Can someone explain to me how water pump works?

[dzikakoza]

I don't understand how it works. One day the waterpump is able to provide me with let's say 300 water and next few days after a drought it doesn't work almost at all and it gives around 10 water units. The amount of beavers doesn't rise. I don't get it.

[ChanceGateau]

Make sure there is a beaver working at all time (I usually prioritize the buildings) because if you lose beavers during a drought, then it might be one of the pumpers, and because there aren't enough beavers, the job is empty.

Also... build plenty of water storage and build dams across the river, even 1 square high ones will help you through the first drought or two. Later, you can make the river deeper and get water even during a drought.

Be careful not to cluster your pumps too much, especially if you have different sections of dams like I do. 1 for each section, that way, you don't drain one section fully and have all that unused water in the other sections.

[bsones]

Alternately, you can cluster your pumps as much as you want IF you remember to turn most (or even all) of them off when a drought comes. This way you can pump a ton of water during the wet season, put it in nearby storage, and have enough to last out the drought.

[jonnin]

if you have not tampered with the workday, one pump supplies about 10 beavers for a day with a little left to go into storage. Short working hours gets less from them, long days gets more. There has to be water to pump, so right after a drought ends, it may not be in the river yet or deep enough that your pipe dips into it (?). They stop working if you don't have anywhere to store the excess.

[Holce]

In short: you need the water storages near your pumps. The beavers need to empty the pumps the more quickly than possible. If they have to move too much the pump efficiency drop a lot.

@jonnin in Hard mode, before the mechanical pump, I was using a lot of big water containers. I was planing 3 big water containers and 2 water pumps per 25 beavers. The purpose was to get 18 days of water stored and fill them in about 18 days. Because I was planing to pump half the time, I was counting twice the amount of pumps per beaver. One pump for 25 beavers. 10 beavers per pump is too low. On another hand, 25 is quite high but doable.

In theory a pump get 3 water an hour. A beaver need 2 water per day. So with 100% efficiency and 100% work speed for your beaver, you can get enough for 24 beavers with 16 hours of work.

In practice, after 5 cycles, the storage of the pump need to be emptied. This may take a lot of time and reduce the efficiency. Increasing the work speed help. But not by much because the beaver has to empty the storage more often. If you don't have water containers nearby, the pump efficiency drop a lot. I plan about 15-20 beavers per pump at start and about 25 beavers per pump end game.

In my last game, my pumps had about 40-45% efficiency. And even with +110% work speed, they wasn't pumping enough. The big water container close to the pumps (only one, my bad) was always full. The beavers was drinking from the others. I was losing water. The haulers hadn't enough time to move water. Once I updated my haulers with golems, they start moving water properly (more carry capacity and work at night). The pumps efficiency jump to 75-80%. 75-80% pump efficiency with +110% work speed is nearly 40 beavers per pump... Ok this is late game dumbiness. :)

[citablekettle]

The silly rebalancing of storage can be avoided by moving the water aside with a Distribution Post placed right by the pumps (with no Water Tanks at all). With a hauler in the mix, this maintains ~98% efficiency indefinitely. As a bonus, this allows storage of thousands of units of water before you can even make Gears.