Factorio Forums

Why is small pump reducing water level? See image for reference



Steam version 0.13.17 with two mods longreach and research queue.

If I understand it correctly, you have a line of boilers, a small pump, another line of boilers and then that goes to your steam engines?

The small pump has a maximum flow of far less than than the pipe itself. A small pump can provide 30 units/s, while a pipe can carry much more. Steam engines consume 6 units/s so if you have more than 5 steam engines on the other end, which I am assuming based on the amount of boilers, the small pump will act as a throttling valve rather than something that drives the flow.

That would make the small pump a bad shut-off valve then? Would 3 or 4 small pumps remedy the situation?
Maybe I should turn off the coal belt to control steam power. Thank you!

2 small pumps pump 60 water/s, or the output of one ofshore pump

Yeah, that small pump is throttling water flow. Small pumps don't add 30 units/sec, they increase flow to 30 units/s, and not one bit higher. If you want more then that from them, you'll need to place multiple small pumps in parallel with each other, so that their outputs add together.

That said, one offshore pump generally doesn't have trouble keeping a chain of 14 boilers and 10 steam engines supplied. You may not even need the small pump.

axelsword wrote:That would make the small pump a bad shut-off valve then?

Kind of, yes. But the reason it is a bad idea is that you are then relying on a lot of electricity to supply your powerplant with water needed for electricity generation. If you overdraw from your powerplant (lasers starts firing or you expand your base before your power plant) then your pumps won't get enough power to pump water to your boilers... and then you produce even less power... and then your pumps stop completely.

axelsword wrote:Would 3 or 4 small pumps remedy the situation?

2 small pumps for each offshore pump. Placed in parallel. In series it won't help. But no small pumps at all is even better.

axelsword wrote:Maybe I should turn off the coal belt to control steam power. Thank you!

That would be very slow. Instead you should disconnect your steam power plant from your main grid and connect it through a power switch. It is instant.

Moved from General to Gameplay Help

If you're doing something funny with the circuit network the two best ways are:
1) Wire up the offshore pumps to directly control the water entering the system.
2) Use a power switch to control the electricity leaving the system.

There's not much use for small pumps in steam setups.

don't use electic pumps for power stations. as said, relying on electricity to pump water to make said electricity is a bad idea.
speaking of which, i only use burner inserters for power plants. with yellow transport belts so they don't run out of fuel reaching for, and missing the fuel.

just increase your number of offshore pumps till your not running out of water. 2 are good for about 24 boilers/ 18 steam engines.
i'm using 3 with 40 boilers / 30 steam engines.

Personally I don't like the use of burner inserters for pumps. If the coal runs out (extended biter hunting trip maybe) and the burner inserters themselves run out of fuel, it's tedious to get it all kickstarted again as you have to either replace all your burner inserters or put some coal in them (I had this happen on my no solar power run). Using electric inserters you only need to drop coal in a few boilers and the whole system starts moving slowly, and you can use long inserters to transfer from boiler to boiler for a more compact setup.

If you wanted I'm sure you could have some sort of setup with a power switch where if the boilers power off it cuts power to your factory until an accumulator starts charging again, maybe reaches 100%. This ensures your inserters get 100% of the power to at least get some coal to all your boilers (or most if using long inserters to transfer between boilers) in the shortest time possible. Personally I prefer solar with steam engines as a backup so this generally isn't a problem.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:Personally I don't like the use of burner inserters for pumps. If the coal runs out (extended biter hunting trip maybe) and the burner inserters themselves run out of fuel, it's tedious to get it all kickstarted again as you have to either replace all your burner inserters or put some coal in them (I had this happen on my no solar power run). Using electric inserters you only need to drop coal in a few boilers and the whole system starts moving slowly, and you can use long inserters to transfer from boiler to boiler for a more compact setup.

If you wanted I'm sure you could have some sort of setup with a power switch where if the boilers power off it cuts power to your factory until an accumulator starts charging again, maybe reaches 100%. This ensures your inserters get 100% of the power to at least get some coal to all your boilers (or most if using long inserters to transfer between boilers) in the shortest time possible. Personally I prefer solar with steam engines as a backup so this generally isn't a problem.

It shouldn't ever really happen that the Burner Inserters on a fuel line run out of energy, as they self-feed before attempting to feed the Boiler behind them. The only way that happens is if you're belt is too fast for the inserter (this is a problem easily avoided by laying things out in a way so that you can use yellow belts anywhere inserters are actually needing to pull from without that becoming a throughput bottleneck).

Is indeed strange but as I said I had it happen. Is there a small passive drain on burner inserters? I assume so. What had happened was first few boilers had eaten all the coal so something like the rest of them just passively burned through their stored fuel and died, had to restock them all manually after fixing the coal problem. Was a real pain.

