water.... not a drop to drink

[wilbursim 10]

My 100K cities have been sucking the ground water dry....  its really hard to manage the water situation even in a high water city...  does ground water repopulate with a rain storm?  or when you sucked the sand dry are you up the creek without a puddle?

[SirChick 184]

Yes rain helps but you should get it from another city.

It doesn't rain any where near enough though, you can go hours without rain which is like in game years lol  its silly.

[wilbursim 10]

Two of the three cities are now dry

[SovietDarkness 1]

I totally agree with OP. Water management is insane in Simcity 5 and I constantly find my water resources sucked dry with rain refilling it every 100,000 years. Intercity play cant solve it long term because the city which supplies a whole another city's water supply finds them self dry in a short time span. Has anyone had any success with keeping a good water flow for a long time with cities over 200k? 

[Sunfighter 186]

They messed up the water simulator in the rush to release the game. The ONLY way youre gonna have enough water is if you....(and DONT laugh)...you have to have a water treatment plant with filterplants and have your poo pipes spit the poo water into the land where the water treatment plant is....basically creating a closed water system.....of filtered poo water.

[wilbursim 10]

ewe... really?

[Ocram's Razr 963]

You can also get water from water pumps directly adjacent to water. Doing that gives you infinite water.

--Ocram

[Sunfighter 186]

You can also get water from water pumps directly adjacent to water. Doing that gives you infinite water.

--Ocram

 

That didnt work for me, though my city didnt have real beach access, but sorta cliffs next to the water so that could of been the problem, I tried to force terraform the land, but gave up after spending about 200K

[wilbursim 10]

screen shot of the pump near the water please (when you can)  

[copperreddc 2]

They messed up the water simulator in the rush to release the game. The ONLY way youre gonna have enough water is if you....(and DONT laugh)...you have to have a water treatment plant with filterplants and have your poo pipes spit the poo water into the land where the water treatment plant is....basically creating a closed water system.....of filtered poo water.

 

 

I laughed. I also figure this isn't so bad in truth because in many cities, like London, you do something similar. The difference between black water, grey water and potable water is sometimes just treatment. Still I figure you should have access to better filtration.

[SirChick 184]

You can also get water from water pumps directly adjacent to water. Doing that gives you infinite water.

--Ocram

 

If thats true, it doesn't work

[rybolton 135]

They messed up the water simulator in the rush to release the game. The ONLY way youre gonna have enough water is if you....(and DONT laugh)...you have to have a water treatment plant with filterplants and have your poo pipes spit the poo water into the land where the water treatment plant is....basically creating a closed water system.....of filtered poo water.

 

This is exactly how I solved the water problems in my cities.  They need to patch the water system soon but I suppose I'll let them fix the servers first...

[Endureth 37]

Water's not wet.  Only stuff water touches becomes wet.  But water itself is not wet.

 

Especially in my city.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

One of the developers said that water pumps next to bodies of water never run out. I think he said it on Let's All Be Mayor. I have yet to play the game so I don't know if this is true or misinformation. I apologize if this is untrue but a developer said it.

--Ocram

[santanadrums 0]

They messed up the water simulator in the rush to release the game. The ONLY way youre gonna have enough water is if you....(and DONT laugh)...you have to have a water treatment plant with filterplants and have your poo pipes spit the poo water into the land where the water treatment plant is....basically creating a closed water system.....of filtered poo water.

 

This is exactly how I solved the water problems in my cities.  They need to patch the water system soon but I suppose I'll let them fix the servers first...

Hey guys,

 

I really dont quite understand what I have to do. If it weren't for the water issue, I would have a had a great running city. Now I am forced to abandon it because of the water issue. Could you please get me a set of instructions of youtube video to show me exactly how you create this closed water system. Or even show me infinite water near coast lines. I have tried putting my water towers near the coast lines and it still runs dry. I refuse to play any longer if I have to deal with this issue. I get it I get it, we need to not overly consume things and humans are problematic to the environment but damn...This is a game, not the real thing....HELP!!

[Jahnri 21]

  The funny thing is, the water model is about as dire in a lot of places I've lived. Id assume Simcity modeled the water after a post depleted time period. Such as what you have in a lot of the country. Heck, a bunch of small cities are having to import over 40 percent of there water off and on. Fortunately I am from the West coast and even here there are years the irrigation just doesn't go. 

 

Then again a truly dire water model isn't exactly fun hehe.

[majortom1981 1]

My 100K cities have been sucking the ground water dry....  its really hard to manage the water situation even in a high water city...  does ground water repopulate with a rain storm?  or when you sucked the sand dry are you up the creek without a puddle?

 

Somebody else stated this but the sewage treatment plants  put their cleaned water in the ground. So if you put a water pump plant with filter next to it it will suck that water for use of the city .

[santanadrums 0]

My 100K cities have been sucking the ground water dry....  its really hard to manage the water situation even in a high water city...  does ground water repopulate with a rain storm?  or when you sucked the sand dry are you up the creek without a puddle?

 

Somebody else stated this but the sewage treatment plants  put their cleaned water in the ground. So if you put a water pump plant with filter next to it it will suck that water for use of the city .

