What is it?
The “Water Pad” Farm is a unique crop farm that utilizes water mechanics to create a semi-automatic, efficient, and tile-able farm that uses AT MOST 1-0 redstone while remaining space-efficient and harvesting as many crops as possible.
It does this by utilizing water mechanics in a small 5x5x1 pad, so a single water source block not only harvests the layer it is on, but passes on in a stream to the next layer. Think of it like a vertical canal, where water is funneled downwards, and branching off to harvest individual “layers” as it does so.
… just… just read the tutorial
What are its dimensions? One farm layer: 39x39x6 (length, width, and height, respectively) Note: This incudes the minimum space needed between layers (3 blocks). If you want space to walk around your farm, then it’s 39x39x7, and you’ll want 4 spaces between every farm layer.
Water Pad: 5x5x1
Entire farm: The farm is tile-able, so the length and width will forever be 39, but it can go upwards as high as possible!
How do I build it?
Finally! The building tutorial will be divided into two parts for convenience. First is the Farm Layer section, which relates to building the pad where you actually farm the crops. Second is the Water Pad section, which talks about building the water flow pads that direct the water flow in the direction(s) necessary, as well as how they work. I leave methods of collection up to the reader, as too much depends on the amount of resources the player has at the time of construction. In my survival server, I use hoppers, but you can use water streams, manual collection, or whatever other crazy methods you can come up with!
Farm Layer:
1) Start by building a 5x5 platform where you want the center of your farm to be. This will be your “water pad”. In this picture it is represented with Quartz, but you can make it out of any block you wish. Then, one block lower, branch out a 6 long “arm” from the middle of each side, made out of dirt. See picture below for reference.
2) Connect the four dirt “arms” with more dirt, in a diagonal path like shown. Fill with dirt.
3) Branch 8 blocks out from the tips of the dirt “arms”, one block lower. Connect with diagonal lines.
4) Fill with dirt.
5) Now’s a good time to test if you’ve built the platform correctly. Place a block of water in the middle of the 5x5 platform. If you built as instructed, water should cover ALL of the dirt, and stop at the edges.
6) Place water under each of the blocks I’ve replaced with glass. These blocks are the outer corners of your 5x5 platform, and the edge of the 6 long dirt platform you built.
Make sure this water doesn’t flow everywhere when you place it, I suggest restraining the water current with half-slabs. This stops the water flow but still lets you place buckets in the desired place.
7) Wash, rinse, and repeat as many times as necessary! Remember to leave at least a 3 block gap between layers, 4 if you don’t have enderpearls or some other method of transportation.
8)For the top layer only: Place signs around the outer rim of your farthest dirt blocks. In the picture the signs are represented as black wool. Leave a 1 block space, and build another outer rim of blocks, in the picture represented as glowstone. The one block space is represented by water, and guess what, that’s your next step! Fill in the gap between your signs and outer rim with water. Be sure you’ve built this exactly right, or you’ll have severe problems later on. If you’ve built it correctly it should look like this:
For all other layers: Nothing! The water should flow cleanly down, leaving a 1 block space between every dirt block and the water flow. If it doesn’t, you’ve built something wrong and fix it now or you’ll have severe water flow issues later on (I know from experience…)
9) Hoe ALL THE DIRT! If you placed the water right, everything should be hydrated but for 4 blocks on every corner on the upper layer of dirt…. Just look at the picture (Ignore that single un-hydrated farmland, I didn’t have the patience to wait for it )
10) You’re done with the farming layer section of this tutorial! If you did everything correctly, your farm should be 39 blocks long, 39 blocks wide, and however high you decided to make it! Feel free to proceed onwards to the “Water Pad” part of the build tutorial!
Water Pad:
Building Instructions:
1) Move to your topmost farm layer. Upon this layer, remove various blocks from the 5x5 pad you left yourself until you have the shape below.
2) Place water in the center block. If you built everything correctly, water should not only spread out and cover your entire farm layer, but also flow in 4 streams into your next layer! Pretty fancy!
3) Remove that annoying block of water (it will just get in your way) and move down to your second topmost layer. In other words, the layer directly under your top one. Then, remove blocks until your 5x5 pad looks like the one shown below. (Sorry for the lack of close up)
4) See the 16 red wool in that picture? Hopefully, that’s dirt on your farm, or you’ve done something horribly wrong. Remove the dirt where the red wool is on my picture. It’s on the 4 tips of every dirt platform, and one block in from those tips.
5) Place dirt blocks underneath the blocks that you just mined out, but only directly after the 1st dirt layer (the 6 block one). See the pictures below for reference.
See the yellow wool in this picture? Where that wool is, put dirt. Now do it on all 4 sides.
