Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sphalerite]

Wind power works well.  You can build a windmill directly on top of the pump, and provided your embark site has wind it will power the pump forever. ... The problem with wind is that at the very least the center tile has to be open to the sky, so you still risk flying invaders being able to get to the pump.  You can still make the water itself completely safe, since the outlet side of the pump blocks passage.

Thank you. Does flying-access endanger the setup to where I might lose the whole shebang (pump, axle, windmill) to a forgotten beast or whatever it is that might fly and also destroy buildings? (I don't have a lot of experience with building destroyers.)

Unfortunately, a windmill requires the space directly above the windmill to be open to the sky.  Flying creatures will be able to get in and destroy the windmill and pump.  It's still a useful setup to have, since flying building-destroyers are rare anyway, and when one shows up you'll probably have larger concerns than it smashing your water source.

To make a completely secure water source, you either have to run the pump manually, or use a water wheel.  You then have to make sure nothing can get at either the pump or the water wheel.  The pump can easily be protected by surrounding it with walls and having a floor grate on the inlet side of the pump where it's drawing water from the river.  The water wheel is tricky, since it needs to be built over open water and can be attacked by something in the water.  You might be able to get away with building the waterwheel over a sealed basin, pumping some water into the basin manually and then hoping that the horribly buggy code that DF uses to tell if water is moving doesn't notice that the water isn't going anywhere.

[Nan]

I'm talking about building an underground waterwheel. Water which is connected to a river, even if it's not a part of the original rivercourse, even if it has been diverted some distance into a dead end, will still power waterwheels. I just realized you might have water pressure problems if you divert the water underground before using it to power a waterwheel. However you can always build the waterwheel and pump at the same level as the river, and if that's on the surface, just enclose them with walls and a roof.

I'll draw another diagram, this one with two z-levels.

#=wall, ~=water, X = raising bridge,

Z-level -1

Code: [Select]

###############~~~~~
~~~~~~~~##~~~~~~~~~~ (River)
###############~~~~~
       #~~~X~~~~~~~~
       ########~~~~~(This is what I meant by the "two walls" thing, you have your channel to take water from the river, and two walls in it to build the pump on top of)

g = grate

Z-level 0

Code: [Select]

......######...~~~~~
......#~%%g#..~~~~~~~~ (River)
......###*.#...~~~~~
...... #|||#..~~~~~~
...... #####...~~~~~

So you have a fully enclosed pump and waterwheel housing. The waterwheel is powered because it's connected to the river. It doesn't need to stay connected to remain powered because water dynamics are funky like that, build a raising bridge at the spot marked X, and once the waterwheel is operating, raise the bridge. The waterwheel is now fully sealed off from the river and building destroyers can't destroy a raised bridge.

As for the pump, that is sealed by the grate over the water channel. A pump can pump through a grate, but nothing can come up through it. So this design is completely secure against intrusion.

[Moleculor]

So is ignoring what I'm asking, forcing me to re-explain multiple things covered in the first post, and then just flat out telling me I'm wrong for wanting to do things a certain way.

This is really heavy derail material.

...says the person who was answering questions I wasn't asking, was offering options that ignored the original topic, etc.

If you cared about keeping the thread *on-topic*, why does everything you offer veer away from the topic?

I was trying to help. You were being rude.

*I'm* being rude? For trying to keep my own thread on topic in the very first page of the topic? Yeah. Sure. Lets call it 'rude'. (Note: That's sarcasm.)

Did you consider that I may have missed what you said?

Then be mature, apologize for missing the original topic, and get back on it.

I never said you were wrong.

I asked for a non-dwarf powered solution. You told me to use dwarf power.

Or that I was trying to tell you an easier alternative to something you had little information on?

Easier is not mentioned in the original topic. Anywhere. Efficient, yes. Self-sustaining is implied, but that's in no way "easy". And I *very specifically* state I don't want it to be exclusively dwarf powered. I even specifically state I want as little dwarven intervention as possible. If I wanted a dwarf manually moving 2800+ units of water by hand for just the initial filling of the cistern, plus more for whenever I want to use water, I'd just set it to dwarf power and be done with it. But that's not what I asked for, is it? (Not sure you'd know, seeing as how you haven't been on topic yet this entire thread.)

To give an example of how I like to do things, the very *very* first well I ever built in Dwarf Fortress was self-regulating so that it would auto-fill from a cistern and automatically shut off the cistern refill when the well had sufficient water to ensure that it would never overflow, all without dwarven intervention or even intervention from myself. I like automated structures.

Same question for you, though a bit broader: Is this in any way protected from things that would normally destroy buildings?

You can make the above system completely underground if that's what you mean.

