Water Extraction

[DownSouth05]

I am about 25 hours in and I have researched the coal/turbine power generator. I located a coal node and a waterfall fed lake miles from my hub.

Worked for two days running a conveyor, pipe and power from the coal node and lake to my hub.

Now the problem. I am pulling 45 MW with the coal mining rig, the water rig and headway pumps in the line. I have two 30 MW bio generators feeding the line. So power is adequate.
My issue is the water extractor. I have it in the deepest part of the lake and as soon as I attach power it starts to pump. I can see it sucking in water if I dive under the platform. I can see M3 of water being pulled into the extractor. Ok so it works BUT the moment I attach any length of pipe to the outlet, it runs for about 20 seconds then stops and nothing I do gets it going again, aside from disassembling the water extractor and putting in a new one.

I checked the extractor and its shows 199.4/200 M3
Ok so it's full but how do I check the pipes for flow rate if no water passes into the pipe?

Any thoughts on what the issue is?

[Karneasada]

Are you trying to pump the water to high? Water extractors can only lift water 10 meters, otherwise you need to place pumps. You can check each pipe segments to see if they have water in them. Normally I would suggest build the coal generators next to the water to minimize the piping required.

[DownSouth05]

Yea, that's what I was thinking. Right now there is about, 5 miles ( rough guess ) of piping.
Be easier I to send the electric rather than the coal and the water. GOD, sometimes my brain ceases to fucntion.

[DownSouth05]

I have 198 cubic meters of water in the extractor. The 1st 2/3s of pipe are filled with water, the last 1/3 is dry and obviously no water is in the generator.

I had built the generator on a foundation so I added a head lift pump to the pipe and powered it. Also added a holding tanks just before the feed to hold excess water. Once I removed the head lift pump, water flowed into the last section of pipe but it seems like it fills the pipe, then back flows because of the elevation.

I may have to try putting the generator on the ground so the feed pipe is level. I don't know. The game is fun but so darn frustrating.

[Blast Hardcheese]

It sure sounds like a possible head lift issue but you haven't mentioned any specific verticality to your layout. On the off chance, one way to be sure is to go ahead and slap a pump on a lower section of pipe and power it up. Then E into the pump settings, wait for the pump to settle into its rhythm, and it will tell you how high it's trying to lift the water ("Head Lift"). With a Mk.1 pump, the water can go up to 20m high. Without a pump, the Extractor by itself can only lift water 10m, so any vertical piping needs to take that into account. Further, pumps do not stack in proximity, so if that water is going *more* than 20m up, you'll need to slap another pump further up the vertical section, somewhere close to, but fewer than, 20m above the first pump. And so on, and so on, etc.

Down the line, when you unlock Mk.2 pumps, they can lift fluids 50m each.

Supposedly, horizontal distance by itself doesn't really have any bearing on fluid transit as yet.

[DerFinneAT]

Originally posted by DownSouth05:

Yea, that's what I was thinking. Right now there is about, 5 miles ( rough guess ) of piping.
Be easier I to send the electric rather than the coal and the water. GOD, sometimes my brain ceases to fucntion.

That would be the first thing I would suggest to fix.
You will want to have your coal-plants (or any water consumer that is), as close to the water, than possible.
Then bring coal to there, and distribute power from there.

Going with the 8:3 ratio you would otherwise need an unholy amount of pipes running through the surroundings.

And albeit working quite similar to the belts, I find it much harder to diagnose and fix piping issues, that belt-issues.
So keeping pipes short minimizes things I have to check, if something doesn't work as expected.

Other than that, Blast Hardchees' post is pretty spot on.

One more note regarding the pumps:
Pumps are directional. So be sure to make them face the right direction.

I managed just the other day to have 1 of 10 pumps having a wrong orientation - and it took quite some time, til I realized, what my issue was.

[DownSouth05]

Food for Thought from DerFinneAT and Headcheese. The one pump I had inline never powered up, yet it was on the same line as the water extractor. I have a feeling I installed the "backwards" sometimes the directional arrows don't appear, although at 73, my eyesight is pretty bad. I'll have to see if that's the problem because I never got any readings at all when I powered up the pump. I could just as easily bring the generator down to ground level, but I want it to work the way I designed it so have to try the pump first.

[DerFinneAT]

Just for clarification, as my post might have been a bit misleading:

With "as close as possible" I was mainly referring to the horizontal component.
So "in a close vicinity" probably would be more appropriate.

I just avoid spanning large horizontal stretches of pipes, where the vertical landscape component is hard to guesstimate.

Vertically I go nuts all the time.

Vertically my first powerplant floor usually starts at 20m above water, and any additional floor is 50 more meters in my standard setup.
And once in a while I place a pump facing in the wrong direction by accident. Usually I see that, the moment I click the left button - but sometimes I miss that.

I wish you success with your project.