I’ve outlined all the dirt blocks you need to place in yellow wool here. Be sure the dirt is level to the 2ndlayer of dirt! Oh, and at this point, you shouldn’t have water everywhere. Ignore it for now, that’s next.
6) Let water flow from your 1st farm layer. It should stream down in 4 streams, flow onto the water pad, and poetically distribute water across the entire farm layer. If not, post a picture in the thread and I’ll do my best to help.
(Hopefully there isn’t this much space between your first and second farm layers, I’ve simply moved them apart for easier photo-taking.)
7) As you move down your farm, alternate between your 1st (the one you used on the top layer) and 2nd (the one that needed all the annoying dirt digging) pad design. Remember, whenever using the 2nd pad design, make all the required adjustments to the farm pad!
8) If you’ve done everything correctly, water placed in the center of your topmost pad should flow down and cover all the dirt on that layer, while flowing onto the second layer, where the same thing will happen, etc. etc. until all layers of your farm have been covered with water! All with only one source block… it’s almost poetic. All that remains now is to replace that single water source block with a dispenser holding a water bucket, pointing down! This is your ONE redstone, and allows you to toggle the waterflow, allowing for semi-automatic harvesting of your entire farm! If you really want to be cheap, you can hold off a water source block with a block, and break that block when you want the thing to harvest! It’s about 5 seconds more work, but costs 0 redstone!
And there you have it! A tile-able, space-efficient, and semi-automatic crop farm, using 1-0 redstone! Not bad!
How it works:
This farm works off of two key water mechanics: 1) Water will flow to the closet block of a lower elevation. If several blocks are an equal distance from each other, it will flow to all of them. 2) Water cannot flow diagonally.
Observe the diagram below, which shows how water flows on one of the “water pads”. I only used one pad because once you get the concept it’s easy enough to understand how the other one works. 1) Water flows from the above pad onto the current one 2) Since water cannot flow diagonally, water flows onto the 4 closest solid blocks. Note how each of the 4 blocks is surrounded by 3 holes; this ensures that the water will flow onto each one, as they are an equal distance away from a lower elevation 3) Remember the rule that if several blocks are an equal distance from each other water will flow to all of the blocks. This means that all of the “holes” in step 3 are an equal distance from all of the blocks in step 2. Thus, water will flow onto each of them. We then proceed to distribute the water across both the farm and down to the next layer.
See, it’s not that hard to understand! Once you understand the mechanics behind it, puzzling out how the actual “pads” work isn’t overly difficult.
If you approve of this build, feel free to sooth my barbaric urges and press that little green up arrow at the bottom of this post! It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside
If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, feel free to ask them below in the comments! If it’s a question, or your build isn’t working correctly, please post with a screenshot so I can adequately assess what’s going on and hopefully help you out.
If you really want to talk to me, meet me, ask me a seriously complicated question, or troll me give me flowers, I can normally be found at Arcadia Games! That’s the server where I designed and built this thing from the ground up, and I’m working on building it in the Survival World right now!
Server Website: arcadiagames.net
Server IP: mc.arcadiagames.net
Note: 1) I wrote this all in one sitting, so if there are any grammatical errors, tell me! 2) I wasn’t sure whether to put this into the redstone section or the survival section. If a moderator thinks it is in the wrong place, feel free to move it!
Is there any way to optimize collection of the crop via a hopper/chest?
There are several ways to collect the harvested crop, which is kinda why I left it up to the reader. Here are a few below:
1) You could use water streams to direct the crops to a desired location. If you do this you'll use less hoppers, but transportation will be a little slower, and it's not very space-efficient
2) You can use a line of hoppers, all funneling the drops to a nearby chest. Since a hopper chain takes up 2 blocks when going diagonal, you're not actually using any more hoppers than with a square farm. This is a little heavier on recourses, but takes up less space and is faster (Image curtesy of my survival farm)
Seems like a good design, and I have actually been looking for a different wheat farm design. Thanks
P.S. Maybe you could also add in a video tutorial for those who don't want to read it.
Thank you! Feel free to give some feedback if you're actually building it in survival. And while I'd love to make a tutorial video, I currently don't have the software to support it .
What is it?
The “Water Pad” Farm is a unique crop farm that utilizes water mechanics to create a semi-automatic, efficient, and tile-able farm that uses AT MOST 1-0 redstone while remaining space-efficient and harvesting as many crops as possible.
It does this by utilizing water mechanics in a small 5x5x1 pad, so a single water source block not only harvests the layer it is on, but passes on in a stream to the next layer. Think of it like a vertical canal, where water is funneled downwards, and branching off to harvest individual “layers” as it does so.