Will the water be truly infinite? I dont care if they are drink poop. I just dont want to fail my city. Its now in the negative and I worked so hard on it.

[plarfman 1]

I made the sewage treatment/water pump setup yesterday on one of my cities and as far as I could tell it was working and would be infinite, it was bouncing from a 20 month supply of ground water to 21 and vice versa. I have yet to be able to log in today to test it some more but it appears to be a good solution for now.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

I made the sewage treatment/water pump setup yesterday on one of my cities and as far as I could tell it was working and would be infinite, it was bouncing from a 20 month supply of ground water to 21 and vice versa. I have yet to be able to log in today to test it some more but it appears to be a good solution for now.

 

It's really messed up. It seems like one water pump is sufficient to produce some huge amount of water, but you basically need to add all the filtration systems you can. And it seems you only need a single outflow pipe to make it work?

 

The whole water/sewage system is buggy. If you have both outflow pipes and sewage treatment plants in your city (maybe just if they're on opposite sides of town?), you have plenty of capacity but sewage still backs up in parts of town. Or at least, that's what happened to me.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Hey guys, I really dont quite understand what I have to do. If it weren't for the water issue, I would have a had a great running city. Now I am forced to abandon it because of the water issue. Could you please get me a set of instructions of youtube video to show me exactly how you create this closed water system. Or even show me infinite water near coast lines. I have tried putting my water towers near the coast lines and it still runs dry. I refuse to play any longer if I have to deal with this issue. I get it I get it, we need to not overly consume things and humans are problematic to the environment but damn...This is a game, not the real thing....HELP!!

The developer said nothing about water towers so your water WILL run out without a water pump. A water pump requires Department of Utilities.

Hopefully that helped!

--Ocram

[Cob92 360]

They messed up the water simulator in the rush to release the game. The ONLY way youre gonna have enough water is if you....(and DONT laugh)...you have to have a water treatment plant with filterplants and have your poo pipes spit the poo water into the land where the water treatment plant is....basically creating a closed water system.....of filtered poo water.

 

Which is what cities do in real life. There is a treatment plant down the road from my house in Houston that does exactly this.

 

BTW, I haven't played the game yet, but I've heard that the way to get an infinite supply of fresh water is to set up a city along a river or something like that.

[nhgriffith 179]

For the record, real life cities don't rely on simply pulling water out of the water table and hoping it rains. Cleaning sewage and redispensing is a very real model of real world, real city water/sewage systems.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

For the record, real life cities don't rely on simply pulling water out of the water table and hoping it rains. Cleaning sewage and redispensing is a very real model of real world, real city water/sewage systems.

 

Depends on the city. I know in Portland, OR, the main water supply is a reservoir up in the Cascades that is fed by, in large part, glacial melt. No need to dump sewage into fields and then pump it out, clean it, and re-dispense it. In other words, they should have a way to extract water from... you know... bodies of water. Because not every city relies on what are essentially wells sucking up the water table.

 

More importantly, if this dump-the-sewage-and-treat-the-dirty-water was an intended part of the game, it should be documented somewhere. It shouldn't be up to us random folk to figure it out on our own (via the other helpful people on here or elsewhere). I wasn't expecting to run out of water so soon in my city, and when I did, I expected there to be a logical in-game solution. The dumping-waste-and-putting-in-a-pump method is not something I would have figured out on my own.

[Zpike 79]

More importantly, if this dump-the-sewage-and-treat-the-dirty-water was an intended part of the game, it should be documented somewhere. It shouldn't be up to us random folk to figure it out on our own (via the other helpful people on here or elsewhere). I wasn't expecting to run out of water so soon in my city, and when I did, I expected there to be a logical in-game solution. The dumping-waste-and-putting-in-a-pump method is not something I would have figured out on my own.

 

I disagree.  This is exactly the kind of thing I like figuring out and should NOT be documented in the help docs.  Half the fun of playing new games is figuring out all the tricks and features and how to use them.

[Vihzel 9]

More importantly, if this dump-the-sewage-and-treat-the-dirty-water was an intended part of the game, it should be documented somewhere. It shouldn't be up to us random folk to figure it out on our own (via the other helpful people on here or elsewhere). I wasn't expecting to run out of water so soon in my city, and when I did, I expected there to be a logical in-game solution. The dumping-waste-and-putting-in-a-pump method is not something I would have figured out on my own.

 

I disagree.  This is exactly the kind of thing I like figuring out and should NOT be documented in the help docs.  Half the fun of playing new games is figuring out all the tricks and features and how to use them.

 

I completely agree with you. It's funny how there are some members going around saying that it's a "bug". lol 

[nhgriffith 179]

It's really messed up. It seems like one water pump is sufficient to produce some huge amount of water, but you basically need to add all the filtration systems you can. And it seems you only need a single outflow pipe to make it work?

No.

There are 4 different water/sewage buildings.

There are the two basic buildings, the outflow pipe for sewage and the tower for water. They have a relatively low capacity. Using just these two buildings, you're not creating the infinite loop (unless you want to pump sewage back to your people), but at the same time, if you can survive on a single water tower, it probably rains often enough to keep the water table fine.

