How do you get water out of tall dams?

[blademan619]

So if you build a large reservoir or dam, say 10 blocks tall, you can only get 3 blocks out with the largest gate. I am confused on how to get more than just those 3 blocks out except maybe deleting blocks and rebuilding each time. Even using mechanical pumps would only work if you daisy chain multiple of them together, which just seems really impractical. Is there a specific way to get water out that I am just too oblivious to figure out?

[Fall2YrDoom]

Depending on settings, easy normal or hard the big reservoir is needed, and yes we remove a block or a few to get by, then replace after.. The drought times and how you have water set up reflects on this.

[ADMNtek]

Easy way no. Either you delete blocks or you use pumps and dumps and daisy chaining as needed. once you are out of gate range. Not very fast or efficient but it works. But it also depends on what the water is for drinking water no dumps are needed. For irrigation as Folktails you have the irrigation tower and Iron Teeth you have the deep water pumps with a 6-block depth so you need fewer pumps but you do need dumps. If you use mechanical pumps in a chain Folktails will need a lot more pumps which can result in a more complicated power infrastructure if you put a bunch of gravity batteries on top of the dam and route it down, safer. Or you build a set of windmills next to each pump and pray that the wind gods are generous, risky.
Makes me wish you could build Levees on top of platforms or dams. because then it would be easy just to leave a hole and put a gate in front and then open it as needed.

[Wolfman]

I usually play Folktails and before the last update, I needed the unity-factions-mod just to have access to the deep water pumps. That mod doesn't work anymore, but there is another one to configure water pumps' depths manually. There should also be a mod for larger flood gates.

[Hoki]

there are 2 alternative solutions to deal with high reservoirs in vanilla:

irrigation: set up smaller reservoirs that only profite passive irrigation to the vicinity so plants wont die. you can build those as high as you want or are able to fill.

drinking water: build multiple stages inside the reservoir with waterpumps. when the reservoir fills the lower levels flood and become unusable until the water level drops low enough again. that way you can claim drinking water regardless of how deep the reservoir is.

[Jambie Lionheart]

There's actually a few mods that grant access to taller gates. Don't think any go ten high though.

Alternatively, if you can't build up then build out.

[Hoki]

the gate mod does go up to 10
but thats the max and costs a lot of research

[blademan619]

Originally posted by CtMurphy:

There's actually a few mods that grant access to taller gates. Don't think any go ten high though.

Alternatively, if you can't build up then build out.

Actually I wanted to play on hard difficulty on the smallest map, so I can't build out much. Also try to stay away from mods for a long time when I first start playing a game, so for now ill probably just delete walls if necessary, till I can build up some kind of pump system in the long run

[Hoki]

screenshots might be helpful for more detailed options

[Jambie Lionheart]

Originally posted by blademan619:

Originally posted by CtMurphy:

There's actually a few mods that grant access to taller gates. Don't think any go ten high though.

Alternatively, if you can't build up then build out.

Actually I wanted to play on hard difficulty on the smallest map, so I can't build out much. Also try to stay away from mods for a long time when I first start playing a game, so for now ill probably just delete walls if necessary, till I can build up some kind of pump system in the long run

That's fair doos. I do the same. Update knock them off the cliff most times :D

As Hoki said a screenie might be more helpful.
If memory serves hard goes up to 30 day droughts. If ya don't want mods and you don't feel you can build outwards any then there's really only 2 alternatives.

You can try building the entire river system taller (but I'm guessing you don't have that kinda time on that difficulty level).
Ok I lied, three ways.
Two, you can deliberately have a lower population. Less beavers equal less demand = longer lasting supply. You can also use this method while you build up the proper infrastructure to sustain a higher population even through long droughts. This one might require restarting the game, depending on how much you've built up.
Alternatively, you can create a district, or three, solely dedicated to collecting, storing and distributing water. Times your beaver count by 3 and then times that by 30 (I'm assuming consumption rates are still 100% for water and food at that difficulty level).
That'll be how much storage you need. Don't forget tho take into account any other sources of water consumption. You can shut them off too though. You can build those as high as you need to and you won't have to worry about crops dying so much. You can count any water storage in other districts towards this total storage count. VERY resource intensive and takes some time but it works.

[Sergeant Snuggles]

So has nobody heard of a Loch system? OP here is how you need to achieve this and the game itself gives you a perfectly useable but costly mechanic - Mechanical Water Pump

Build a multi level corridor leading to your "Exit Gate" or where you let water run out eventually prevent flooding and then at each level (but connected by a long length of power poles alongside) are your water pumps. When the resevoir is flooded, the pumps do not need to work and the water flows as normal, as the levels drops, the pumps will automatically kick in at the required stages and pump water up to the next loch level (look up the Suez Canal to see a real world example on large scale!)