[DownSouth05]

I just went back into the game. One thing I didn't realize was that the head lift pump is a "Sleeve" that fits over the pipe. I thought it was a pipe with a pump attached; so I installed it "inline" So I put the line back plus the holding tank and put the head lift sleeve over the pipe and powered it up. My lift distance was 2 meters. The remaining length of pipe filled with water as well as the holding tank and the generator ran for a total of 1 minute and stopped dead. The holding tank is full with 400 M3 yet the genny is bones dry.

Do I now need to add another water extractor? Oh and I had a "Cross T" connector in line in case I needed to add more piping but the water wouldn't flow until I took it out.

[DerFinneAT]

Do you already have a consumer on the other side of the tank?

I assume with generator you refer to the water extractor.
Please correct me, if I am wrong.

Because as soon, as every pipe and every storage is full with water, the extractor will stop extracting, as there is no place where the water could go.
It is similar to how miners top mining, when all belts and all storages are full.

Please let me know, if I misinterpreted something in your post.

[DownSouth05]

I have a Water Extractor that now has 2 head lift pumps. The water is piped from the Extractor to the holding tank and from the tank into the generator. All the pipes show as full and well as the holding tank, yet the generator shows 0.1 M3 of water. It will suddenly run for a split second then stop as there is not enough flow to keep the generator running.

It pretty annoying that the extractor can push the water approx 300 feet and that's it?

[Vectorspace]

Pumps can be placed alone and then have pipes attached, or they can be applied on top of an existing pipe. Either way works.

A mk1 pump applies 20 metres of head lift. So with the 10m from the extractor plus the 20m from the pump, gives a total of 30m vertical lift. Is the generator more than 30m higher than the extractor?

Pumps have a maximum head lift. If the max head lift is exceeded then the pump can stall. If the pump is not much higher than the extractor it may be exceeding max head lift. Try moving the pump further uphill.

But ultimately, the best solution is to put the coal generator right by the extractor

[DerFinneAT]

Originally posted by DownSouth05:

I have a Water Extractor that now has 2 head lift pumps. The water is piped from the Extractor to the holding tank and from the tank into the generator. All the pipes show as full and well as the holding tank, yet the generator shows 0.1 M3 of water. It will suddenly run for a split second then stop as there is not enough flow to keep the generator running.

Depending in the vertical situation between the tank and the generator it might also be necessary to add pump(s) to that leg also.

Could you try adding one immediately behind the fluid-tank, to see if it helps?

Otherwise some Screenshots might help to diagnose you particular problem.

Other than some fragility and wonkiness pipes could be run for any arbitrary length - so it isn't a "hard" game limit you currently are facing.

[DownSouth05]

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

Pumps can be placed alone and then have pipes attached, or they can be applied on top of an existing pipe. Either way works.

A mk1 pump applies 20 metres of head lift. So with the 10m from the extractor plus the 20m from the pump, gives a total of 30m vertical lift. Is the generator more than 30m higher than the extractor?

Pumps have a maximum head lift. If the max head lift is exceeded then the pump can stall. If the pump is not much higher than the extractor it may be exceeding max head lift. Try moving the pump further uphill.

But ultimately, the best solution is to put the coal generator right by the extractor

The generator inlet is 4 meters higher than the pipe. I have, in my game, that the head lift pumps only work when installed as a "sleeve" over and existing pipe. But that is not the issue.

I tried the following:

I disassembled the entire generator and pipe assembly. I built a jetty from the land out to the water extractor and attached the extractor directly to the generator with a length of pipe about 3 feet long. I also added a head lift pump and powered it up which showed a head lift distance of 0.1 meters.

I had zero flow to the generator and the water extractor was showing as full with 199/200 M3

I then took that apart and rebuilt my original design with an approximate length of pipe of 300 feet, 2 head lift pumps and the hold tank. I mounted the generator flat on the ground. Heads lift pumps indicated 0.1 meters of lift.

The pipes are all full, the holding tank is full and the generator is empty. The water will not move past the holding tank aside from the amount needed to allow the generator to run for about 2 seconds

It's 2:30 am and I have heading to bed, but tomorrow I will make some screen shots.

[MJS WARLORD]

you made a classic error you made long pipes go to power station.
You should put power stations as close to water as you can to keep pipes as short as possible and then conveyor the coal in regardless of how far it has to travel.

dont start up any power stations until all your pipes show full , also be careful when using a biomass to boot up water pumps because if you over do it the fuses will blow .

put a power lines along the length of where your stations are and boot up each station 1 at a time , dont connect any machines to your power source until you have made a save point and finally make a couple of power storage units and add them to your power line.

Once the storage units are fully charged you should not see them working again , if they are working then that is the first indication you have a supply/demand problem.

Fuses usually blow if you only just have enough power and some come off stand by all at the same time.

[Saviliana]

Also always try search for waterfall and place the extractors on the top of it, not the other way around. Headlift is an important thing to be remember, gravity helps alot when flow downhill, it is much more cost saving, and keep a new setup much more easy to maintain since there is no need to placing multiple pumps along the way.
And there is a better chance that you could be already researched tractors and truck stop, use it to transport coal to a watersource is much better option then long piping.