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[Lord Shiteblast]

I'm considering an embark that has everything I need except a river. I'd prefer not to have to breach the caverns right away and I want my farms in a specific place so I want access to water so I can flood my farm areas. My embark site is across mountain and rock wasteland biomes with aquifer in the wasteland but not the mountain which has plenty of sexy metals and flux.

What I'm wondering is this: as far as I can gather from the wiki and Googlefu, aquifers don't generate water pressure, is this correct? If so, I plan on digging under the layer, aqueducting it to a general area then using a pump stack to bring the water up. I'm not sure how to safely breach the aquifer in this scenario (having built the aqueduct/canal first). I know liquids flow slower from diagonals so I guess digging diagonally and having a door ready should keep my miner safe. Just realised I should be able to channel from above. I'd prefer to keep it all underground for a safe, closed system.

I've never dealt with aquifers in all my DF career.

[Kametec_Housen]

Channeling from above and having a pump feed the water to the aqueduct will work.
If tapping it from below, you can use stairs. If you have large enough cistern or off screen drain, you can carve stairway into the aquifer from below. Dwarves will happily work standing in the resulting waterfall as long as you can deal with the water it generates. I usually build 2x1 tap from below.

Step 1: carve 2x1 stairway from below into the aquifer.
Step 2: have floor hatch installed in one tile
Step 3: have it linked to a lever and open it.
Step 4: build another floor hatch in the other tile
Step 5: have it linked to same lever as the first one

And now you have on/off switch to a endless supply of water, which generates reasonable flow. As for the pressure, aquifer doesn't generate it, which means water it creates can flood your fort up to the z level of aquifer it comes from but not higher.

[Lord Shiteblast]

Thanks for the reply. I like the hatch idea, I think I'll go with that.

[PatrikLundell]

Aquifers are water sources, and pressure builds up from their water just as it does from other sources, but aquifers themselves are not pressurized. I typically build my well/water source cistern below the aquifer and depressurize the water with a diagonal at the top level of the cistern on the way into the cistern. Once I got the hang of it I stopped using drawbridges to cut off the flow (so the body of the stupid visitor at the bottom of the cistern will remain there).
Note that an open access with a de-pressurizer will keep the cistern full as it will replace the water drawn from it.

[Lord Shiteblast]

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't know diagonals negate pressure, that will come in real handy. I was able to breach the aquifer successfully and now have a completely secure source of water for the whole fortress. I'm really happy with the result. Thanks for the help!

[Ghills]

Aquifers are water sources, and pressure builds up from their water just as it does from other sources, but aquifers themselves are not pressurized. I typically build my well/water source cistern below the aquifer and depressurize the water with a diagonal at the top level of the cistern on the way into the cistern. Once I got the hang of it I stopped using drawbridges to cut off the flow (so the body of the stupid visitor at the bottom of the cistern will remain there).
Note that an open access with a de-pressurizer will keep the cistern full as it will replace the water drawn from it.

I've been contemplating embarking on an aquifer for some water projects, and I completely forgot about diagonals. Thanks for the reminder!

[Dunamisdeos]

I usually use a as-tall-as-possible pressurized underground cistern.

I stop it with a raising bridge at the bottom, and anytime i need water or want to add a well to another part of the fortress i open the bridge and it fills the whole network instantly.

Also with this method if you make any mistakes whatsoever it will instantly explode ridiculous amounts of water into your fort, so there's that to consider.

[Kametec_Housen]

I also use pressurized water as much as possible and use on/off switches (floodgates, hatches) to control different branches of the system. The only time I use the diagonal flow is when tapping into an ocean from below. It seems that different water sources have different potential to generate flow. Ocean can flood your entire fort in a single tick. If you have an off-screen drain prepared, it will push insane amount of water through it so that it means instant fps death. (I at least believe so, but I don't have any other explanation why the game slows to a crawl) When I was using a brook to satisfy my need to watch cisterns fill, it took the water about 2 years before water even reached the cistern.

Aquifers are my preferred water source so far. They generate reasonable and constant flow without generating any "clutter" for the game to compute. I would say that rivers are comparable in terms of the flow potential, but when they are flowing into my waterworks, water levels behind the intake slowly drops. And I did notice it once I had enough dwarfs running around.

[Lord Shiteblast]

There's no security considerations to take into account with aquifers either. You can make a river water source secure of course (Duna taught me so with a lovely diagram), but with an aquifer it's just the drainage, if any, and routing to consider and no extra infrastructure needed. I've not had a lot of experience with them obviously, but the one I use now seems to provide much faster flow than any river I've ever tapped into.

[Dunamisdeos]

There's no security considerations to take into account with aquifers either. You can make a river water source secure of course (Duna taught me so with a lovely diagram), but with an aquifer it's just the drainage, if any, and routing to consider and no extra infrastructure needed. I've not had a lot of experience with them obviously, but the one I use now seems to provide much faster flow than any river I've ever tapped into.

         **TRIGGERED**

HUAAAAAAAAAEEeeere are some diagrams I enjoy posting when any excuse whatsoever the situation calls for information regarding the proper construction of waterways.

I do so enjoy when I get to use them. Indubitably.

Spoiler: On creating a safely sealed, accessible waterway (click to show/hide)

The main thing is to create a renewable (or at least vast in volume) source of water for sick or injured dwarves, and for non-dwarf residents. However, you don't want dangerous baddies to sneak in to the system from outside, and you don't want to flood your fort.

Below is a 100% SUPER GREAT SERIES of diagrams showing how to do all this safely. So long as the water source is large enough, you can pump water to anywhere in your fort. Use grates as shown to prevent anything from entering your fort through the water system. You can even link the grates to levers if you want to access those sections of pipe later (for cleaning, perhaps). This is also the purpose of the drains in each section of pipe.

Grates are invulnerable from below, BUT it's important to note that there must be no accessible path to the rear (right hand) grate (see third diagram). This is the reason for the front (left most) grate.

Spoiler: On piercing water sources (click to show/hide)

You can almost always use this method to safely pierce a source of water from the side or above. Be sure to only pierce it after your safe pipeline is completed.

You can also pierce an aquifer from below to achieve this effect. It is more dangerous in terms of initial drowning, but hey, no baddies will ever come through your pipe if it's sourced from solid rock.

Spoiler: A GREAT diagram for GRATES ah-hah-hah (click to show/hide)

It is also easy to add wells to your underground pipe system. Just make sure that the water flows diagonally from the pressurized pipe to the well area. Your dwarves should have no problem escaping the rapidly filling well area, and the water will not rise above the well level.

Spoiler: Visual on diagonal water movement (click to show/hide)

It's worth noting that there has been concern that when adding a new well onto the system that dwarves will get caught and drowned as the well fills.

In my experience constructing it exactly as shown and making that one-space connection to the main pipe allows the water to flow diagonally in two directions, which fills slow enough that a dwarf will always escape.