently the rains have not been coming, and so my water "income" has all been from the pool freezing in the winter and thawing in the summer.  2/7 water freezes to an "Ice wall" which then thaws to 7/7 water for a net gain.

[Ibid Straydrink]

This is valuable information!

[Hans Lemurson]

In a hot or scorching climate where ALL standing water is vulnerable to evaporation, you have to do things a little different.  Your pools will "die" no matter what in the summer, and so letting the monsoon rains fill them up is a futile gesture.

You have to get the water out of the pool as quickly as possible.  When the rains come, each drop rain turns 1 tile of pool-bottom into 1/7 water.  This tile is now "primed".  When your entire pool is "primed", then all subsequent drops of rain will produce 2/7 water, which will skitter around the pool.  This is the water that you can collect.

Channel-out some tiles next to the pool.  When the rains come, the skittering 2/7 water will eventually find its way into your collection trench where it will be safely stored, shielded from the scorching rays of the sun.  Be wary of expanding this trench/collection-pool too fast, otherwise it will drop below the critical level of 2/7 water and your erstwhile collection-pool will be subjected to evaporation and you will lose your water.

The amount of water you can get from this depends on your overall rainfall (which varies from year to year) and the size of your murky-pool. A bigger pool-bottom means more rain can be caught.

[Sutremaine]

This is valuable information!

It is on the w-- oh wait, no it isn't.

*adds it*

[blue emu]

Can you protect pools in a scorching climate by roofing them over?