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[Nagidal]

thanks, as far as i understand it this is the original slow method of double slit. then he wrote that there is a faster way how to drill through all but the lowest aquifer layers. And that's where i don't understand how to proceed.

[hapes]

This is the fastest way I know, and applies to all layers of the aquifer.  It's pretty efficient.  And you don't need to use wheels to run the pump, just start it manually and assign a dwarf the pump operator labor (not your mason or miner). 

[GavJ]

I don't have any dwarves suitable for testing this, but can dwarves who are currently swimming do various tasks, like constructing things or smoothing walls?

If so, just dig a hole big enough for a pump stack to fit in, and put swimmers in, smooth/construct everything, drain the layer of water with the pump stack (that progressively gets built downward).

?

[GoldenShadow]

This is how I do a single layer.I use a 2x2 hole for single layer. I use a 4x4 hole for double layer. I havent encountered an aquifer more than 2 layers yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IGy_Lbablk

[CatkinsFTW]

I recently started playing Dwarf Fortress (34.07) and after disabling aquifers I decided to learn how to them. I generated a few worlds with deep 7-10 layer aquifers.  I created a bunch of new (to me anyway) aquifer breaching methods all of which work in a finite area and with arbitrarily deep aquifers.  Since the version just changed and I'm discarding these forts, I'd like to present 3 of these methods here: my preferred method which is slightly more compact that the double slit method (and has only 2 or 3 squares that suspend), a method that uses only 1 pump (no walls) for that insanely minimalist embark and a method that uses only walls (no pump) for stone age pre screwpump dwarfs.  The second two methods are not efficient, but they were fun.

First, I'd like to thank Tarn and Zach Adams for Dwarf Fortress, DwarfEngineer for maintaining Dwarf Therapist and QuantumMenace for the double slit method.

My Preferred Method

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Similar to the improved double slit method you dig out alternate sides of a chamber and use the aquifer to drain itself.  By offsetting the pumps you avoid backwash, save 1 tile and avoid rebuilding stairs.
The technique uses lower aquifer levels to drain the upper levels, so at some point all middle levels become self-draining.

This method requires a pump, wall building material and a miner who is at least a novice swimmer, and a pump operator.  My miner is usually close to legendary by mid summer from mining out a dirt hovel. I used 2 pumps, but you can replace the second pump with a wall to isolate the output of the pump from the input, vertically mirror the second chamber and then move the pump when the instructions say to pump from the other side.

The method is broken into two parts: a technique for the final 2 layers and a mid layer technique for all of the rest.  Always dig the exploratory UD stairs first so that you know which of the following sets of instructions to follow. 

Here we go. 

Top Level

Urist McMiner is an outstanding miner and novice swimmer so he will never drown regardless of the water depth or duration of immersion.  His masonry is enabled, but only dabbling.  All other dwarves are in burrows excluding the watery areas, otherwise the most foolish dwarf will drown admiring the spray from under 7 ticks of water, then the most altruistic dwarf will die attempting to retrieve the body and 2 more and 4 more ...

1. Dig 2 updown (UD) stairs below each of the down (D) stairs in the picture. 
2. Channel out the input side of the pumps.
3. Build your pumps or your pump plus wall. 
4. Depending on whether 2 levels down is aquifer or not follow the mid level instructions or the last two level instructions.




Mid Level

The mid level instructions are a cycle that you keep repeating until you reach the second last level of aquifer. 
1. Start pumping from the east. 
2. Dig out UD stair and the UD stair below it at (a) in the figure.
3. Dig out the 4 channels and the dig square near (b) in the figure. 
4. Swap the pump.
5. Dig out the UD stairs, 4 channels and dig tile near (c).
6. Deconstruct the pump(s) and dig out the 2 D stairs and 2 dig tiles near (d).  Everything should look like the second panel in the figure and be self draining.
7. Build 2 walls at (f) on the floor above, or if it is the top floor do nothing.
8. Build 2 walls at (e).  These are the only 2 walls that will suspend and need to be unsuspended until the job is done.
9. Build the 6 walls and 2 pumps in the third panel and then everything should look like the fourth panel.   Now you can bring in the non-swimmers to man the pumps.




Last Two Levels

In the figure below the top two panels are the second last level, and the bottom panel is the last level, incomplete and completed.  It assumes that the exploratory stairwell that determined this is the last two levels is on the east(right) side.

Second Last Level

1. Start pumping from the east. 
2. Dig the 4 channels, the UD stair, the UD stair below it  and the dig tile near the (a). Also dig the one channel beneath the (c) in the figure.
3. Swap the pump.
4. Dig the 3 channels, 3 D stairs and UD stair, but not the UD stair on the level below and the one dig tile on the (b) side.
5. Dismantle the pump(s) and dig out the 1 D stair and 2 dig tiles in the center wall.
6. Build the 2 walls over the pump inputs on the level above.
7. Build the 3 walls over the D stairs under (b) and (c) in the figure.  This walls will suspend and need to be resumed.
8.  Build the remaining walls and pump(s) until it looks like the top right panel in the figure.


