Mindcrack: Combustion Engines, Water and Pumps
 

Hi,
the more experienced and well studied of you will know this, and those who do not use combustion engines will not care, but for the rest:

Beware when using combustion engines which need to be cooled with water. Occasionally (and this seems random) the water pumping system will manage to remove all the water source blocks for the 3 x 3 pond you need to use to feed the pump. This will cause your combustion engines to overheat and explode if you don't catch it.

As far as I can tell the only way around this (at least to stop it all exploding) is to build a circuit with gates and red stone that auto cuts-off the engines when they reach yellow/red in color. It is a total pain in the behind but seems to be the only way to cut the engines off when it happens.

If anyone wishes to see one example of how to set this up just come look at my place. It is not that complicated but does need a total of 8 pipe gates (yes 8 ). 4 for the pump control and 4 for the cutoff and some red stone/red alloy wiring especially when you use the (almost) mandatory cut out switch for the room.
Cheith.

There is a machine you can use to create water; aqueous accumulator.
As long as you place two water source blocks next to it it will create water quite quickly. It's probably more reliable than using a pump and a pond.

I agree with Daed, OJ did all our combustian engines with the aqueous accumulator and never had an issue with them overheating. But might have to stop by and have a look and see your idea anyway :)

are you pumping from a corner? and also is your pond 3 x 3 and only 1 deep?

for buildcraft pumps you must pump from a corner.

Interesting - pumping from the center and actually had no issues with water running out until today. Fortunately I caught it. I have probably run something like 100 buckets of biofuel through these things with the pumps running the way they are!

The really weird part was that both water sources (which are separated) ran dry at the same time.

I shall look into the aqueous accumulator.

Cheith.

There's a bit of an odd behavior with this. If the pumps are running when the chunk is unloaded and then re-loaded, there's a chance that the block won't refill at the right time, and the pump will take the next block. This can kill the whole setup.

Funny you should say that - this is what I noticed at the last server reset today, a chunk not refilling properly and a new chunk being fetched messing the whole thing up - fortunately my new fail safe setup just switched the combustions off when they hit orange.

Cheith.

On the subject of pumps and pipes, what would be a worthy trade to get some bee's wax to make some waterproof pipes??

You can cook cactus to make waterproofing as well.

Yes, cactus is the way to go. Cook a cactus to make a cactus green. Cook a cactus green to make a waterproofing.

Aqueous Accumulator is my friend. I use it for all water needs. It does not count a water source underneath it for the 2 to operator at full speed FYI.

(It will actually function without any water sources, accumulating the aqueous from the air as it were, but this is pretty slow so not useful for engines.)


- OJ