From what I understand, if you move Naturally Flowing water in a river to another z-level, chances are it loses its Natural Flow status. I suppose I could move this water 50 tiles off to the side, into the side of a mountain, but I'd rather not.

To make a completely secure water source, you either have to run the pump manually, or use a water wheel.  You then have to make sure nothing can get at either the pump or the water wheel.  The pump can easily be protected by surrounding it with walls and having a floor grate on the inlet side of the pump where it's drawing water from the river.  The water wheel is tricky, since it needs to be built over open water and can be attacked by something in the water.  You might be able to get away with building the waterwheel over a sealed basin, pumping some water into the basin manually and then hoping that the horribly buggy code that DF uses to tell if water is moving doesn't notice that the water isn't going anywhere.

Well, I'm flushing the water through a grate, a fortification, and another grate before dropping it down several z-levels to the cistern, so securing the water is not too much of a problem. A building-destroyer who chooses to go the water route would probably ruin my day and flood my fortress... hm. I'll have to think about that. While I do...

Is there anything stopping me from just shoving a waterwheel above the inlet channel AND the outlet channel and connecting both to the pump? The initial water-flow in to the pump might start the pump going which MIGHT keep the flow on the inlet side long enough for the flow to hit the other waterwheel? Maybe? Confirm/deny? Or is the shut-off from the power of the waterwheel's loss of flow so fast that it would only work one time, and never again? Or might end up in a state where the inlet is completely full (and thus not-flowing) and the outlet is dry (and thus also not flowing).

I'm talking about building an underground waterwheel.

Yeah, I managed to figure that out about twenty minutes too slowly.

Water which is connected to a river, even if it's not a part of the original rivercourse, even if it has been diverted some distance into a dead end, will still power waterwheels. I just realized you might have water pressure problems if you divert the water underground before using it to power a waterwheel. However you can always build the waterwheel and pump at the same level as the river, and if that's on the surface, just enclose them with walls and a roof.

I am definitely curious about trying this out, especially just shoving a walls/floors around the whole construction and saying "VOILA!"

I am starting to realize why I don't understand your drawings though... I don't have that font on my computer, so they're not mono-spaced.

I'm beginning to think I should just save-scum, experiment, and see what works. I've been playing Dwarf Fortress since the 2D era, and I've never seen a clown. 3D? Never been past the first caverns. I keep getting distracted, or the occasional "I don't know how to use civilian alerts!"-esque problem crops up.

[Nan]

I've changed the tags to the code tag, hopefully the diagrams will display properly for you now.

[Moleculor]

Definitely more readable, thanks. I may have to think about that option. I suppose it wouldn't be *too* weird to have a small outhouse built on top of the river...

[Nan]

Actually I just figured out there's no need to build an above ground outhouse. The "flowing" quality of a river remains even if the water is put through diagonals. So you can take the water underground, put it through a diagonal to reduce pressure, and use to power the waterwheel - it'd still be the same setup, just dug into the earth.

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is really heavy derail material.

...says the person who was answering questions I wasn't asking, was offering options that ignored the original topic, etc.

If you cared about keeping the thread *on-topic*, why does everything you offer veer away from the topic?

>Cares about keeping on topic
>Spends half of every post ranting on about me

1. You never asked any questions, I was adding information so that future posts would be able to say the best solution. See what that stagnant tile post was about? That way people wouldn't just immediately go "build a well" or "redirect it".
2. Funny how you completely ignored the part about "I was trying to help".
3. Keeping topics on topic is a good thing for people who are asking for DF help. Why do you seem to have a problem?
4. How is it you perceive everything I'm writing as off topic?

I was trying to help. You were being rude.

*I'm* being rude? For trying to keep my own thread on topic in the very first page of the topic? Yeah. Sure. Lets call it 'rude'. (Note: That's sarcasm.)

>Not rude at all
Btw, you do realize calling you rude was not for the reasoning, but for the way you said everything. Generally the patronizing nature and the sarcasm, could you honestly not find a better way to phrase things?
Impolite, rude and a whole lot of other things >_>

Did you consider that I may have missed what you said?

Then be mature, apologize for missing the original topic, and get back on it.

"missing the original topic"
"apologize"

The Internet.

Does not work like this.

The last thing I expected was someone demanding I apologize for trying to help them.

I never said you were wrong.

I asked for a non-dwarf powered solution. You told me to use dwarf power.

I said that the amount of Dwarf power you thought you would need to use was neglible. You never said why you didn't want to use Dwarf power with no reasons beyond security, autonomy and micro. I said that Dwarf power was secure, micro-easy and relatively autonomous.

Or that I was trying to tell you an easier alternative to something you had little information on?

