Buildcraft Waterproof Pipes Always Have Liquid Traversing Them?

[Dex Luther]

I've noticed for a while now that Buildcraft water proof pipes pretty much always have liqud sloshing around in them, but thought nothing of it until now.

I set up a coke oven with a wooden pipe underneath and some other water proof piping leading to an Iron Tank for my creosote oil. Before slapping some redstone engines onto the wooden pipe, I put an "OR gate". I set up the gate like this:

Yellow pipe signal (+) = Redstone (attached to a button further away to start a manual flush)
Liquid Traversing = Restone
Tank Full = Redstone

Since engines and pipes are all under the floor, I wanted a way to know when the tank was being emptied. Farther down the line I put another gate on the pipe and set it to:

Liquid Traversing = Redstone

I put a howler alarm on the wall next to it, and pushed the button to set off the engines. The engines pumped once and got liquid moving, which set off the second condition on the gate and kept the engines going. The howler alarm went off as planned and everything seemed fine.

That is until the liquid appeared to be sloshing back and forth. Quick fix: Replace all the pipes with Iron Pipes so the liquid can go forward, but not come back.

That seemed to work except the alarm kept going off every few seconds. It looks like the engines keep going off because there's still liquid in the pipe, which shouldn't be possible at this point. I removed the engines and watched the gate. Liquid is seen dripping out of the oven at regular intervals, but I don't know why. There aren't even any engines on the wooden pipes.

Anyone else get this constant liquid in the pipes?

 

[Enigmius1]

This is normal for buildcraft pipes. Just a suggestion, but get rid of all the gates. Run your engines to empty and then turn them off and call it a day. The more complicated you try to make it, the more likely it is to backfire in your face (especially with BC pipes).

 

[Dex Luther]

This is normal for buildcraft pipes. Just a suggestion, but get rid of all the gates. Run your engines to empty and then turn them off and call it a day. The more complicated you try to make it, the more likely it is to backfire in your face (especially with BC pipes).

Why is liquid flowing through a pipe without an engine "normal"? It shouldn't be. It's the whole purpose of the engines being there in the first place.

 

[Mikey_R]

Assuming the iron tank is full, then any liquid in the pipe will 'slosh' around, so it will go back and forth until it has somewhere to go.

 

[Omicron]

I'm not sure if this is the phenomenon you're experiencing, but:

If you give a wooden waterproof pipe an energy pulse with a redstone engine, it will attempt to draw out exactly 1 bucket's worth of liquid (1000mb). If less than this amount is present, it will sometimes "hold on to the charge" and attempt to complete the bucket, even if that takes a very long time.

You can test this out with an oil refinery. Have the refinery start producing, give the output wooden pipe a single engine pulse and then stop the engine. Then observe. As long as the refinery keeps producing fuel, the wooden pipe will continue to draw it out, mB by mB, until it has completed the full 1000 for a bucket. During that time, it will look like the output pipe constantly has liquid it in.

 

[Enigmius1]

Why is liquid flowing through a pipe without an engine "normal"? It shouldn't be. It's the whole purpose of the engines being there in the first place.

Should be, shouldn't be, doesn't matter. It is what it is. I didn't say it was right or good or made sense. I just said it was normal for BC pipes. You can take that information and adapt your system to account for it or not.