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[Yiab]

I've embarked on the edge of a glacier, I've built a fairly large fort and it's still growing. So far I've built every lasting construction out of ice, and I'm certainly not going to run out soon, but I like to plan for the future and for sustainability.

I've built an extensive underground water/magma system, and from that I've noticed that in order for water to freeze it does not need to hit an "above ground" square, it has frozen as soon as it is in a square which was only covered above by natural ice (at embark time), which got me trying to find a way to keep water melted.

I read somewhere that someone wanted to make a molten metal moat by running magma on the z-level below it to keep the metal molten, so I figured this might work for ice too. Unfortunately, it seems to me that magma entering a square will melt ice in the square above, but that ice will re-freeze later on, also water entering a square above already static magma can still immediately freeze - this has essentially led me to conclude that it is impossible to keep liquid water in a freezing area for any length of time.

Since I do want to build an ice farm, I'd like to be able to have it larger than a 1-wide wall of ice at the border of a freezing area - is this possible? Basically, is it possible to keep water a liquid above ground at a glacier?

[Quatch]

As I recall, any amount of water (possibly 2/7ths+) freezes into a solid tile. Therefor I suggest carving a room into outdoor ice, with a chamber under it that you can fill/drain with magma at will. Carving the ice room to a specific number of tiles where melting the remainder by filling the sub-room with magma will fill the ice room to 2/7ths, then removing the magma so it freezes solid, should (if I remember the mechanic correctly) generate infinite water/ice at the cost of magma lost due to shunting evaporation.

[Sphalerite]

Magma will only melt ice above it if the magma is considered to be moving.  Static magma won't.  If you want to keep the moat constantly liquid you need to have the magma being constantly circulated by a pump.

[Vattic]

Yes it is possible. I had the same problem as you with my Orcsicle trap, even when I filled the room bellow with magma the water would eventually freeze again. It seems like if magma is not flowing it stops melting ice.

To fix this problem I kept the magma moving when I wanted the ice. Here is some of my design in profile.


%% = pumps as usual
The black line above the magma chamber is a bridge.

The magma is pumped over the bridge back down into the chamber where the the system repeats. Unfortunately the magma very slowly runs out, it must be evaporating somewhere in the system. Oh and my trap created excess water, hence the overflow pipe.

So to keep a large area of surface water frozen keep a large area of magma moving underneath.

edit:ninja'd

[Quatch]

Magma will only melt ice above it if the magma is considered to be moving.  Static magma won't.  If you want to keep the moat constantly liquid you need to have the magma being constantly circulated by a pump.

Does sloshing magma in a room that isn't filled exactly to 7/7ths count?

[Vattic]

Quatch, I have found that any magma that has it's depth changing often counts as flowing and keeps the water wet. The problem is occasionally areas of the magma will settle for too long and the water above will freeze.

[Retro]

Any amount of water (yes, even 1/7, though I feel like it was 2/7 and up in 40d) will freeze into a block of ice. If you want to do this the easy way, turn off temperature in d_init, fill your farm with water, and then turn it back on. Otherwise I defer to these gentlemen's suggestions.

[Yiab]

Alrighty, I'm building a version of Vattic's magma pump system, once I get the 40 pumps I need. Thanks all for the help!