Might be a fringe condition, I think half my miners suddenly ran out but as most of my factory was idle the few active boilers could keep it operational. When I eventually went to check why I was only on 90% power I had a bit of a shock lol.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:Personally I don't like the use of burner inserters for pumps. If the coal runs out (extended biter hunting trip maybe) and the burner inserters themselves run out of fuel, it's tedious to get it all kickstarted again as you have to either replace all your burner inserters or put some coal in them (I had this happen on my no solar power run). Using electric inserters you only need to drop coal in a few boilers and the whole system starts moving slowly, and you can use long inserters to transfer from boiler to boiler for a more compact setup.

If you use straight yellow belts then the burner inserters can't possibly run out of fuel. Use burner inserters.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:Is indeed strange but as I said I had it happen. Is there a small passive drain on burner inserters? I assume so. What had happened was first few boilers had eaten all the coal so something like the rest of them just passively burned through their stored fuel and died, had to restock them all manually after fixing the coal problem. Was a real pain.

Might be a fringe condition, I think half my miners suddenly ran out but as most of my factory was idle the few active boilers could keep it operational. When I eventually went to check why I was only on 90% power I had a bit of a shock lol.

In my experience this happens when you had a severe coal shortage and resulting powerloss. If not enough Coal is being supplied (or too much being sent elsewhere than to your boilers, you can get into a situation where your miners aren't producing enough Coal because their underpowered...and their underpowered because you're not producing enough Coal. The best fix is to temporarily cut off any sidings of the Coal line, so that 100% of it is going to the boilers. Soon enough (non-trivial amount of time here, but not ages), things will be 'back to normal' and then you reconnect other coal consumers.

Qon wrote: If you use straight yellow belts then the burner inserters can't possibly run out of fuel. Use burner inserters.

They are right and you are wrong, I'm afraid. I only accepted this as a non-bug, myself, a week or two ago, after discussing it with some smart folks here at the forums.

Simply stated, it is somewhat rare, but they most definitely can and will run out of fuel. Once it happens, resupplying the belt will not cause them to re-bootstrap themselves. They stay stopped, unless you have additional burner inserters, inserting fuel into your burner inserters (which actually does work -- but then what happens when your burner-inserter-burner-inserters run out?, etc. -- so it's burner inserters all the way down and this doesn't solve the problem, at least not in and of itself).

I don't know exactly what are the right conditions to cause them to run out -- I've never seen the "event" itself, only the tragic result -- a row of stopped burner inserters, all poised to feed a row of cold boilers, but all flashing red "no fuel" indicators, sat right next to an idle, straight, dead-end, yellow belt, jammed to full compression with nothing but coal.

Burner inserters don't have a drain listed.

golfmiketango wrote:

Qon wrote: If you use straight yellow belts then the burner inserters can't possibly run out of fuel. Use burner inserters.

They are right and you are wrong, I'm afraid. I only accepted this as a non-bug, myself, a week or two ago, after discussing it with some smart folks here at the forums.

Yes, what I said was wrong, you are right. It is at least possible to deliberatly construct something where half the inserters run out of fuel if you do all of these:

• Place inserters on both sides of the belt
• for a long time let coal trickle in one every few seconds.
• Where every single piece of coal reaching the inserter pair only comes on one side of the belt for at least a hundred times in a row.
• The side where the inserter succeeds has to pick up every single coal, so it's boiler can never be full. So coal must arrive to the pair less than once every 10 seconds.
• Wait a minimum of 4 hours under continously optimally bad conditions for 14 burners in a row to run out of fuel.

So if you are using steam engines as your main source of power then you are probably moving your coal by train and would never get this slow trickle of fuel. I'm not qonvinced yet that this is something to worry about. But electric inserters are fine if have them on a separate grid powered by dedicated solar panels + accumulators.

Link to the expert discussion?
Picture of your setup that failed?

golfmiketango wrote: Simply stated, it is somewhat rare, but they most definitely can and will run out of fuel. Once it happens, resupplying the belt will not cause them to re-bootstrap themselves. They stay stopped, unless you have additional burner inserters, inserting fuel into your burner inserters (which actually does work -- but then what happens when your burner-inserter-burner-inserters run out?, etc. -- so it's burner inserters all the way down and this doesn't solve the problem, at least not in and of itself).

I don't know exactly what are the right conditions to cause them to run out -- I've never seen the "event" itself, only the tragic result -- a row of stopped burner inserters, all poised to feed a row of cold boilers, but all flashing red "no fuel" indicators, sat right next to an idle, straight, dead-end, yellow belt, jammed to full compression with nothing but coal.

I've not seen the event happening myself. But I have seen the results in my own game. I had a single yellow belt, with a single row of 14 burner inserters with boilers. Coal had run almost dry and 4 of the burners had stopped with an out-of-energy notification. Nothing fancy here, not even inserters from both sides of the belt.

I've also seen "out of energy" burner inserters that where placed by bots. But that could have been a different problem.

Hmmm I might have been using red belts so of course the inserters burn through their fuel trying to grab coal but missing because the belt is too fast. I swapped them out for electric ones which allowed me to feed boiler to boiler which was better for the layout of the land in that particular game.