Easier is not mentioned in the original topic. Anywhere. Efficient, yes. Self-sustaining is implied, but that's in no way "easy". And I *very specifically* state I don't want it to be exclusively dwarf powered. I even specifically state I want as little dwarven intervention as possible. If I wanted a dwarf manually moving 2800+ units of water by hand for just the initial filling of the cistern, plus more for whenever I want to use water, I'd just set it to dwarf power and be done with it. But that's not what I asked for, is it? (Not sure you'd know, seeing as how you haven't been on topic yet this entire thread.)

Secure

This implied easy to me. Btw, damn, I think you don't understand what definition of Dwarf power is being used.
It's not an army of Dwarfs hauling buckets of water individually -_-
It's a single Dwarf operating the pump and giving it power. It's incredibly quick too >_>

To give an example of how I like to do things, the very *very* first well I ever built in Dwarf Fortress was self-regulating so that it would auto-fill from a cistern and automatically shut off the cistern refill when the well had sufficient water to ensure that it would never overflow, all without dwarven intervention or even intervention from myself. I like automated structures.

If you can build automated wells, why would you need help to build an automated cistern? Perhaps you should've mentioned you had already built automated structures before?

From what I understand, if you move Naturally Flowing water in a river to another z-level, chances are it loses its Natural Flow status. I suppose I could move this water 50 tiles off to the side, into the side of a mountain, but I'd rather not.

There would be two channels, and pumping it would automatically raise it water one z lvl and lower it again, so by your definition water should lose it's flow status. I have never heard of natural flow before, but water that has flown before always keeps its flowing status - this is how aquifer power plants are made, even though they're 7/7 and are stationary, they keep their flowing status.
You familiar with moving water off screen through a fortification?

Well, I'm flushing the water through a grate, a fortification, and another grate before dropping it down several z-levels to the cistern, so securing the water is not too much of a problem. A building-destroyer who chooses to go the water route would probably ruin my day and flood my fortress... hm. I'll have to think about that. While I do...

How is the water route exposed?

Is there anything stopping me from just shoving a waterwheel above the inlet channel AND the outlet channel and connecting both to the pump? The initial water-flow in to the pump might start the pump going which MIGHT keep the flow on the inlet side long enough for the flow to hit the other waterwheel?

1. Nope, there's nothing stopping you.
2. The initial water flow should start the pump, unless you use depressurized water (well as long as you use the river this won't be a problem). After this the outlet wheel will keep it self powered.

[Avo]

You may want to change your tone here,  getting snippy with the forums is a good way to get any posts you make ignored. As for your problem, the solution IS dwarf power, your dwarves drink almost no water with each sip. A cistern of any size can support your fortress for many MANY years. You can actually bail enough water into a 3x3 cistern to support your fort longer then its going to live. Your dwarves consume mostly booze, your cistern is for emergencies, as a result it rarely gets used, when your dwarves DO use it they only use a partial tile.

[Sutremaine]

I want to put a pump (or some other de-stagnantization system) between the river and my cistern, which is several z-levels below and several squares east of the river.

*is confused by topic*
*is ignoring everything but the OP*

Is absolutely the whole thing stagnant? I've had a couple of rivers suffering from stagnant water, and they've both passed between murky pools at the point where the water starts to stagnate. If some of the water nearer the source is fine, you could run the river under the ground into the area you were going to fill from. (caveat: see below)

From there you can build a water reactor attached to the pump you're using to transfer water. To do this you build your water reactor somewhere close to the pump, and then connect the reactor and the pump. The reactor will probably start itself while filling, but if not then it only takes a quick pump from a dwarf to get it running. (Water reactors haven't changed between versions.) In the last version water could only change levels by moving directly up and down, so running power to the cistern pump from below is possible if the axle is beneath the impassable tile. I very much doubt this has changed in .34.

Incidentally, the test fortress I made to see if reactors still work is stagnant in a small portion of the river close to a single murky pool. Both ends are clean water, it's just those dozen tiles that are stagnant. I suspect that the only reason it's not spreading is that the water is teleporting from the source to the other end of the river, and that if I were to start diverting the water for a cistern the change in flow would spread the stagnancy around. I could probably get around this by pumping the river back into itself upstream of the pool, both with the flow and against it to stop stagnant water from getting into the physically unseparated clean water tiles. Then I could put a wall in.

[Moleculor]

Spoiler: Everybody was Kung-Fu-Fighting! (click to show/hide)

1. You never asked any questions.

More evidence that you didn't read the very first post in this thread. There's a question in the subject. The question is re-iterated and expanded upon in the very first post in this thread. Seriously starting to feel trolled here.

2. Funny how you completely ignored the part about "I was trying to help".

"I'm trying to help!" he screamed, while constantly bringing up things that were counter-productive to what the original post was asking for.

That's a bit like screaming "I'm trying to help!" at a dwarf in a hospital bed while stabbing him with a knife.