Last Level

1. Start and suspend an UD stair at (h) so that Urist can complete the UD stair after the 4 walls are completed.
2. Build the 3 walls at (e), (f) and (g). These will suspend.
3. Dig out (j) (east wall near (h)) and build a wall.  This will suspend. 
4. Unsuspend and complete the UD stair.  Build a D stair above it so Urist can be free of the pit.
5. Dig 2 levels down and you are through.

Only a Pump Method

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The idea is to use a pump to gain a foot hold in the aquifer level below.  Dig out a self draining structure so that you can walk the 3 pump parts from the current location to the new location without dropping the parts in the water and rebuild the pump.  Repeat until the last level.  On the last level smooth (or build walls and you are done.) 

This was framerate destroying and I gave up after 5 levels of aquifer. 

This method requires a pump, a pump operator, a miner with a least Novice swimming ability to prevent drowning, and the bottom level must be stone.  If the bottom level of the aquifer is soil then you will need 4 units of wall building material. 

This method is based on the following observation.  Any structure in the aquifer with more drainage that source tiles is self draining.  For example a D stair beside a channel is self draining and can be dug arbitrarily long distances through the bulk of a aquifer( provided your miner doesn't drown).  Similarly a D stair beside a D stair over an UD stair is also self draining.

In the figure below each panel is the next level down.  The pump moved from pump site A to site B to site C and is currently at site D.  I've included the plan of the next 3 turns, E, F and G. 

Notes

It is important when expanding the structure in the aquifer be sure to dig the drainage first, because Urist tends to dig on one level at a time.  Once you have a structure with insufficient drainage it is often unrecoverable.

For each turn the crab structure is built last (crab A-F in figure).  Its purpose is to drain water away from above the pump build site to allow a (mostly) cancellation free re-build of the pump.   

No Pump Method

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This method consists of alternately caving-in 2 adjacent rings of dry soil/stone, to fall one level below the adjacent ring.  Buck brigade to empty out the ring.   Dig diagonally out of the ring and hollow out the area under the adjacent ring and creating a new cave in until the aquifer is breached.  The cave-ins are caused by leaving the ring only supported by a floor and constructing a ring above ground a dropping it through the floor to shear off the support. 

This method requires a miner with at least Novice swimming ability to prevent drowning, a bucket, lots of building material and that the top 3 layers are either all non-aquifer, 2 non-aquifer and 1 aquifer or 1 non-aquifer and 2 soil aquifer layers.

The method is based on 2 observations:
Any structure in the aquifer with more drainage that source tiles is self draining.  For example a D stair beside a channel is self draining and can be dug arbitrarily long distances through the bulk of a aquifer( provided your miner doesn't drown).  Similarly a D stair beside a D stair over an UD stair is also self draining.
A good miner can dig 2 UD stairs on top of each other into soil aquifer before the top UD fills with water.  This is a self draining structure and gives you a dry foothold within the top layer of aquifer if the top 2 layer of aquifer are soil and Urist doesn't decide to chase a butterfly between the first and second UD stair.

I think I made a third observation of a bug.  Any caved in stone loses its aquifer property.  I didn't exploit this, but it certainly is exploitable.

The figure below is just before the 4th drop of 9 drops. 

Startup is straight forward if there are at least 2 non-aquifer layer to make your first ring from.  You can just dig a trench into the aquifer and drop a ring in like the basic cave in method.  When you have only 1 non-aquifer level and 2 soil aquifer levels, then employ the second observation and dig two quick UD stairs in order get a foot hold in the aquifer.  Dig under your ring, with appropriate drainage and one square beyond so that the ring is only supported by a floor.  Build a ring of floor one square larger in every dimension and drop it to cut through the supporting floor.

Once you have dropped a ring you will be able to build walls around the edge of the aquifer, which is drained by your lower levels until you reach the ring.  Dig out the ring and empty it via bucket brigade.  Dwarf powered waterfall ecstasy.  Dig diagonally out of the ring.  Dig 2 levels down everywhere except under the diagonal square (top left corner 2 levels underneath ring B in figure at red (b)) other wise you will no longer have a complete ring of dry stone which can be emptied by bucket.  Build the cutting ring and drop it.

As mentioned the figure is just before the 4th drop (ring A, ring B, ring A, ring B).  The panels are 10 levels from the same location from top to bottom layed out like text, left to right top to bottom.  The south ring B is about to be dropped.  The first two panels are the top two levels which show cutting ring B and its support. Note, I cheated on my own requirements and brought along 3 stone to build a mechanism and lever to release the cutting rings via support A and B (marked in figure), but you could use children they enjoy the responsibility.  The third panel is ground level with a clay stockpile and some tethers so that the goblins know where to get the best vantage point for the engineering spectacular.  The next two panels are dry soil levels.  The third panel second row is a complete aquifer layer, with retaining walls built.  The fourth panel second row is the top layer of ring B, which is only support by flimsy floors.  In the first panel of row three you can see the bottom level of ring B and the top level of ring A, providing a dry tunnel down.  In the second panel of row three is the bottom of ring A. In the bottom right corner of the ring at the red (a) is where I diagonally dug out of my dry tunnel.  The last panel show ample drainage for the tiles above and that the tile under red (b) is not dug out. 

