v0.31 Talk:Screw pump

Note: Pumps will transfer power vertically as they did in 40d. It is confirmed they function in all respects as they did in the previous version. For information on vertical power transfer see Pump Stack in the article.

Moved this to here from the article. Oddtwang of Dork 22:00, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

About the service area in the picture. You can use a door at the impassible part of the screw pump instead of using two doors. The dwarves can dig and move diagonally. --Altaree 15:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

it can be ... operated by ... using gear assemblies connected to water wheels and/or windmills.

A gear assembly is not necessary. It is possible to build a water wheel, connected to a horizontal axle, connected to a screw pump. The screw pump will function as intended.

Pump Speed

How much water do screw pumps move? Is it 1/7 of water per game frame? If you wanted to build a 1x1 waterfall that operated constantly without sourcing any new water, how many pump stacks would you need?

A lot. I don't know. Less than one, so to speak ;) In any case, channel the water through a diagonal after the pump --92.202.29.45 17:16, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe they move 7/7 per step. Make sure your drainage is good :) 66.30.8.88 21:27, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

In a different tack. In the notes section it is mentioned that pumps do not pump 1/7 amounts of liquids, but at least my pumps do in an unmodded version. If no one corrects me I'm going to change that in a few days. --Egodeus 14:50, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Could you record a movie of this and upload it to DFMA? I just tried this with water, and a screw pump would not move it from the source tile unless it was at least 2/7 deep. --Quietust 16:12, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to do that once I get the chance. I'm going out of town for the weekend so probably not going to happen before next tuesday. --Egodeus 05:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I've done a lot of pumping, and it always drains water to 0/7 in the tile being pumped out when it can, assuming it's powered. Non-empty tiles are mostly when surrounded by water and flowing in anyway from pressure. AutomataKittay 09:06, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps there is confusion in this discussion due to terminology? I'm thinking, perhaps, pumps will not start pumping unless the source is at least 2/7 deep, but it will still drain the source to 0/7 if it had enough to start pumping? Just a thought... I haven't tested this. Also, I vaguely seem to recall a technical discussion on how water flows in DF that claimed the water level in a tile can, sometimes, fluctuate too fast to be updated on the screen. Perhaps the water was fluctuating like this between 1/7 and 2/7? --Thundercraft 21:38, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I think you're right, did a quick test to verify. It won't pump 1/7 out, but will completely empty 2/7 when ran on manual. My mistake about the always emptying out, it's either evaporation or just not pumping everything down to 1/7. I haven't tried powered, but I'd imagine the behavior would be the same. AutomataKittay 07:48, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I verified it. A pump will pump a tile to 0/7 when it pumps, but pumping will NOT occur if the tile is only 1/7 full. I hadn't kept that much of an eye on the pumps and the pumping tile had just evaporated. This is with magma and apparently also holds true for water. Sorry about the trouble. --Egodeus 17:45, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Magma-Safe Pump

How is it possible to make a magma-safe pump (or rather, one which does not degrade into its component parts), since pipe sections and corkscrews can (apparently) only be made of wood? Rodya mirov

• Nevermind, pipe sections and corkscrews can be made of metal, just not rock. Leaving this here in case anyone else has a similar concern. Rodya mirov

The entry implies that you can pump magma with a pump containing some wooden parts. This is very misleading because while you can fill an area on the other side of it with some magma, the pump pretty much instantly catches on fire, and within a couple minutes will fall apart.--Krenn 06:40, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Desalinating water

Can someone add an idiot-proof explanation for how pumps desalinate water? I can't get it to work.

Here's my setup:

 (saltwater lake)
   %
╔═0%0
║+++║
║+++║
║▲++║
╚═══╝
 ▲

Pump pumping north to south from the lake, ramps put in for access while constructing, floor built under first tile of the pump. When I order the pump to be started, the reservoir gets filled. I stopped the pumping before the reservoir overfilled, then designated the level above as a zone. Water source does not highlight, and designating it doesn't work.

Initially I did the above but had not built a floor tile under the exit end of the pump, which did not work. I removed the pump, put in the floor, waited for all the water to evaporate and tried again - no dice. Does that mean mud will contaminate the water and make it salty?

See Salt_water - you have to pump the salt water into a completely constructed cistern. The water inside the cistern will be desalinated.

========desalination not as simple as portrayed 9/22/2010 I built a basalt cistern. Basalt floor, basalt walls, basalt door into basalt floored pumping room. cistern fills, holds water, not drinkable.

cistern is constructed from rock hauled up the mountain.

does the cistern need to be made of blocks or bars?

I must be an idiot though because after 3 days trying with the wiki and youtube open I still can't get a single level of pump stack to work either.

========It turns out that water will be purified by screw pumps, but only if the receiving structure has never previously contained salt water. Once it has, it will become permanently salty, no mater what materials are used to construct the cistern. You can even use natural materials. See water

"A screw pump can be used to desalinate water, but if the fresh water produced ever contacts salty water, the "saltiness" will conduct through the entire body of water making the reservoir permanently salty, so be careful not to drain the fresh water into salty water (including salty aquifers). Note that once a tile is marked as salty, it cannot be reverted without external tools.

Previously there was a myth that water would turn salty if it ever touched natural stone. This myth has been debunked, any cistern will work, except those dug into a beach, which may spontaneously turn salty (constructed cisterns on the beach are fine though)."

Pumping FPS

I have built about 110 pumps in a stack to get magma to the surface. After I have turned them on, the FPS dropped to <1 (with typical FPS about ~60) until all stack containments filled up to the 7/7. WFrag 06:24, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72296.0 WFrag 11:27, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

They only stack one way if you dig correctly

Worth noting that due to the way the power is transmitted from one pump to the next, if you have any problems of this nature it's because the inlet hole and power transmition holes are not dug correctly -- one level is '1010' and the next level is '0101', repeated as many times as is necessary. If you dig the holes correctly, then the pumps will only allow you to build them one way -- the way that will work. This confused me for a good while! FleshForge 01:10, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

FYI These are extraordinarily dangerous - if you didn't channel your aquifer access, dorfs slip and drown when using pumps.

Necessity of pump stacks

Here's the thing that I've never understood: If I dig a set of Up/Down stairs straight down, and then position a pump stack to pump water into the stairs, water will get pushed into the stairwell. This water has nowhere to go but up, and eventually rises up the stairwell. So why do we need pump stacks in the first place? Why not just pump into a vertical aqueduct? --Romeofalling 02:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Er, pumps don't work that way - they can't lift a liquid higher than the Z-level of the pump output tile. Thus, if you have water on Z=120 and you need to move it up to Z=140, you need twenty screw pumps. --Quietust 04:49, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

power output

How much power does the pump transfer? And given no other power source, what's the limit of pumps that a single dwarf could hand-power? Uzu Bash 00:31, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Power transfer? As much as is supplied, minus the 10 points for running the pump. Dwarf-power? Just the one he's operating. --DeMatt 00:33, 20 October 2010 (UTC)