Experimentation with rapids: Waterwheels and aquaducts

[Tam Hawkins]

I played around in creative with rapids to see how to utilise them best and wanted to share my findings. Not sure how much is already known but I'll share it anyway.

So first Whaterwheels and rapids:

I tried out tree setups.

1. Waterwheel beeing feed by 3 rapids flowing into each other before meeting the waterwheel.

2. 3 Waterwheels in paralel directly connected via avles and no big gear to unite them (big gear was used later to speed up)

3. 3 Waterwheels connected via big gear

I wanted to see if uniting 3 rapids cuold lead to 3 waterwheels beeing build right after each other. But the stream immediatly turned non rapid after the first wheel.

Next I speed up the rotation with one big gear to see how many helve hammers each waterwheel can support.

For 1. the number was 3 (total stop at 4) and for 2. and 3. the number was 9 (total stop at 10). For 3. I also checked how many helve hammers before speed was going down significantly and the number seems to be either 4 or 5. At 5 the speed still was fast but I noticed some weird fluctuations in speed.

 

 

Next was Aquaducts

I tried different setuops to see how much I could elongate the rapids with different hight drops and drop frequency. My conclusion is a very simple one.

Ever drop in elevation sets the rapids length to 5 blocks. 

So the best setup for a long Aquaduct is to let it drop one block, then let it flow for 4 blocks (including the block it dropped on!!!) and then let it drop one more level with the fifth block. The sole exception is the first drop as the source allows for a drop at the 7th block

That way you get a nice calculation for how long you aquaduct can be depending on the starting hight of the rapid vs the destination hight.

Lets say you want to bring a rapid to another place adn the rapid starts at 160 heigth while the destination is at 110 height (so 50 height difference).

Length = l, heightdiff = h

l = 1*6 + (h-1)*4

Then the maximum length you have for your aquaduct is: lenght = 1*6 + 49*4  = 202 blocks

 

Hope this is helpfull,

Tam

Edited April 13 by Tam Hawkins

[williams_482]

I found in my survival world that a water wheel will run three helve hammers at pretty much the same speed as one, but dropped to half speed trying to run four. I had mixed results trying to replicate this in creative, though, and sometimes it seemed like the wheel could run a quad hammer at about the same speed as a triple. A more reliable way of measuring speed/power would be useful: my fallback of counting hammer strikes per ten seconds was pretty clunky. Up-geared double waterwheel setups also exhibited this strange oscillation in speed, going faster for a few secs then slowing for a few sec and back, that I was not used to seeing for windmill power trains (or may have simply blamed on wind variation). That added to the measurement uncertainty. 

My guess based on limited testing is that the standard survival setup is going to be a triple hammer off a single waterwheel, or an up-geared quad hammer if you can get two water wheels in parallel. 

[Vratislav]

Have you checked number of active block powering the waterwheel? I did some experiments earlier to realize that "low water" has usually 3 active blocks, but with high water, you may get up to five active blocks powering the waterwheel. However I haven't tested for the difference in power output. 

 

[williams_482]

2 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Have you checked number of active block powering the waterwheel? I did some experiments earlier to realize that "low water" has usually 3 active blocks, but with high water, you may get up to five active blocks powering the waterwheel. However I haven't tested for the difference in power output. 

 

That's a great question. I couldn't discern a difference in my limited testing, but it feels like there should be one, especially since the waterwheel says the number of water blocks in the tooltip. I'm sure that's intended to tell us something?

[Tam Hawkins]

2 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Have you checked number of active block powering the waterwheel? I did some experiments earlier to realize that "low water" has usually 3 active blocks, but with high water, you may get up to five active blocks powering the waterwheel. However I haven't tested for the difference in power output. 

 

I had heard from someone on youtube that it did not matter s I did not test it. Give 2-3 hours and I will test it when I come back from work.

[Tam Hawkins]

3 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Have you checked number of active block powering the waterwheel? I did some experiments earlier to realize that "low water" has usually 3 active blocks, but with high water, you may get up to five active blocks powering the waterwheel. However I haven't tested for the difference in power output. 

 

Okay, I tried it out and the conclusions are funny.

First of all I tried out three set ups. Two as you shown in your post with 3 and 5 active blocks and then another with four active blocks. 

While I cannot note any significant difference between 3 and 4 active bolcks (3 helve hammer at slow speed, stops with 4). Once you have 5 active blocks you can have a fourth helve hammer at slow speed.

Now here is where the fun begins.

Additional rapid falling from the center top through the middle of the wheel to the bottom. Alone? No active blocks detected and no rotation. Together to the former setup? 6 active blocks (I assume the center does not count). And can move up to 6 helve hammers so a 50% increase in workpower. Problem is you need another rapid for that. But I can see it as usefull If you have 2 or more rapids and not enough resources for a second wheel yet.

Ok what about 3 rapids from the left, middle and rigth top to the bottomso that all 8 blocks are active?

I cant make it work. What I mean is not that it stops. It just fluctuates weirdly between detecting 8, 3, 0 or 5 blocks and weirldy enough the rotation of the wheel and the amount of helve hammer it can drive als seems inconsistence not only in general but also with how many blocks the wheel registers currently.

I would highly suggest to keep it at one or two rapids per wheel in survival as otherwise one might lose the resources for the wheel as it seems to not handle abuse of that level well.

 

I then tried having only 1 or two blocks active and the effect was as expected a weaker output:  2 active blocks can drive 2 helve hammers and stop at 3, while 1 active block can only support 1 helve hammer and stops at 2. That said you actively need to sabotage yourself for that set up so I do not think anyone will want that.

[Vratislav]

32 minutes ago, Tam Hawkins said:

Additional rapid falling from the center top through the middle of the wheel to the bottom. Alone? No active blocks detected and no rotation. Together to the former setup? 6 active blocks (I assume the center does not count). And can move up to 6 helve hammers so a 50% increase in workpower. Problem is you need another rapid for that. But I can see it as usefull If you have 2 or more rapids and not enough resources for a second wheel yet.

Ok what about 3 rapids from the left, middle and rigth top to the bottomso that all 8 blocks are active?

It seems that "symmetric" layout (water from the top to the middle or all 8 covered) means that the wheel cannot decide, where to rotate and how to calculate the output. Seems logical.

However, I was surprised that the relation of the number of active blocks and of the output is not linear. 

[Maelstrom]

21 hours ago, Tam Hawkins said:

Once you have 5 active blocks you can have a fourth helve hammer at slow speed.

PERFECT!   Now I know how to set up my wind powered water mill.  I found some rapids up near the max wind power and plan on combining the power from the water wheel and windmill into a single large gear to power a quad-hammer setup.   I am so loving the seed I'm playing on!