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[deknegt]

Is there any way to stop a waterfall?

I embarked at a river with a 3z waterfall inside it and it's crippling my frames to max 40. Needless to say the slow pace is driving me nuts and I want to stop the waterfall from... falling.

Is there any way to stop the waterfall by damming it? Or am I better off finding a new embark?

[Gizogin]

You should be able to stop the fall by damming the water above the drop.  How you can do that is another matter entirely.

[Meta]

Build a wall of pumps directly above the river to pump the water back into the river. It should stop the flow. Then build a wall in the river. Done!

[Ross Vernal]

A pump stack will drain the river quickly. I once used pumps to power an artificial waterfall, and had to re-engineer a solution to get the river running downstream of my pumps.


I'm not sure about this, but couldn't you build a staircase 2 squares away, a support 1 square away, and then build a series of floors and walls before taking apart the stairs and pulling the lever to cause a cave-in dam?

[Gizogin]

Constructed walls and floors will deconstruct when you drop them, so that wouldn't work.

[Ross Vernal]

Good to know.

[Gigaz]

You can stop the waterfall without using any screwpumps. First, build like that:

s=soil
0 - nothing
c - constructed floor
7 - muddy ground of the river (shows in game as 7)
t -  tunnel to your fortress
Z0:

t s s  s s s s
t s s  s s s s
c c 0 7 7 7 7
c c 0 7 7 7 7
c c 0 7 7 7 7
c c 0 7 7 7 7
s s s  s s s s

The waterfall can now easily be stopped by building a wall everywhere where a "0" is. The dwarfs might suspend the construction of the wall 2-3 times, don't bother and unsuspend.

[Triaxx2]

Actually the pump trick simply pumps the water back up stream, stopping it in it's tracks. To restart the river, just turn off the pumps.

Depending on the height, and width of the waterfall, you might be able to build bridges under it to push it out from the surface of the rock and work underneath it.

[Itnetlolor]

Why not make a series of over-steps with the pumps, and provided enough pumping power dries the falls enough, build a retractable wall-bridge so you can control the out-flow. After all that is taken care of, de-commission the initial pump setup, and you have yourself a nifty operational dam/flood mechanism.

Feel free to modify the river path any which way you please from then on.


EDIT:
If you're feeling creative, make it look like a faucet, and use staircases and a series of flow re-routings to turn it into a shower/sink.

[sneakey pete]

Constructed walls and floors will deconstruct when you drop them, so that wouldn't work.

They will break any floors without walls below them, so if you dig out under the river, then drain it to the caverns (and install floodgates somewhere), drop the floors to break the riverbed, it drains, you wall it up downstream, close the floodgates and it stops flowing.

Screw pumps are way easier though.