You can use the pumps to go all the way to the deepest part of your reservoir as thats where the final level would be but if you are at that level then naturally the higher the power requirement for all those pumps, this is where platforms and batteries become a godsend, at the highest level of your resevoir in a straight line along side your loch walls, build a wall of gravity batteries, then at the very end a simple double right angle power pole can hook them into your pump system and you now have a gravity battery that increases as the water drops

[blademan619]

Originally posted by Hoki:

screenshots might be helpful for more detailed options

Originally posted by CtMurphy:

Originally posted by blademan619:

Actually I wanted to play on hard difficulty on the smallest map, so I can't build out much. Also try to stay away from mods for a long time when I first start playing a game, so for now ill probably just delete walls if necessary, till I can build up some kind of pump system in the long run

That's fair doos. I do the same. Update knock them off the cliff most times :D

As Hoki said a screenie might be more helpful.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2988544553
You can only have the top 3 blocks be used via floodgate, so I was seeing if there was another way that didnt involve pumps, but it seems that is not the case.

Originally posted by Sergeant Snuggles:

So has nobody heard of a Loch system? OP here is how you need to achieve this and the game itself gives you a perfectly useable but costly mechanic - Mechanical Water Pump

Yes I do know of it, I was just seeing if there was another way that didn't involve pumps or manually deleting the walls. I also didn't really want to use pumps because of the required setup and the extra space they will take up inside the reservoir, which would reduce the overall capacity of water it could hold. Seems a lot more feasible and easy to just delete single levee blocks as needing till drought season ended, rebuilding them right before water started flowing again.

[ADMNtek]

Originally posted by blademan619:

Originally posted by Hoki:

screenshots might be helpful for more detailed options

Originally posted by CtMurphy:

That's fair doos. I do the same. Update knock them off the cliff most times :D

As Hoki said a screenie might be more helpful.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2988544553
You can only have the top 3 blocks be used via floodgate, so I was seeing if there was another way that didnt involve pumps, but it seems that is not the case.

Originally posted by Sergeant Snuggles:

So has nobody heard of a Loch system? OP here is how you need to achieve this and the game itself gives you a perfectly useable but costly mechanic - Mechanical Water Pump

Yes I do know of it, I was just seeing if there was another way that didn't involve pumps or manually deleting the walls. I also didn't really want to use pumps because of the required setup and the extra space they will take up inside the reservoir, which would reduce the overall capacity of water it could hold. Seems a lot more feasible and easy to just delete single levee blocks as needing till drought season ended, rebuilding them right before water started flowing again.

honestly, I would just build some pumps and a staircase inside the dam. also, you have 300+ dynamites do some excavation to up the stored water volume. This is something I'm not sure about do buildings actually take away from water volume when they are flooded?
and why are there 2 random levees inside your dam? Also spreading your water by your making a hole will mean it will evaporate after since evaporation is based on the surface area not on depth quote from the wiki.

Originally posted by Water has a constant evaporation rate of 0.045 meters per day regardless of the weather. A full, non-flowing block of water will take just over 22 days to completely evaporate, if there are no water pumps. The evaporation is calculated only on the top level of a tile. This means that when storing water on reservoirs it might be a good idea to go for depth rather than more area so the water loss due to evaporation is not as severe. [/quote:

[blademan619]

Originally posted by ADMNtek:

honestly, I would just build some pumps and a staircase inside the dam. also, you have 300+ dynamites do some excavation to up the stored water volume. This is something I'm not sure about do buildings actually take away from water volume when they are flooded?
and why are there 2 random levees inside your dam? Also spreading your water by your making a hole will mean it will evaporate after since evaporation is based on the surface area not on depth quote from the wiki.

I was thinking of eventually placing water pumps inside the dam but was holding off on it due to it not being max height/lowest height just yet. Also was trying to not do that since the route for the pumps would be significantly longer to get the water to population centers. The dynamite I was saving for other large projects including digging a new straight canal to maximize crop planting space.

The 2 random levees were from the first original 3 high damn wall I built, I just forgot to delete them and didn't feel it was necessary to recover the resources, ill grab them once I start blowing up dirt to deepen the dam.

Spreading the water was necessary for crops and trees, which was why I was posting to see if there was a better way to release the water from the dam besides the flood gate or pumps. Based on everyone's replies, that is the only way besides deleting walls to have water flow out.

[EleventhStar]

i get water out of deep reservoirs by simply having multiple layers of pumps, with the lower layers submerged until needed. (lategame you can use mechanical pumps so one layer of pumps is enough, removes some micro hassle with turning pumps that run dry on/off. but this is way better than forgetting to open/close a floodgate and having an actual water crisis as a result)

but honestly the biggest thing is: you don't need deep reservoirs. for a 30 day drought on hard i typically don't need more than 4 blocks deep.

[Graf Schokola]

My reservoir:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990776905