3. Keeping topics on topic is a good thing for people who are asking for DF help. Why do you seem to have a problem?
4. How is it you perceive everything I'm writing as off topic?

I ask "How do I build a pump to de-stagnate water that doesn't require dwarf power?" You say "Pump it!" I say "Yes, that's what I'm asking about. How do I do that?" You say "Use a dwarf!"

It's like you didn't even read the subject line of the post, much less the content.

Btw, you do realize calling you rude was not for the reasoning, but for the way you said everything. Generally the patronizing nature and the sarcasm, could you honestly not find a better way to phrase things?
Impolite, rude and a whole lot of other things >_>

I was patient the first three times I replied to your off-topic posts. I don't have the patience of a saint, and the fourth one (where you argue with me about how I shouldn't even be trying to do what I'm asking about) pushed me over the edge. I'm oh so sorry I don't have the patience of a saint.

The last thing I expected was someone demanding I apologize for trying to help them.

At that point you hadn't tried to help, or were trying to help without understanding what the question was. You'd only been trying to discourage me from doing what I'm trying to do or arguing with me about why I want to do it.

You never said why you didn't want to use Dwarf power with no reasons beyond security, autonomy and micro. I said that Dwarf power was secure, micro-easy and relatively autonomous.

My *reasons* don't matter, and using dwarf power means requiring an unlocked door to access the pump, which is insecure.

Secure

This implied easy to me.

Well I'm sorry that it did, but considering the fact that in the exact same sentence I defined what secure meant by referencing a lack of access to the pump by monsters, animals, etc, I'm not sure how you could make such a completely incorrect assumption.

Btw, damn, I think you don't understand what definition of Dwarf power is being used.

It's not an army of Dwarfs hauling buckets of water individually -_-
It's a single Dwarf operating the pump and giving it power. It's incredibly quick too >_>

Ok. From what I remember the last time I did anything that could be dwarf powered, in order for it to be dwarf powered, the dwarf had to stand there and power the damn thing for as long as it was running. If he stepped away, it stopped working.

Has this changed sometime recently that I'm unaware of? Do pumps now work where the dwarf walks up, taps it, and walks away as the pump merrily operates on its own pumping hundreds of units of water?

To give an example of how I like to do things, the very *very* first well I ever built in Dwarf Fortress was self-regulating so that it would auto-fill from a cistern and automatically shut off the cistern refill when the well had sufficient water to ensure that it would never overflow, all without dwarven intervention or even intervention from myself. I like automated structures.

If you can build automated wells, why would you need help to build an automated cistern? Perhaps you should've mentioned you had already built automated structures before?

Because I don't need an automated cistern, I need a filtered cistern. And the well I could make a few mistakes on, because a single mistake wouldn't ruin the tiles forever. A filter for stagnant water, however, has no room for error.

From what I understand, if you move Naturally Flowing water in a river to another z-level, chances are it loses its Natural Flow status. I suppose I could move this water 50 tiles off to the side, into the side of a mountain, but I'd rather not.

I have never heard of natural flow before, but water that has flown before always keeps its flowing status

MagmaWiki: Water that naturally flows but changes z-levels loses its natural flow.

Well, I'm flushing the water through a grate, a fortification, and another grate before dropping it down several z-levels to the cistern, so securing the water is not too much of a problem. A building-destroyer who chooses to go the water route would probably ruin my day and flood my fortress... hm. I'll have to think about that. While I do...

How is the water route exposed?

Uhm, the only exposure point this water system has is a floodgate-blocked tunnel dug from underground into the side of the river (ok, wait, it's a 'brook', and there's a technical difference, apparently. Dunno if it matters). No channeling from above (yet, maybe ever if I can get this filter made before the river unfreezes). The only way into the tunnel (right now) is if a creature can withstand 7/7 water for a few ticks, and they can smash through the closed floodgate. A few ticks is not much time, so I'm guessing most building destroyers could do it if they didn't mind getting wet. Once I open the floodgate, ideally the whole system will be flooded with water (hopefully clean), and the only way anything is getting in is if it can swim and breathe underwater for the time it'd take for them to swim through forty or so tiles. Then there should be a couple grates around a fortification (~~GFG~~) at the brook end of the piping (before the pump), which I've been told should block any non-vermin from entering the pipe (except maybe swimming building destroyers). Then the pump should block the vermin. Maybe. Dunno, don't care. Vermin aren't too much of a hassle.

Is there anything stopping me from just shoving a waterwheel above the inlet channel AND the outlet channel and connecting both to the pump? The initial water-flow in to the pump might start the pump going which MIGHT keep the flow on the inlet side long enough for the flow to hit the other waterwheel?

1. Nope, there's nothing stopping you.
2. The initial water flow should start the pump, unless you use depressurized water (well as long as you use the river this won't be a problem). After this the outlet wheel will keep it self powered.

