instead make it in one place like that why not make move around map, more greenland

Yeah, I figured out what I did... I hade this idea that if I restricted the canal to 1 width at the beginning and end, it would make the water flow faster and turn the wheels easier, but turning the wheels is more about total flow and water level than speed of flow. Once I got rid of that stupid restriction, it flowed more consistently. Not 100%, but mine is flatter than yours, more of a lazy river than a cascade. The biggest gains actually came from keeping religiously to a two tile width even around the turns, and reducing the distance between the pumps and dumps.

dpwhittaker, it only takes 5 water dumps in a 2 wide canal to provide enough water flow for the wheels to turn. I added the sixth water dump for the lazy beaver that shows up late to work. All the water drains into the bottom basin, that is 7x5x2 deep. never overflows. What little water that evaporates from that is easily replaced by the haulers grabbing water from the colony drinking stations. This is a close to a closed system as you will get. There is no drop between the dumps and the first row of water wheels, just the drop from the dump.

Looks cool, but I want to see a video or save file... I tried a smaller version, and even with 12 pumps and 20 haulers couldn't keep the water flowing fast enough to turn the wheels consistently. Maybe your level drops make the difference - I only had a 2-height waterfall at the start. It also liked to overflow whenever a pumper left to get a snack. You can't build a closed system - evaporation and thirsty beavers will run you out of water in a few days, so regulating the water level in the system is difficult. I ended up just putting a dam at the bottom to drain the excess off to a canal.

If you've got it this efficient with folk tails imagine what iron teeth could be like. You could put the pumps up at the level of the dumps and leave the haulers only taking one or two steps to move the water.

MrGuffels, I had an insane amount of wood available, so it was no problem. One could always use the already stair stepped landscape to cut down on the wood, but you would need explosives to remove troubling outcrops.

Such an insane about of wood required

That's clever

That is inspiring!

i was thinking something similar, but mostly as a aqueduct system that has the "start" and "end" being close together, so i can also use it to hydrate farmland. I saw a bunch of ideas that make the hydration redundant, though.

Beaver engineering at it's finest.