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[SpiralDimentia]

So I've decided to finally mess with pumps so I can flood Ardentire with magma. After 15 years I'm tired of his fortress and want to move on, but my militarty isn't placing nice and keeps killing everything. I've built [what I assume] is the most simple version of a pump stack to get started.. all 30 floors of it. I've currently got the pumps themselves being built. My problem, however, is power. I don't have 30 spare pump operators, so I wanted them to be self-powered. I know I can do this with windmills. I looked at Windmills though... 

From what I gather, a windmill can power 10 pumps. I have 30. I thought about hooking multiple windmills up, but I'm told they generate their power to the square in the center of a 3x3 area. Considering all the pumps are one on top of the other, how would I power the lower 20 pumps without having to dig  DEEEEEEEEEP holes to get an outside tile underground?

[Jelle]

Axles and gear assemblies?

Why not place 3 windmills next to another, gear assembly under them, connect the three gear assemblies and connect one of them to the closest pump, should do the trick I think.

[SpiralDimentia]

Hm... so I'll have to have a huge undergorund area cavred out to move power from the windmills? damn. And if I connect them all to the top pump, will it power the bottom pumps?

[Jelle]

I don't know do the pumps transfer power if they are connected? I've never built a pump stack (magma piston all the way for me)

[SpiralDimentia]

yeah, the pump above it supplies power to the pump below it. but I know power only goes a certain distance.

[ral]

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Machine

[Silophant]

Pumps transfer power between them. If you make your pump stack in this/url] fashion, you won't need separate axles between each pump, only between the power source and the top pump. All you ever need to know about building and powering pump stacks can be found on the [url=http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Pump_stack#Pump_Stack]wiki.

[SpiralDimentia]

Yeah, seen both of those. One is how I built this. But that doens't answer my question, about powering the lowest pumps. Will 1 windmill on the top power all 30 pumps? I doubt it, since I think 1 windmill can only power 4 pumps? Geeze im gonna need alot of windmills.

[ral]

No, one won't do it. In fact, an infinite number won't do it if you have no wind on the map.

Windmills produce either 40, 20, or 0 power depending on the map. Then the axels and gears eat up some power, so one windmill wont even power 4 pumps if it's producing 40 power.

Basically, any machine components transfer power to anything touching them. Pumps transfer power up and down on both of their tiles, so if they're all on top of each other then they're already connected. But to connect windmills you need something like this under the windmills:

G==G==G==G==G

Where G is a gear assembly under the center tile of each windmill, and = is an axle. Then on the last gear assembly you'll need a vertical axle going down. Gear assemblies transfer power in all directions (except diagonal) including up and down, but axles only transfer it left right, top bottom, or up down

[SpiralDimentia]

Alright. I highlighted my bottom most pump and it said total power required was 100, somaybe I won't need so many windmills. Is there a way to tell how much wind you have on the map?

[ral]

The only way to tell is to build a windmill and then use q to view info on it. It will tell you how much power it's producing. If it says 0 then you're out of luck and you might as well deconstruct the windmill.

Waterwheels are much less trouble since they produce a lot more power, they just need flowing water, but if you have any endless supply of water on the map you can drain it into the caverns below to create an endless flow. If an upper cavern has water then you should be able to also create flow by draining it into a lower cavern.

[BuGGaTon]

Once pumps are connected to each other the entire thing is a machine and will only work when enough power for the entire thing is available.

[ShinWalks]

People usually generate large amounts of mechanical power using waterwheels, potentially in a Dwarven Water Reactor. The current system allows for compact, easily scalable perpetual motion power, and if you need thousands of units of power to run a 100+ z-level pump stack, this is is probably the most reasonable way to get it.

[blue emu]

If your bottom pump showed only 100 power needed, then it must only be connected to nine other pumps, since they consume ten power each. A stack of thirty pumps should require three hundred power, plus a bit for any Axles and Gears connected to the top pump. Did you bork-up the pump-stack somehow?

Do you have water or an Aquifer on your map? Waterwheels produce much more power, in a more compact set-up, than Windmills.

[SpiralDimentia]

I've got a brook. Will that help?