Piping empty buckets into Liquid Unloader?

[Phillips126]

I have found that I can use a wood pipe and a redstone engine to pipe filled lava buckets out of the Liquid Unloader, but is it possible to pipe empty buckets back into the unloader or does the player have to manually place them?

I'm trying to create a Lava farm in the Nether, which pipes FULL lava buckets to an ender chest, which is then emptied at my home base, turned into geothermal power, and sends the empty buckets back to be filled again. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[disconsented]

Can always use a deployer to place the lava in tanks and then pipe it from there.

[Phillips126]

That was my first idea, however, the deployer cant seem to put the lava back into the tanks.

I was able to use the deployer to fill a bucket from a tank in nether, transport it to my base via Ender chest, but I just have a bunch of lava buckets, no way to empty them.

Perhaps my server is buggy, but the deployer is very finicky and can only remove contents from tanks and not add it.

Any suggestions?

[MasterVentris]

Why do you need a liquid unloader? Also would you rather use buildcraft pipes or redpower tubes? I can give examples for each but I dont want to type both out.

[Phillips126]

Let me explain what I am trying to do, perhaps there is another method to do this? - in which you could enlighten me (im pretty new to the complexity of Tekkit).

Please forgive the relatively long post.

I'm currently working on a nifty little structure full of machinery and am looking for a power source.

I know there are many many ways to generate power - but I fell inlove with Geothermal for this particular project.

The power I am using isn't much, so Geothermal will work.

I've tapped out several nearby volcanos and sucked out a LARGE pool of underground lava, but now I seem to be out of it.

I came up with the idea of sucking the nearly infinate supply of lava from the Nether, and pump it into the "real world dimension" where my homebase is located.

The only way I can figure out how to move anything between dimensions is the ender chest, so that is what I will use in the process below...

The process that I am trying to do is this:

• Using a pump, extract lava from the Nether and fill several large tanks.
  
• Using a deployer full of empty buckets and a redstone timer, buckets fill with lava from the full tanks.
  
• Wood pipes extract the buckets from the deployer and a diamond pipe seperates them (full & empty).
  
• The empty buckets are sent back to the deployer to fill, the full buckets go to the ender chest and stack up.
  
• Back at my home base in the "real world dimension" the full lava buckets are pumped from the ender chest.
  
• ???
  

This is where I am stuck - I want to somehow fill the lava tanks at my home base, which then distribute lava to several different geothermal generators spread accross the land.

I'm trying to find a way to to convert the solid "item block" of lava buckets back into the "fluid block" of lava.

I know you can pass the buckets straight through the geothermal generators to supply power, but I dont want 100s of buckets going to the several bases spread out, its much easier to spread the lava out using teleport pipes.

I've tried many different ways to do this - deployers can't put the lava back into the tanks, liquid unloaders don't seem to have a way to pipe in buckets of lava (even though you can pipe out empty ones)...

Anyone have any suggestions? On my server I use a combination of both redpower and buildcraft, so either or works.

Thanks again for helping me with this tedious project.

Phillips126

[MasterVentris]

Ok I have a workaround for this.

First, use Advanced wooden pipes to extract from machines as you can specify exactly what is taken (ie only empty buckets, not full ones). Or use redpower filters, which is my prefered solution as I like how they wont drop if the pipes carry too much.

Secondly, to get the liquid out of a bucket, the only way i have found is to use a liquid loader to load a tank cart, then immediately unload the cart using a liquid unloader. Unloaders can have the liquid pumped out in waterproof pipes and put into tanks.

This is what im guessing you are using to load the buckets with lava and put them in an ender chest, while returning the empty ones back to the deployer. Or an equivalent with an IC2 pump as it will load buckets itself.

This is at the other end (in your base) with another cycle of moving full buckets one way and empties the other. You have to use buildcraft to extract empty buckets from the liquid loader as you cant access the bottom to use a filter.

This shows the stack of Loader above tank cart above unloader. Make sure the cart cant move.

[Phillips126]

Thank you so much for taking the time to assist me.

I had a similar setup, however, the loader / unloader we're not in close proximity - the cart had to move.

When a full bucket was piped into the loader, it vanished. Both the bucket and its contents gone - perhaps this design will correct the issue for me.

I will try this tonight and see what I can come up with.

Thank you again! I will reply back with my success or failure.

[MasterVentris]

Yes, if you pipe into the loader using buildcraft pipes then the bucket disappears, but it works with redpower tube. Vice versa, you need build craft to get it out, redpower doesnt work. I might let the railcraft creators know about that fun issue.

(I reckon redpower would work to extract, if the filter was on the bottom of the loader as is usual for bottom inventories. However since there will always be a cart there that isn't any use)