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[foxsoul]

Aquifer Question time!
What is the minimum drain size for 1 exposed aquifer?

For background information, I am planning out a way to provide mist to the future housing district by dropping water in from above.
I have multiple ideas, like having the entire hallway just covered in grates with churning water below, and having water drop in from above.
In all cases, I still need to ensure I am not flooding the place.

[PatrikLundell]

One aquifer tile (at a lower level) is sufficient to drain a fair number of exposed tiles on the level above (a standard 2*1 staircase is capable of draining the water produced by the walls of the 2*1 hole at the level above it (i.e. 6 tiles), but that's probably not the limit. A Deployable Hole probably has  the same capacity. The limit to a drain capacity is how fast water can teleport and fall down it.

Note that if you're dropping water on top of dorfs you have to make sure the falling flow doesn't exceed 3/7 at any time or you'll get repathing and task cancellations.

Depressurizing water with diagonals can be used to get a screw pump stack (or two) to produce a dwarf washer at the fortress entry. If the water is drawn from single tile aquifer sources it can be absorbed by a single tile of the same aquifer, while drawing water from an open water source (such as a basin fed by several aquifer tiles some distance away) can push too much water through a depressurizer, so I'd recommend a single diagonal passage to the source tile to throttle the flow (while still using a depressurizing diagonal at the top).

[Loci]

What is the minimum drain size for 1 exposed aquifer?

A "portable drain" (minecart dumping into a solid wall) should be more than sufficient. In general, each tile of moving water causes lag, so it's best to keep your hydroworks to a minimum size. Here's an example aquifer-shower I posted a while back:

http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=13443

One aquifer tile (at a lower level) is sufficient to drain a fair number of exposed tiles on the level above (a standard 2*1 staircase is capable of draining the water produced by the walls of the 2*1 hole at the level above it (i.e. 6 tiles), but that's probably not the limit. A Deployable Hole probably has  the same capacity.

Not even close. A minecart will fill and dump 2/7 water per tick. An aquifer tile will absorb an infinite amount of water per tick. You can literally drain an ocean into a single aquifer tile (I've done it).

[mikekchar]

I keep trying to understand this.  My guess is that the aquifer will absorb all of the pressurised water in the tile in one tick?  Therefore if you manage to have to pressurize it, it will get absorbed?  Because it *does* take time for water to get absorbed by an aquifer in many situations.  My guess is that it's the time it takes for the water to fall into the tile?

[Loci]

Yes, aquifers only absorb water via pressure-teleportation. Likely for performance reasons, the game only evaluates 1/16 of the standing/falling water tiles per tick. So it will take 16 ticks for the entire *second* ocean z-level (of any x and y size) to disappear completely, instantly replaced by water from the third z-level. Each additional z-level will then disappear after it falls to the second z-level (in a multiple of 16 ticks). The first ocean z-level (sitting atop the ocean floor) cannot pressure-teleport directly, so it will only drain as it randomly flows over the hole to the aquifer below, taking far longer than 16 ticks.

Screw pumps and a few other dwarven devices ignore the 1/16 tile evaluation cycle and operate each tick.