I'm somewhere between first and second page of quests. How can I get water/cooling more effectively than shearing-fermenting-dirt water-furnace?
If you sift dust all night the first night you should be able to get 24 stones which will alow you to make a slab furnace and enoufe iron to make shears, shear leaves and compost to dirt, dirt+empty bottle=dirty water+furnace=water also the cold water is useful if you get heat stroke but if you are desperate then drink from the bottle or cold water+furnace=water and if you are really desperate drink dirty water it will make you sick, but won't directly kill you unless you have no food. These are some early game tips to use till you can get better resorce and better secured in your base.
After this there are several ways to auto produce water some suggestions
Pipeing dirty water into a furnace and clean out.
One furnace, 2 chest and a set of item ducts (1 lead and 2 tin) this is good because you can use rotten flesh or any other compostable itemfor water and it only requires 8 items+fuel
Fluid Transposer with a tank on top powered by 2 survivalist generators.
2 survivalist generators (2 furnaces 10 cobble 4 redstone 2 iron),tank (1 copper 4 glass) requires a fuel sorce, 10 items to transpose not as efficient as the dirty water but easyer to automate and has small chance of giving sapling when using leaves
Melt leaves in a crusiblepipe leaves from a chest into the top of the crusible and pipe water out from the side into a tank.
Crusible (7 clay 7 bonemeal), chest, tank (1 copper 4 glass), item ducts (1 lead and 2 tin) fluid ducts )1 lead 2 copper) requires 10 leaves and a heat sorce the least efficient but requires no fule or maintenance just drop leaves in the chest and walk away.
also note that you can use hoppers (5 aluminium and a chest) in place of the item ducts
These are the 3 most commen early-mid game systems after this there are all kinds of ways to improve theses systems but thats a whole nother subject