Well, that would solve everything. I think. I just have to get the design right on the first try. It's "only" been about two or three years since I used a water wheel or pump, so here's hoping.

Spoiler: Because hiding people who are off-topic is useful and fun! (click to show/hide)

As for your problem, the solution IS dwarf power,

More people refusing to read the original topic? Yay.

your dwarves drink almost no water with each sip.

Huh? What's that have to do with anything?

A cistern of any size can support your fortress for many MANY years.

Oh really.

You can actually bail enough water into a 3x3 cistern to support your fort longer then its going to live. Your dwarves consume mostly booze, your cistern is for emergencies, as a result it rarely gets used, when your dwarves DO use it they only use a partial tile.

The last time I built an indoor well, it was a small pit (at least 3x3, if not larger, definitely not smaller) that autofilled from a cistern similar to the one I'm planning on building here. In the short time my fortress was alive, I saw it go from 5/7 or 6/7 to dry at least once, and that's just the once I noticed. Water is for more than just "drinking when you're out of booze". The sick need it. It's needed for cleaning things. And sometimes things go wrong and I run out of booze!

Oh, and, just to make sure you understand this: This cistern is not going to be a well. It will feed into a well, but it will also be used to supply mud for at least one farm, if not more, possibly for flushing floors of contaminants if I ever live that long, potentially a few mist generators, AND it might be used to make an obsidian farm. Which is going to need a lot more than a 3x3 room filled with buckets.

I want to put a pump (or some other de-stagnantization system) between the river and my cistern, which is several z-levels below and several squares east of the river.

*is confused by topic*
*is ignoring everything but the OP*

I give you cookie. Here is snickerdoodle. I luffs joo. Many <3s.

Is absolutely the whole thing stagnant? I've had a couple of rivers suffering from stagnant water, and they've both passed between murky pools at the point where the water starts to stagnate. If some of the water nearer the source is fine, you could run the river under the ground into the area you were going to fill from. (caveat: see below)

The whole thing.

Looking again at the wiki, the source of the stagnation might be my biome? Are there brooks in wetlands? Are those always stagnant? (Turns out this is a brook, not a river, and there's a technical difference. Oops. Didn't realize.)

From there you can build a water reactor attached to the pump you're using to transfer water. To do this you build your water reactor somewhere close to the pump, and then connect the reactor and the pump. The reactor will probably start itself while filling, but if not then it only takes a quick pump from a dwarf to get it running. (Water reactors haven't changed between versions.) In the last version water could only change levels by moving directly up and down, so running power to the cistern pump from below is possible if the axle is beneath the impassable tile. I very much doubt this has changed in .34.

Yeah, I'd been curious about possibly setting up my very first water reactor. I'm just a bit worried about the potential FPS hit.

Incidentally, the test fortress I made to see if reactors still work is stagnant in a small portion of the river close to a single murky pool. Both ends are clean water, it's just those dozen tiles that are stagnant. I suspect that the only reason it's not spreading is that the water is teleporting from the source to the other end of the river, and that if I were to start diverting the water for a cistern the change in flow would spread the stagnancy around. I could probably get around this by pumping the river back into itself upstream of the pool, both with the flow and against it to stop stagnant water from getting into the physically unseparated clean water tiles. Then I could put a wall in.

That went right over my head. These fluid dynamics rules are still tricky to wrap my head around. S'why I felt it necessary to ask about pumps and waterwheels before building some, especially in the inaccessible fashion I'm going to be building them.

[Nan]

MagmaWiki: Water that naturally flows but changes z-levels loses its natural flow.

Well that's definitely not factual. I made water both drop a z-level and go through a diagonal and it retained it's flow. Not everything in the wiki is true - ESPECIALLY when it comes to fluid dynamics. Myths have been rampant for a long time, and are only gradually being replaced by hard science.

edit: Okay some refinement. The flow quality doesn't always successfully propagate to newly flooded areas. It seems there is some kind of code which stops areas from flowing if they shouldn't, it just seems this code doesn't always work when it should. So it would still seem that the most reliable system is one which has a waterwheel near the river itself on the same z-level as the river.

[vassock]

It's the easiest way and it doesn't require much Dwarf attention at all unless you have to constantly refill it, which won't be a problem if you make it sufficiently large.

So in other words you're saying "I don't want to answer your question, here's an entirely different answer to a different question you didn't ask".

Gee. Thanks.

He's giving you the right answer. A large enough container of water will remain filled for years if not longer. All you need to do is designate one dwarf to run the pump for a relatively small period of time continuously. Then it will be full for years. Or you can construct a complicated system of windmills, gears and axles and then figure out some way to enclose it to protect it from building destroyers AND turn it on/off (which, guess what, requires dwarf attention and micromanagement) to get the same result. Really, it isn't worth it.

