40d Talk:Well guide

In illustration number nine, "Build the Well", where are the stairs that are in the previous illustrations? Is there a way to remove them?

Tapping a brook

As long as you're on the same z-level as the water, you never need to worry about flooding no matter what the source. So even a river can be tapped that way. Now, if you want/need to drop it a z-level or more then flooding can be a serious issue, even with a brook. --Squirrelloid 17:14, 30 December 2008 (EST)

Interesting, I've had nothing but trouble trying to do this with rivers, and no problems doing it with a brook, even when I drop it down a z-level to provide a given level of the fortress with a well. Just wanted to note another well strategy, as the original article said it was not recommended and/or very difficult to do with a brook, and I've found it easy. JubalHarshaw 23:51, 30 December 2008 (EST)

I have narrowly avoided flooding my fortress with a brook. ('Oh crap, water has pressure' as water starts flowing up out of my well). --Squirrelloid 10:57, 31 December 2008 (EST)

This conversation is bringing "The Sorceror's Apprentice" to mind... :-) --Maximus 23:12, 31 December 2008 (EST)

I have never had difficulty tapping brooks, and I don't use the "out" channel to relegate the flows. Water pressure is only a problem if you drop z-levels. This article smells really suspicious to me. Is there a flag for that? I doubt the validity of this argument. It seems outdated, and agrees with the old data, not the new. --Zchris13 19:54, 21 February 2009 (EST)

Point of the deep well shaft?

Why bother with deep well shafts? When the water on the tile right below the well is less than 4/7 deep, it says "Well dry". I don't really see the point. --Alpha 15:05, 20 February 2009 (EST)

The deep well shaft is for if you are dropping the water any amount of z-levels. If you plan it right, it will work at any z-depth you want it too. Done wrong, and you have no water.--Zchris13 19:54, 21 February 2009 (EST)

But will the well function if the square DIRECTLY below it runs out of water? --Alpha 20:06, 9 March 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, I often build my wells above deadly underground rivers:

▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ emptyness ▒>.o..o..▒ ▒ natural wall ▒<X XX ▒▒▒ X constructed wall o well ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ . floor ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ≈ river

They work just fine. And keep deadly underground creatures out. Although said creatures do sometimes scare the dwarves. --Savok 20:56, 9 March 2009 (EDT)

Pumps

I notice that the article and its discussion make no mention of pumps, which would help control the water taken from a (channeled) brook tile since they "reset" water pressure. Or are we assuming a Luddite's guide? --FJH 20:21, 3 March 2009 (EST)

Meh, it doesn't mention about anything else too. And things like "unless you use floodgates" "You will also want to control the water with floodgates" (not to mention that you better use lever controlled doors) --Koltom 22:00, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Nostalgia

Is anyone else sad to see the old well guide go (at least the pond draining part)? Despite its questionable tactical suggestions noted above, I liked how it took you step by step through an engineering project, with diagrams and warnings about precautions to take. I found that to be very helpful as a newbie trying to learn how to approach DF. What's left here seems like a mere description that belongs on well and much less guide-like. I vote to undo, but I readily concede that my judgment is clouded by sentimental attachment. --HebaruSan 04:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm in the process of re-writing the rewrite, combining the (with any luck at all) best of both views.--Albedo 05:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Dwarves and wells.

I have a well.

There is water under it.

Why won't my dwarves drink from it?--DarthCloakedDwarf 03:54, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Probably because they've got enough booze, which they will (nearly) always prefer over water. --Quietust 04:27, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Fort Okilor (testdrink)

Okay, after reading this, I'm curious as to the exact details on a number of things. I'm setting up an experiment fortress, and putting the results here. I'll be uploading the save file elsewhere, for anyone who wants to see working examples of different well types. It is dedicated to one thing only. Wells. Okay, not just wells, but different ways of building and managing wells, and their properties.