Note, always dig adequate drainage first.  If you fall behind with the drainage the water may be too pushy to fix the drainage.  So given an option dig down in the aquifer instead of across, (exactly what Urist doesn't like to do).

[Finndibaenn]

Has anyone tried the fast method described here with 34.10 ? http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=79224.msg2060636#msg2060636

I have 2 levels of UD stairs in the slits as explained but both levels are filled with water (even though the 2 levels seem to be aquifers (damp stone all over) preventing walling one the upper one

edit : my  bad, it was actually not an aquifer

[saintjebus]

I'd just like to thank all of the contributors to this thread. Using the information here, I just successfully breached my first aquifer (using Quantum's original 2-slit method). Thanks a bunch.

[Nagidal]

I would like to thank Slythe for explaining me Quantum's method and guiding me while writing it up as a newbie-friendly tutorial in the wiki.

Please test it whether it is easily understandable.

[Panando]

I've posted a How-To video on youtube showing how to quickly pierce a multi-layer aquifer using a refined twin-slit method inspired by QM's improved twin-slit method (the one in the spoiler tag). It's heavily optimized for speed and simplicity and IMHO much superior, in this video it takes only 5 minutes to punch through the 2 layer aquifer, and then another 5 minutes to establish a cavern drain and tidy up the staircase through the aquifer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXQH9dliFZE

Maybe it'll be useful to someone(s) who can't pluck up the courage to tackle an aquifer .

Spoiler: description (click to show/hide)

The main difference between my method and QM's method, is the staircases go down the slits, and the interior tiles are kept as natural floors. Avoiding all the floor construction/deconstruction and stairs construction obviously makes it go faster, and I also believe it's a lot easier to remember what needs to be done. There is a minor optimization where only the minimum tiles required to build a pump are walled off, which also saves quite a bit of time, because it avoids most of the "job cancellation spam" wall builds.

The most serious time saver, is putting only a single staircase down through the bottommost layer, and then installing a cavern drain and finishing the job (and again I believe it's much easier to remember this process and not screw it up). QM's second method in the spoilers is fast, but the original pure-pumped no-drainage method is frigging slow. Installing a cavern drain (or a map edge drain) is much faster. On rock layers it's not a big difference because smoothing stone is fast and easy, but it makes a huge difference on sandy bottommost layers.

Finally I by no means intend to belittle QM. While I do believe my method is better, I am truly standing on the shoulders of a giant.

[Symmetry]

I would like to thank Slythe for explaining me Quantum's method and guiding me while writing it up as a newbie-friendly tutorial in the wiki.

Please test it whether it is easily understandable.

I can't follow it at all I'm afraid.  eg. step 2 all the pictures seem to bear no relation to the text.
"Designate these two tiles" which two?
"build the wall on the south" build a wall where?  there's no wall in the picture.
"then the north" picture is completerly different to the last one making the lack of a wall even more confusing
"build these two walls".  picture identical to picture from 3.

[greycat]

I had a different wiki-translation of the two-slit method on the Aquifer page, but someone removed it and added this new page.  I haven't completely looked over the new page to see whether it conveys the same information, but from my quick glance at it, I can see that it deviates (slightly) from QM's original design in a couple spots.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=DF2012:Aquifer&oldid=172023

(I'm not sure why someone felt a complete rewrite was required. )

[Nagidal]

I apologize for any inconvenience. You must have been reading the wiki page while I was working it all over. Unfortunately I did not notice that I'm accidentally replacing the images in that page.

You shall not have any further troubles. The tutorial is now very easy to follow and has the right pictures in it.

[JarinArenos]

That looks much better. Thank you.

[QuantumMenace]

Beautiful job on the write-up. Just a few clarifications, though:

The reason I say to use one-step to examine the layer below is to attempt to catch it during a tick where the pump has removed the water puddle on the tile above, so that the layer below won't be labeled "damp" if it isn't an aquifer. This isn't really necessary if you can just check the wiki to see if the layer material can't support an aquifer, unless it's possible for an aquifer-compatible layer below an aquifer to be dry.

The link says "QuantumMenace improved Hans Lemurson's pump method." I don't think mine was really based off his, which pumps the water out of the shaft entirely.

In any case, nice work. Panando's variation does indeed look a lot faster, but my original version was designed for people who are really picky about symmetry, so to each his own

[thiosk]

I'm having a problem actually performing this setup.  Once the second layer of stairs are built, the top aquifer layer is supposed to be draining to the lower layer.  However, that never happens.  To build the walls I need to actively pump continuously, and there are simply too many cancellations to proceed.

As usual when following instructions like these, i'm missing something.