One time, I built a magma pump stack of about ~100 glass pumps to pump magma into a cistern to allow me to perform magma smelting/smithing near the surface. After that, I never did it again. Why? Because it's so much easier to just do the smithing near the magma sea. See: stupid dwarf trick.

[Sutremaine]

Are there brooks in wetlands? Are those always stagnant? (Turns out this is a brook, not a river, and there's a technical difference. Oops. Didn't realize.)

Found a marsh with a brook, embarked on it, water wasn't fully stagnant. Again there were stagnant patches, clustered around the areas where there was no grass on the ground between the pool and the river (maybe the game isn't separating them properly). But most of it was clean water.

Yeah, I'd been curious about possibly setting up my very first water reactor. I'm just a bit worried about the potential FPS hit.

A one-wheel reactor will only ever have water in half a dozen tiles, and you can fill the reactor to the point that the water level in it doesn't change at all. Your brook has more flowing water than that.

That went right over my head.

The game started with a non-moving patch of stagnant water in the supposedly-flowing clean river (I'll just call it a river). The patch of water stays still because water produced by the source tiles doesn't flow through the river, it teleports through the 7/7 tiles in the river until it finds a 6/7 or shallower tile to occupy. Flow like you'd expect from real-world physics doesn't happen until the 7/7 tiles are disturbed by something diverting the water, and that's when the stagnant water starts having some 6/7 tiles to move into and corrupt forever. I observed this by connecting a murky pool to a lake and watching as the water level stabilised until there was one patch of 6/7 water moving around. It wasn't getting to the map edges to be refilled, which would stop the flow, but instead it was contaminating the lake as it moved around. In the end two whole levels of water were made stagnant, with a couple of clean layers left beneath. I didn't try to tap those.

On isolating clean sections of river: If you build a bunch of screw pumps over a river so that they send water directly upstream, the water will somehow be absorbed back into the river as long as you have a couple of wall tiles around the pumps to stop it from sloshing onto the ground. Since there's nothing acting on the water downstream of the pumps, water from there will start flowing back up the river into the pump intakes. You don't want the stagnancy-carrying water coming into contact with the clean water upstream, so you build another set of pumps to shove that filthy water back where it came from.

These fluid dynamics rules are still tricky to wrap my head around.

Fluid dynamics themselves are pretty simple because with drainage, you can keep on trying until you find a way of fitting it into your head. Stagnancy is a property of the tile and not the water and never goes away, so you need to know why fluid dynamics are the way they are so that you can avoid polluting all your cistern locations. Contamination should cease to be an issue if you pump sourced water into a cistern and treat that as your sourced water while making sure it never comes into physical contact with the original water. To make sure that happens you may need to cover every tile of pool and river on the map. I don't know if a bucket of stagnant water poured into clean water will make the whole lot stagnant as effectively as an n/7 tile of water.

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler: ...As fast as lightning! (click to show/hide)

More evidence that you didn't read the very first post in this thread. There's a question in the subject. The question is re-iterated and expanded upon in the very first post in this thread. Seriously starting to feel trolled here.

 

I feel like I'm having to repeat myself. What was the rest of the original sentence about? A topic is not limited to what it was started for. You seem to not get that.

"I'm trying to help!" he screamed, while constantly bringing up things that were counter-productive to what the original post was asking for.

Such as...?

That's a bit like screaming "I'm trying to help!" at a dwarf in a hospital bed while stabbing him with a knife.

Doing it right

It's like you didn't even read the subject line of the post, much less the content.

1. Someone missing something?

ON THE INTERNET?

WHAT MADNESS IS THIS?

EVERYONE, STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING, BECAUSE HUMANS ARE INFALLIBLE AND ALL THAT JAZZ, THIS CALLS FOR CAPS LOCKS AND MOLECULOR BEING SARCASTIC AND RUDE AGAIN!

I was patient the first three times I replied to your off-topic posts. I don't have the patience of a saint, and the fourth one (where you argue with me about how I shouldn't even be trying to do what I'm asking about) pushed me over the edge. I'm oh so sorry I don't have the patience of a saint.

You should probably sort out them anger issues then. Bay12 is a nice community, full of nice people. If you haven't noticed, I was being quite patient with you as well. But I don't have the patience of a saint either! At least we now have common ground. Or rather, we did before, you just want to keep arguing 

The last thing I expected was someone demanding I apologize for trying to help them.

At that point you hadn't tried to help, or were trying to help without understanding what the question was. You'd only been trying to discourage me from doing what I'm trying to do or arguing with me about why I want to do it.