1. The super-deep well. Because of alligator infested above-land, I cannot yet make a well tower to fully test it, but as far as I can tell, there is no limit to the functional depth of a well. The current super-deep well is 13 levels from bottom to top. The bottom level is at 6/7 depth. The well at the top? Perfectly functional. This kind of bothers me, because if I tied a dog to the chain, it wouldn't be able to go any father than 1 tile away. It means a rope's length is defined by it's function, rather than it's own properties.
2. I decided to build another well half way down the same shaft, directly in the path of the one above. It does not block the well above. Both function just fine.
3. I constructed a hatch cover even further below, again, on the same shaft as the first two wells. this, of course, blocked the wells, preventing them from functioning. I then connected the hatch to a lever, and pulled the lever, to see if the wells would suddenly become functional again. They did. That means we could use a one-shot pressure plate to close a hatch directly under a well when it senses overflowing water, preventing further flooding. I guess wells don't obscure because they're just a special hole in the ground. I read that grates, though they do allow water to pass through, will also obstruct a well. This is also confirmed. Personally, I'd say it's because a bucket can't fit between the bars, and leave it at that. Even so, grates can be connected to a lever, like a hatch. Don't know why you'd want grates in a well, but okay!
4. I've made a single large reservoir underneath the residential district, and put a well in several of the larger bedrooms. Multiple wells can draw from one source, no concerns. All a well considers is whether there is a single tile of 7/7 water somewhere below it in a straight line, with nothing obscuring. Also, a wide well reservoir takes FOREVER to fill. It's virtually impossible to accidentally flood your fortress, when it takes a half hour to go from 0/7 to 5/7. Oh also, in doing this, I've discovered that if you leave any stone on the floor of a well, and it accessible to your dwarves, it is elligible to be selected as an item for construction, from workshops AND architecture. My dwarves have been repeatedly opening the side door my miners used to dig out the well, grabbing stone for construction, and getting out before they drown. My dwarves are quickly becoming excellent swimmers, though my fortress' main stairwell is flooding. I've dug a huge sump to deal with that, and once the stone's been cleared out, I'll just lock the door. (hey, if they aren't drowning, why the heck not?)
5. I made a single-tile reservoir for a well, and just filled it from the large one with buckets. Just to see whether even such a small well is functional, given the rate of evaporation. With such a simple well literally directly next to it's source, yes, absolutely. It spams your dwarves with hauling tasks, but it will always be full to what your dwarves need, it will never overflow, it takes up almost no space, dwarves can't die from falling in, (Unless they REALLY suck) and you don't have to mess around with all kinds of complicated things with levers and floodgates and safely mining out filling pipes.
6. I tried to get a dwarf to try and fill a pond well from it's own reservoir. I simply forbade all the other wells' buckets. Sure enough, the carpenter came along with a bucket, took water from the only available well, the one he was filling, walked to the other side of the well, and dumped the water back in. To confirm, if your dwarves are filling a well from it's own reservoir, forbid that well's bucket AND rope. If the rope is still usable, they'll still use the well... Somehow.
7. By this point, a lot of the alligators had just... Kind of... Left? I dunno. There were five, now there's one. None deceased. In any case, it's much safer to go above ground now, even with the carp, so I'm going to make the super deep well into a super deep, super tall well tower. While making the well tower, the remaining alligator was killed by the carp. Okay, so, at 30 levels above water, I'd say wells have no depth limit, because this thing's still active.
8. In doing all of this, I've found a pretty effective way of avoiding flooding your well. Digging out and filling the reservoir first, and not even channeling a hole for the well, completely prevents the well from flooding. So long as you have something, like a flood gate, that can then be used to prevent further flow into the reservoir, it will be filled to 7/7 depth, with no pressure behind it, totally safe to mine into with a channel and build a well on top. It's making sure that there really is no force behind it that gets tricky.
9. Okay, my next idea is just sillyness. I'm going to make a well with a running water fall going down through the well into it's reservoir. Usually, I fill my wells from the side of the bottom level of their reservoir, but I've never filled one directly from above the well opening itself. If this works, it'll be a perpetual motion machine, waterfall and well, all-in-one. Oh, and of course I hit Hematite and lignite in the process of mining this out... Oh well, not like I really plan on playing this fort outside of well construction experiments... Okay, that didn't work. I'm-a gonna' save this now, and put it on DFFD, if anyone wants to see examples of what I've made. (Or if they want to make my perpetual motion machine work) Okilor Example

Preventing dwarves from falling down a well is actually fairly easy, from what I can see. I've had a well in my dining room and nobody's ever (to my knowledge) fallen in. Even so, that's mostly just luck. (And short-lived forts) So, to prevent dwarves and animals from falling into wells:

1. Put it somewhere out of the way. If your dwarves don't have any reason to path over it, they won't fall into it.
2. Surround it with restricted traffic control. Then dwarves will be less likely to actually walk over it, even if they do go through that area.
3. Don't make it a meeting hall, or people will throw parties at it, and dwarves don't really care about traffic, when they're on break/partying/nojob, because they aren't trying to find the fastest rout to their task, because they don't have a task. Also, animals like to ignore traffic control.
4. For the same reasons, don't put it in a meeting hall.
5. Don't put it in a barracks, or around other places where dwarves may be fighting for any reason, as dwarves don't look before they leap. Though, now that I'm thinking about it, it would be funny to watch a bunch of goblins go tumbling down a well... Hm... I'll have to think on that.
6. Making a well so it's at the end of a hall, with only one tile dwarves can stand on next to it, will dramatically decrease the chances of anything ever falling in. because then the only reason anything could have to go there, is to use the well, which does not involve standing ON the well.
7. Making a well's reservoir shallow, but wide, is also a good idea, I think. A wider reservoir holds a LOT of water, and takes a LONG time to dry out. If a reservoir is shallow, that means a dwarf will only fall one level or so, which can only cause momentary unconsciousness at the worst, from what I've seen of simple cave-ins. That means your dwarves won't fall down the well, break their leg and drown. Making an escape rout from a well is probably also a good idea, I think.

I noticed in the Well guide it says murky pools and brooks can be used as water sources for wells. This should probably be stated there, but just building a well over such a thing is a bad idea. Any dwarf who drinks from a well over stagnant water gets a negative thought about the nasty water. That water only becomes not-bad when you channel it to some other place. On the same line, I've also experienced that simply building a well makes salt water drinkable. Which means that desalinating by pump is not a particularly valuable bug, by comparison, though it makes a tiny bit more sense. --Kydo 01:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Simple Pressure Management

Pressure is easy to deal with when getting water from a brook. Use a setup like this:

_Brook________
#Water   #####
########^ ^#W_
########## * #
##############

Where # is a wall, ^ a ramp, and W the well. And put a diagonal passage at the star. --Calculator 22:47, 1 April 2010 (UTC)