Railcraft / Buildcraft big pumping station help (pics)

[Kelvin]

Hi all, I have been running a setup the same as direwolf for pumping liquids cross dimension and it has been working fine, however I have scaled up the design and the pumps don't seem to be working properly, there is plenty of liquid below them and ALL chunks involved are active with world anchors over both dimensions but the engines don't seem to drive up the liquid. Sometimes they work fine for a few carloads then they will dry up for 10 mins or so. Any ideas? (edit - I kept the same ratio of 1 pump to 2 carts so that wont be the problem)

Thanks

 

[warfighter67]

I have the same problem with mine, so if anyone finds a solution, that would be great.

Mine only has one system though, not two.
Two pumps powered by 4 redstone engines each in 5 blocks deep lava (tested by diving in with quantum armor on) going to an iron tank that goes to liquid loaders and uses portals to unload them in the overworld.

 

[noah_wolfe]

I ran across this issue and thought my netherrack quarry "world anchor" was too far from my pump (which was used to feed a magma engine running the quarry). I'm not sure if it was the pump or the redstone engines freezing up, or a chunk issue - though you could try to power the pumps with magma engines (feedback the lava) in order to rule out a possibility or two.

 

[warfighter67]

I ran across this issue and thought my netherrack quarry "world anchor" was too far from my pump (which was used to feed a magma engine running the quarry). I'm not sure if it was the pump or the redstone engines freezing up, or a chunk issue - though you could try to power the pumps with magma engines (feedback the lava) in order to rule out a possibility or two.

I tried temporarily powering my pumps with two combustion engines each and they still didn't pump. I was standing next to them even though they were chunkloaded, so that's not the issue.

I should note that there is a bunch of flowing lava above the 5 blocks of (what i think) sources. Although lava runs so slowly that flowing blocks can stay forever in place, so maybe that's the problem?

 

[Kelvin]

I managed to find a solution to my problem, i split my nether pumping station into 3 separate stations very far apart, with 2 pumps to station and +20 blocks between each pump, I also put the pumps closer to the lava (don't know if this contributed but thought I would mention it). Anyway its working now. Thanks guys, hope you manage to fix yours.

 

[Omicron]

Then it would seem like the pumps interfere with each other when they're too close. Odd.

 

[warfighter67]

Good to know. My setup worked a lot better when I only had one pump running, so that seems to be the case.

 

[Yusunoha]

I don't know what engines you are using to power the pumps, but as said maybe the pumps go so fast that they suck up eachother's lava sources and the lava first needs to flow again before they can keep going...
one thing I noticed about BC pumps is that they are random, I don't know if it's really as random as it looks to me or not

 

[Kelvin]

I was using 4 redstone engines per pump. Only because I know they won't explode or run out of fuel. What are the other options?

 

[warfighter67]

I was using 4 redstone engines per pump. Only because I know they won't explode or run out of fuel. What are the other options?

Kind of cheap, but you could use one geothermal generator to power 3 electrical engines on 3 different pumps. Give it an initial source of lava and use the pumps own lava to pump it back in. I haven't tested this yet, but you should profit lava, especially if you're using it to power more than one pump.

 

[Omicron]

Note that four redstone engines, once warmed up, are enough to pretty much saturate a normal waterproof pipe coming from a pump - and that's still only 0.2 MJ/t. Using more than 1 MJ/t per pump is complete overkill even if you use a golden waterproof pipe to transport liquid (and then you still have to move one golden pipe's worth of lava per pump with liquid loaders, which probably means more than one loader per pipe, although I haven't tested it per se).

So I'd use one electric engine per 3-4 pumps, maybe.

 

[warfighter67]

Note that four redstone engines, once warmed up, are enough to pretty much saturate a normal waterproof pipe coming from a pump - and that's still only 0.2 MJ/t. Using more than 1 MJ/t per pump is complete overkill even if you use a golden waterproof pipe to transport liquid (and then you still have to move one golden pipe's worth of lava per pump with liquid loaders, which probably means more than one loader per pipe, although I haven't tested it per se).

So I'd use one electric engine per 3-4 pumps, maybe.

Good to know! I learn more every single day..

 

[agrodon]

I'd go straight for magmatic engines, they generate 4 MJ/t and will not explode.

 

[Kelvin]

I'm still having trouble , i am wondering if there is a limit somewhere on pumps.

Basically i had 4 stations in the nether each with 2 pumps (4 redstone engines per pump, this was fast enough for myliquid loader/unloader to constantly run) and all was fine. I doubled this to 8 stations each with 2 pumps and once again some pumps would randomly not pump the lava (there was oceans worth underneath them). Again all chunkloaded and all very far apart :/.

 

[Omicron]

You could try to go to the official Buildcraft forums and ask around there if others can replicate the issue or if pumps have any known bugs.

 

[Kelvin]

Good plan, will do