Then there are two advanced buildings for each. There's a water filtration system for sewage, and there's a water pump for water. I don't know exactly how they stack up to the basic buildings in terms of $/hr efficiency (they're probably better), but they're significantly more expensive to place and offer significantly higher capacity then the basic counterparts.

You need enough outflow pipes and/or filtration systems to handle ALL of your city's sewage. Period. If you don't have enough, you need to export your sewage, or you'll have it backing up.

You need enough water pumps or water towers to handle ALL of your city's water needs. Period. If you don't have enough, you'll need to import your water, or your city won't be providing water everywhere.

Now, I can't remember all the ploppable options on the filtration system, but the water pump had two ploppable options. One of the options is for a basic pump (I think these are like 44,000 each) and the other is for a filtration pump (and I think these are 66,000). They both pump the same total capacity (and each one you plop increases the total pumping capacity of the building). The advantage of the filtration pump is that if the water below it is polluted, it will clean it up before dispensing it through your city. So, if you've got a bunch of outflow pipes (or dirty water for whatever reason), you can plop the filtration pumps and pump clean water out. But if the water isn't dirty, just plop a normal pump and pump away. You don't need towers and pumps.

The filtration system is a replacement for the sewage outflow pipe in the same way that the pump is a replacement for the tower. The filtration system deals with your city's sewage. It's more expensive than the outflow pipe, but it has a significantly higher capacity and it also cleans the water before dumping it out.

[Trooth 22]

Most Americans drink poo water. That water has been run through several treatment facilities and is clean. People underestimate what our civil engineers are capable of. Especially environmentalists. How did you all think cities like Phoenix and Tucson can support such large populations?

[MallowTheCloud 41]

More importantly, if this dump-the-sewage-and-treat-the-dirty-water was an intended part of the game, it should be documented somewhere. It shouldn't be up to us random folk to figure it out on our own (via the other helpful people on here or elsewhere). I wasn't expecting to run out of water so soon in my city, and when I did, I expected there to be a logical in-game solution. The dumping-waste-and-putting-in-a-pump method is not something I would have figured out on my own.

 

I disagree.  This is exactly the kind of thing I like figuring out and should NOT be documented in the help docs.  Half the fun of playing new games is figuring out all the tricks and features and how to use them.

 

It would be great if it was logical. But it's never logical to have an infinite water table. And that's what this does. So either it's a bug, or something I would have never thought to do. Besides, since it's infinite, it feels like "cheating" to me, and I never have fun when I feel like I'm "cheating" the system.

 

 

 

 

It's really messed up. It seems like one water pump is sufficient to produce some huge amount of water, but you basically need to add all the filtration systems you can. And it seems you only need a single outflow pipe to make it work?

No.

There are 4 different water/sewage buildings.

There are the two basic buildings, the outflow pipe for sewage and the tower for water. They have a relatively low capacity. Using just these two buildings, you're not creating the infinite loop (unless you want to pump sewage back to your people), but at the same time, if you can survive on a single water tower, it probably rains often enough to keep the water table fine.

Then there are two advanced buildings for each. There's a water filtration system for sewage, and there's a water pump for water. I don't know exactly how they stack up to the basic buildings in terms of $/hr efficiency (they're probably better), but they're significantly more expensive to place and offer significantly higher capacity then the basic counterparts.

You need enough outflow pipes and/or filtration systems to handle ALL of your city's sewage. Period. If you don't have enough, you need to export your sewage, or you'll have it backing up.

You need enough water pumps or water towers to handle ALL of your city's water needs. Period. If you don't have enough, you'll need to import your water, or your city won't be providing water everywhere.

Now, I can't remember all the ploppable options on the filtration system, but the water pump had two ploppable options. One of the options is for a basic pump (I think these are like 44,000 each) and the other is for a filtration pump (and I think these are 66,000). They both pump the same total capacity (and each one you plop increases the total pumping capacity of the building). The advantage of the filtration pump is that if the water below it is polluted, it will clean it up before dispensing it through your city. So, if you've got a bunch of outflow pipes (or dirty water for whatever reason), you can plop the filtration pumps and pump clean water out. But if the water isn't dirty, just plop a normal pump and pump away. You don't need towers and pumps.

The filtration system is a replacement for the sewage outflow pipe in the same way that the pump is a replacement for the tower. The filtration system deals with your city's sewage. It's more expensive than the outflow pipe, but it has a significantly higher capacity and it also cleans the water before dumping it out.

 

I guess I wasn't clear. I understand all of this (I'm not dumb). When I said "all you need is a single outflow pipe", what I meant was that you can do the following:

- Plop a sewage treatment facility to handle all your sewage.

- ALSO plop a single outflow pipe.

- Plop a single water pump with filtration pumps next to the outflow pipe

- Infinite water-->PROFIT

 

This just seems so broken to me. And the fact that in a large city, it's either this option or run out of water makes it even more annoying.

[Trooth 22]

It isn't broken. It is a real world solution that allows us to build cities in the desert. Recycled water allows us to have "infinite" water.