Why won't an accumulator power a small pump?

[mooklepticon]

Edit: okay, it pumps during the *day*, which is the opposite of what I want it to do. I noticed that the water level would go back up to 10 sometimes. I ran a few day/night cycles at 10x and it returns to normal function once the sun comes up. This is because I have it powered by 1 solar panel and 1 accumulator. Why wouldn't an accumulator power a small pump?

Original Post:

I was trying to use a small pump with a circuit condition to turn on steamies as back ups when the accumulators fail, but something's not working. If the conditions are met, then the pump only sends 0.6 water through. I tested with a regular pipe and it'll send 8 or 9 water through, so the plumbing is okay. Then I tested the pump without the circuit condition, just picked up and placed the pump, and it doesn't work either! The pump has electricity, it's just pumping SUPER slowly.

Plain pipe. It works.

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Plain pipe

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Pump with no circuit connection. Electricity bar is full. Should run fine. Only pumps 0.6 water

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Pump, no circuit

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Pump with circuit condition of coal > 0. Works the same as pump with no circuit condition. Aka, only 0.6 water

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Pump with circuit

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[BlakeMW]

I'm not sure what the wider setup looks like, but it looks to me like you have 14 boilers, and probably 10 steam engines. A small pump only pumps enough water for 5 steam engines, you need 2 small pumps in parallel to pump enough water.

The 0.6 number in the small pump is the water level in the pipe - it's not the amount being pumped each second. The water level will tend towards 0.0 if more water is being removed from the pipe system than pumped into it, and will tend towards 10.0 if more water is being added than removed. It's 0.6 because 10 steam engines consume way more water than 1 small pump can provide.

If you want to know exactly how much is being pumped, check the power grid the small pump is on. If it's the only small pump on that that grid then you can see how much energy it is consuming - by happy coincidence it takes 1kW to pump 1 unit of water/s, so the pump usage in kW is how much water is being pumped.

[mooklepticon]

I'm not sure what the wider setup looks like, but it looks to me like you have 14 boilers, and probably 10 steam engines. A small pump only pumps enough water for 5 steam engines, you need 2 small pumps in parallel to pump enough water.

The 0.6 number in the small pump is the water level in the pipe - it's not the amount being pumped each second. The water level will tend towards 0.0 if more water is being removed from the pipe system than pumped into it, and will tend towards 10.0 if more water is being added than removed. It's 0.6 because 10 steam engines consume way more water than 1 small pump can provide.

If you want to know exactly how much is being pumped, check the power grid the small pump is on. If it's the only small pump on that that grid then you can see how much energy it is consuming - by happy coincidence it takes 1kW to pump 1 unit of water/s, so the pump usage in kW is how much water is being pumped.

Oh, thanks! That correlates well with the 5 engines that would run and the 5 that wouldn't. I didn't know that small pumps only did 5 engines. Again, thanks!

[mooklepticon]

IMPORTANT NOTE: PUMPS MUST BE PARALLEL. 2 serial pumps is just the same as 1, lol.

[BlakeMW]

That's right, a small pump is also a flow-limiter. It wont let through more than 30 fluid/s, guaranteed.