Multiblock Orchard Question

[Skirty_007]

Yesterday I built a multiblock orchard (largest size - 5x5x4) and stuck some apple trees in it. I hooked a valve up to an aqueous accumulator (source blocks on either side) with liquiducts and it struggled to keep up with hydration (I'm in a plains biome), so I removed the circuit board, broke a block, made another valve and set up a second accumulator, reinstalled the circuit board, but it's still not keeping up with the water. Does anyone have any idea how much water I might need? (The mouse-over in the farm says "10 fertilizer, 32 water" - is that for each side, and if that means 32 buckets of water, how often does it require that?).

The farm is to supply apple juice and mulch for my biomass, the tank of which is pretty empty right now, hopefully the boiler doesn't use up the whole biofuel tank today whilst I'm offline (I play on a server, and even though we have chickenchunks set to not load when we're not online, I still come back to find my assembly table has made a bunch of stuff, my bees have run out of frames, etc.).

 

[Hydra]

To be honest; it's very easy to produce a lot of biomass with just water. And mulch or compost you can produce from wheat farms more easily.

Regarding the issue with your base being loaded: if you're close enough to someone else those chunks will be active. IIRC a player creates a rather large amount of active chunks around him.

 

[Skirty_007]

To be honest; it's very easy to produce a lot of biomass with just water. And mulch or compost you can produce from wheat farms more easily.

I know, but I wanted to try out the multiblock farms for something, as I'm using Steve's carts for wheat and trees. My original (pre-orchard) method was just to use water, but I figured since orchards were available I might as well have a go now that I have lots of ingots, so it's not too expensive to make.

Regarding the issue with your base being loaded: if you're close enough to someone else those chunks will be active. IIRC a player creates a rather large amount of active chunks around him.

There are only 2 of us on the server, and we generally play at similar times. Our bases are also pretty far apart - more than 1000 blocks. It's weird, but we can live with that, the only issue is if I run out of fuel and my boiler stops, but there are 2k buckets of biofuel in my tank, so if that starts to go down I have plenty time for drastic measures before that happens.

 

[dc0110]

Farm configuration
So judging by this you need 40 mB of water ( 0.04 of a bucket) per what I don't know.
The largest size farm it says has 180 blocks of farmland, does that sound about right for what you have?

This is from the thermal expansion wiki, and seems to me that it should more than handle it.

*If adjacent to two or more water source blocks, the Accumulator will generate water extremely quickly, as if it were a source block being refilled. it will eject water at a rate roughly comparable to a BuildCraft pump being powered by a couple of redstone engines.

[DOUBLEPOST=1363010894][/DOUBLEPOST]i can't seem to get my head round the maths of it.
Need more clarification

 

[Skirty_007]

Farm configuration
So judging by this you need 40 mB of water ( 0.04 of a bucket) per what I don't know.
The largest size farm it says has 180 blocks of farmland, does that sound about right for what you have?

Yep, that's the one I built.

This is from the thermal expansion wiki, and seems to me that it should more than handle it.
i can't seem to get my head round the maths of it.
Need more clarification

Aye, but the farm takes account of humidity and temperature the biome you're in and mine says 10 fertilizer and 32 water (presumably that's mU and mB as per that link), but I don't get why it's not keeping up at all. When the farm is off the tank fills up but when it's turned on it drains really quickly, and a tab on the right hand side of the GUI flashes on and off, saying that the farm is out of water.

I think I might need to duplicate this setup in a creative world whenever I play next, and see how many valves and accumulators I need to keep up with the farm. I totally didn't anticipate this as an issue!

 

[dc0110]

while you're in creative, maybe try xycraft soil planters block thingies, I believe they make it so you don't need to supply water.

 

[Skirty_007]

So I didn't go into creative, I logged in tonight (after 2 days) and my farm has stablised. (It was running the whole time, I still have no idea why it's chunkloading with neither of us online but it's not really that big a deal I guess). Somehow it now has enough water, so now I'm wondering whether there's a "setup" phase where it needs lots of water at the beginning. Or maybe my accumulators were bugged somehow and now they're ok... in any case it's fine now with no interference, and I have loads of apples coming out, hooray!