Pumping out a certain area in an ocean (FTB Ultimate pack)

[Fibbler]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone here could help me figure out how to pump the water out of a certain area in the ocean.

Thinking it was simple, a few friends and I blocked off a circular area right off the coast in our world. We tried having a cobblestone wall going most of the way to the ocean floor and set up a couple of pumps and hooked them to a few xycraft tanks to start getting rid of the water in the area. We noticed this was going soul crushingly slow, and one friend set off to fill the area layer by layer with leaves and burning them away to remove the water.

About an hour later, I'm going around to get more leaves off the forest we planted and noticed a large area of missing water in the ocean. We turned off the pumps and fixed up the whirlpools, and decided since the two water bodies were touching, it counted. We made a full wall, double checked for any holes and started up the pumps again. We watched both inside and out, and noticed the pumps didn't go down into the water they were over, and instead only extended 2-3 blocks out. We saw they were pumping water though, and checked around. Sure enough the ocean was being drained again.

Bottom line; How can we cut the ocean off from the area we want to drain so the pump doesn't wreck our ocean as well? I'd rather just have a machine get rid of the water than fill the area with leaves layer by layer.

Thank you for the help.

 

[lavarthan]

Have you tried the buildcraft filler? I have not use many buildcraft machines, but that sounds like a solution. Not sure if it removes water, but you could let it fill it with dirt and move the markers and let it clear out the dirt afterward.

 

[Ako_the_Builder]

Buildcraft filler. Fill the entire area using the box pattern (8 bricks with a space in the centre), make it big enough to encompass the circular area you want.

Add xycraft valves to make the box into a xycraft tank (make multiple boxes if you're bigger than the max xycraft tank size.

Get a couple of liquiducts, a lever and a xycraft liquid void block and pump all the water out of the tanks into the void block (not sure if this works, need to see if a liquiduct will connect to a liquid void, if not you can use buildcraft waterproof wooden and void pipe).

Build your structure inside, then get rid of the walls, can use the filler for this in clear pattern (9 glass).

If the water surface isnt smooth you can make a floor 1 block below the water level (again with filler), make sure the 1 layer of liquid covers the entire floor, then destroy the floor. this should give you a flat ocean again.

 

[Freakscar]

Another (costly) option would be a MFFS contraption with the sponge upgrade. But this does not drain the water, instead the water blocks are destroyed.

 

[BeastFeeder]

A filler with tons and tons of sand from pulverized cobble set up at the top will place it and it will fall to the bottom repeatedly.

 

[snooder]

Your idea of walling off the area should have worked. Double check to make sure that you don't have any holes.

The way the BC pumps work is that they pull from the farthest connected source block. So they'll drain the ocean around before they drain the water underneath unless you wall it off.

Your other option to set up a turtle to move around the area and drop/pickup a liquid void block from xycraft.

 

[CodaPDX]

Are you using buildcraft pumps or redpower pumps? Buildcraft pumps actually work from the outside of their effective radius in towards the center, and aren't particularly sensitive to the geometry of the blocks surrounding the water they're supposed to be pumping. Redpower pumps are much better at pumping the water out of a particular area (or vice versa).

 

[snooder]

Are you using buildcraft pumps or redpower pumps? Buildcraft pumps actually work from the outside of their effective radius in towards the center, and aren't particularly sensitive to the geometry of the blocks surrounding the water they're supposed to be pumping. Redpower pumps are much better at pumping the water out of a particular area (or vice versa).

I would hope he's using BC pumps. Unless something has changed with RP2 pumps, they have a bug where if your storage fills up, they just start creating random water source blocks in the world.

 

[Fibbler]

I'm using buildcraft pumps. I suggested the filler idea to one of them, but the other seems pretty convinced on using the pumps. I realized it would be kinda of a pain setting up the path markers for the filler though, since they cant be put under water and what not. I was going to just dig under the area i needed but, trouble shooting the pumps at this point. Thank you for all the help, hadn't heard of any uses for the filler before, figured it was literally for just making a square/rectangle of a block to sculpt something.

 

[BanzaiBlitz]

Sand/gravel/crushed obsidian wall due to gravity preventing any holes. Once properly cut off or filled in, easy again.

And fillers happily work in a single block line if you're trying to make a wall. Just hook up a method to pump in sand and sit back to watch it work.

 

[Ako_the_Builder]

I'm using buildcraft pumps. I suggested the filler idea to one of them, but the other seems pretty convinced on using the pumps. I realized it would be kinda of a pain setting up the path markers for the filler though, since they cant be put under water and what not. I was going to just dig under the area i needed but, trouble shooting the pumps at this point. Thank you for all the help, hadn't heard of any uses for the filler before, figured it was literally for just making a square/rectangle of a block to sculpt something.

My base on the server I play on is a 3x3 chunk structure in an ocean underneath an npc village, I had some fun trial and error making it

 

[Saice]

My base on the server I play on is a 3x3 chunk structure in an ocean underneath an npc village, I had some fun trial and error making it

I have done the underwater base thing before. It is a lot of fun to do and has its own challanges. And man it looks cool when your done if you go with a lot of glass in the build.