1. Giving advice = not help
2. Offering easier set up alternative = discouraging = not helping, loving that logic.

At what point did it allow you to become so damn snarky?! How many times do you think someone's posted something the OP's already said?
Hell, it's the first time I've ever seen anyone get so worked up about it.

My *reasons* don't matter

They do if you begin arguing about them

using dwarf power means requiring an unlocked door to access the pump, which is insecure.

1. Using a door? How did you...

What is this...

Secure

This implied easy to me.

Well I'm sorry that it did, but considering the fact that in the exact same sentence I defined what secure meant by referencing a lack of access to the pump by monsters, animals, etc, I'm not sure how you could make such a completely incorrect assumption.

Because having a cistern not full of wild helmet snakes and jabberers is easy mode to me.
There is no definite difficulty scale in DF, it's impossible to go around saying someone's right in what they view as casual, easy, normal, hard and fun.

Ok. From what I remember the last time I did anything that could be dwarf powered, in order for it to be dwarf powered, the dwarf had to stand there and power the damn thing for as long as it was running. If he stepped away, it stopped working.

Has this changed sometime recently that I'm unaware of? Do pumps now work where the dwarf walks up, taps it, and walks away as the pump merrily operates on its own pumping hundreds of units of water?

1. Don't use a random Dwarf then.
2. You already have the solution to the second caveat, why are you still somad about this?

Because I don't need an automated cistern, I need a filtered cistern. And the well I could make a few mistakes on, because a single mistake wouldn't ruin the tiles forever. A filter for stagnant water, however, has no room for error.

You're arguing about error in DF. And arguing that you want it autonomous. With little to no attention from you.
Even though multiple people have already given reasonable suggestions.

MagmaWiki: Water that naturally flows but changes z-levels loses its natural flow.

The DF wiki also once said Dwarfs didn't drink salty or stagnant water. Specifically, it's fluid mechanics info is rough and sometimes outdated.

How is the water route exposed?

Uhm, the only exposure point this water system has is a floodgate-blocked tunnel dug from underground into the side of the river (ok, wait, it's a 'brook', and there's a technical difference, apparently. Dunno if it matters).

Brook? Completely secure then. No need to worry. Brook tiles are treated like special floors, nothing'll get through them.

Well, that would solve everything. I think. I just have to get the design right on the first try. It's "only" been about two or three years since I used a water wheel or pump, so here's hoping.

Looking forward to imminent success. Just make sure everything's linked correctly, it'll do fine.

Spoiler: Because the more obnoxious love this arguing... (click to show/hide)

As for your problem, the solution IS dwarf power,

More people refusing to read the original topic? Yay.

It looks like a trend! I feel sorry for you now Mole, you must be in intense agony knowing people might be misreading a sentence in their rush of everyday life.

your dwarves drink almost no water with each sip.

Huh? What's that have to do with anything?

You building an automatic cistern is kinda redundant, if you do it right you'd never need to refill it at all.

A cistern of any size can support your fortress for many MANY years.

Oh really.

Many lulz have been obtained from this thread.

Oh, and, just to make sure you understand this: This cistern is not going to be a well. It will feed into a well, but it will also be used to supply mud for at least one farm, if not more, possibly for flushing floors of contaminants if I ever live that long, potentially a few mist generators, AND it might be used to make an obsidian farm. Which is going to need a lot more than a 3x3 room filled with buckets.

This sort of thing should go in the OP. Bah, spilt milk and whatever.

Edit, here's what the thread would've looked like if you conducted yourself in a way that didn't insult bay12
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101820.15

See that? Called thread evolution. Magical stuff.

Now get this, it'll blow your mind.

PEOPLE POSTING STUFF THAT ISN'T ON TOPIC BUT IT STILL IS, AND ALL MAKING REDUNDANT RESPONSES THAT HELP OTHERS MAKE USEFUL SUGGESTIONS, CULMINATING IN THE OP ACHIEVING CISTERN SUCCESS!!

WOW! UNBELIEVABLE!

[Moleculor]

edit: Okay some refinement. The flow quality doesn't always successfully propagate to newly flooded areas. It seems there is some kind of code which stops areas from flowing if they shouldn't, it just seems this code doesn't always work when it should. So it would still seem that the most reliable system is one which has a waterwheel near the river itself on the same z-level as the river.

Yeah if it's buggy, I won't want to rely on it if I'm also planning on sealing it away, never to be touched again. I'm paranoid about bugs, and I tend to trip over enough that I don't know about than to associate with ones I do.

Spoiler: LOUD NOISES! (Also politics.) (click to show/hide)

He's giving you the right answer. A large enough container of water will remain filled for years if not longer.

Not if I'm using it for a large series of internal plumbing systems that I want to be able to flush, empty, and refill.

Answering a question I didn't ask is not "the right answer", unless you're Mitt Romney. (Seriously click on that link. It's Stephen Colbert. It's hilarious.)

Found a marsh with a brook, embarked on it, water wasn't fully stagnant. Again there were stagnant patches, clustered around the areas where there was no grass on the ground between the pool and the river (maybe the game isn't separating them properly). But most of it was clean water.

Ok, so bad luck on my end. I wonder how even the most up-stream tiles got infected.

A one-wheel reactor will only ever have water in half a dozen tiles, and you can fill the reactor to the point that the water level in it doesn't change at all. Your brook has more flowing water than that.

Ok. Even if I don't end up using a water reactor for this particular job (I'm actually a bit curious about the self-powered pump to see if it'll work in all conditions, so I'll try it first), I'll keep it in mind for later projects.

On isolating clean sections of river: If you build a bunch of screw pumps over a river so that they send water directly upstream, the water will somehow be absorbed back into the river as long as you have a couple of wall tiles around the pumps to stop it from sloshing onto the ground. Since there's nothing acting on the water downstream of the pumps, water from there will start flowing back up the river into the pump intakes.

So... you're removing water from the middle of the river, across the width of the river, so that even in the case of any stagnant water flowing down it, it'll stop there and not go further? A "fire break" for water stagnation? Or am I completely misunderstanding?

Contamination should cease to be an issue if you pump sourced water into a cistern and treat that as your sourced water while making sure it never comes into physical contact with the original water. To make sure that happens you may need to cover every tile of pool and river on the map. I don't know if a bucket of stagnant water poured into clean water will make the whole lot stagnant as effectively as an n/7 tile of water.

Oh. I hadn't even thought of the possibility of some idiot dwarf going and dumping a bucket of stagnant water into my system. If there are no dump zones at all, or whatever the bucket thing that I've only used once-ever in the four+ years I've been dabbing in DF is called, and the only access to the water is a well (do dwarves dump buckets down wells?), fishing areas, and maybe a grate or three to suck the water from misting systems back into the plumbing, will they ever have a reason to dump a bucket into the system? What's my risk of stagnation infection?

Spoiler: Because it's THERE! (click to show/hide)

What was the rest of the original sentence about?

Huh?

The first post had the same question twice. A short version, and a longer, more specific version.

A topic is not limited to what it was started for. You seem to not get that.

Ok, so... were you not talking to me *at all* in your first three responses to this thread?
Should I start running into other threads tossing in tangentially related facts about what's being discussed, just in case they don't know what a wiki is?

Your first two posts were things that I had already read in the wiki, and those facts were quite specifically the reason why I asked the question I asked, and you sharing those facts did nothing to answer my question. The third response was an "answer" to the question that I had specifically ruled out in advance.

If you asked:

"What plant gets me silver dye?"

and I said

"You can get dye by milling plants!" and
"You can process mill plants at a millstone or quern!",

it'd be the same as your first two posts. Non-answers. Then, when you finish tolerating my responses and I say

"Don't use silver dye, use blue, it's easier to get for an underground fort!", that'd be the equivalent of your third response. Telling you you're wrong for trying to get silver dye, and saying to go with something easier.

using dwarf power means requiring an unlocked door to access the pump, which is insecure.

1. Using a door? How did you...

What is this...

What are you confused by? I don't want any passages, stairs, hatches, doors, pits, or other dry pathways leading to or from the pump if I can help it. Even if I had to use a water reactor (and I don't, apparently, or rather I'm going to be building a non-standard one) I'm pretty sure I could build one before flooding the tunnels and sealing off the area with water, leaving the entire area inaccessible, including the reactor. Which is what I want.

Because having a cistern not full of wild helmet snakes and jabberers is easy mode to me.
There is no definite difficulty scale in DF, it's impossible to go around saying someone's right in what they view as casual, easy, normal, hard and fun.

Would you tell a person building a computer in DF that they want "EZ Mode" because they don't want animals in their water?

Again, what does it matter? I specified what secure meant. I mean, you can assume that means I want "EZ Mode" all you want, and y'know, maybe you're right (in terms of AI challenges), but that doesn't mean I'm looking for easier, simpler, more primitive architectural designs. I specified what I wanted, and specifically saying I should not do it and just do the exact thing I said I didn't want to do is the same as telling a person that they're wrong for trying to do things a particular way. This is Dwarf Fortress. Are people wrong for trying to embark in towns? Are people wrong for trying to hollow out entire mountains?

Are you the final arbiter and judge for what people should or should not be doing in game?

Brook? Completely secure then. No need to worry. Brook tiles are treated like special floors, nothing'll get through them.

Unless I channel it out for waterwheels. But that's definitely good to know, as the wiki isn't crystal clear on it (though it certainly infers it).