… just… just read the tutorial
What are its dimensions?
One farm layer: 39x39x6 (length, width, and height, respectively)
Note: This incudes the minimum space needed between layers (3 blocks). If you want space to walk around your farm, then it’s 39x39x7, and you’ll want 4 spaces between every farm layer.
Water Pad: 5x5x1
Entire farm: The farm is tile-able, so the length and width will forever be 39, but it can go upwards as high as possible!
How do I build it?
Finally! The building tutorial will be divided into two parts for convenience. First is the Farm Layer section, which relates to building the pad where you actually farm the crops. Second is the Water Pad section, which talks about building the water flow pads that direct the water flow in the direction(s) necessary, as well as how they work. I leave methods of collection up to the reader, as too much depends on the amount of resources the player has at the time of construction. In my survival server, I use hoppers, but you can use water streams, manual collection, or whatever other crazy methods you can come up with!
Farm Layer:
1) Start by building a 5x5 platform where you want the center of your farm to be. This will be your “water pad”. In this picture it is represented with Quartz, but you can make it out of any block you wish. Then, one block lower, branch out a 6 long “arm” from the middle of each side, made out of dirt. See picture below for reference.
2) Connect the four dirt “arms” with more dirt, in a diagonal path like shown. Fill with dirt.
3) Branch 8 blocks out from the tips of the dirt “arms”, one block lower. Connect with diagonal lines.
4) Fill with dirt.
5) Now’s a good time to test if you’ve built the platform correctly. Place a block of water in the middle of the 5x5 platform. If you built as instructed, water should cover ALL of the dirt, and stop at the edges.
6) Place water under each of the blocks I’ve replaced with glass. These blocks are the outer corners of your 5x5 platform, and the edge of the 6 long dirt platform you built.
Make sure this water doesn’t flow everywhere when you place it, I suggest restraining the water current with half-slabs. This stops the water flow but still lets you place buckets in the desired place.
7) Wash, rinse, and repeat as many times as necessary! Remember to leave at least a 3 block gap between layers, 4 if you don’t have enderpearls or some other method of transportation.
8) For the top layer only: Place signs around the outer rim of your farthest dirt blocks. In the picture the signs are represented as black wool. Leave a 1 block space, and build another outer rim of blocks, in the picture represented as glowstone. The one block space is represented by water, and guess what, that’s your next step! Fill in the gap between your signs and outer rim with water. Be sure you’ve built this exactly right, or you’ll have severe problems later on. If you’ve built it correctly it should look like this:
For all other layers: Nothing! The water should flow cleanly down, leaving a 1 block space between every dirt block and the water flow. If it doesn’t, you’ve built something wrong and fix it now or you’ll have severe water flow issues later on (I know from experience…)
9) Hoe ALL THE DIRT! If you placed the water right, everything should be hydrated but for 4 blocks on every corner on the upper layer of dirt…. Just look at the picture
10) You’re done with the farming layer section of this tutorial! If you did everything correctly, your farm should be 39 blocks long, 39 blocks wide, and however high you decided to make it! Feel free to proceed onwards to the “Water Pad” part of the build tutorial!
Water Pad:
Building Instructions:
1) Move to your topmost farm layer. Upon this layer, remove various blocks from the 5x5 pad you left yourself until you have the shape below.
2) Place water in the center block. If you built everything correctly, water should not only spread out and cover your entire farm layer, but also flow in 4 streams into your next layer! Pretty fancy!
3) Remove that annoying block of water (it will just get in your way) and move down to your second topmost layer. In other words, the layer directly under your top one. Then, remove blocks until your 5x5 pad looks like the one shown below. (Sorry for the lack of close up)
4) See the 16 red wool in that picture? Hopefully, that’s dirt on your farm, or you’ve done something horribly wrong. Remove the dirt where the red wool is on my picture. It’s on the 4 tips of every dirt platform, and one block in from those tips.
5) Place dirt blocks underneath the blocks that you just mined out, but only directly after the 1st dirt layer (the 6 block one). See the pictures below for reference.
See the yellow wool in this picture? Where that wool is, put dirt. Now do it on all 4 sides.
I’ve outlined all the dirt blocks you need to place in yellow wool here. Be sure the dirt is level to the 2nd layer of dirt! Oh, and at this point, you shouldn’t have water everywhere. Ignore it for now, that’s next.
6) Let water flow from your 1st farm layer. It should stream down in 4 streams, flow onto the water pad, and poetically distribute water across the entire farm layer. If not, post a picture in the thread and I’ll do my best to help.
(Hopefully there isn’t this much space between your first and second farm layers, I’ve simply moved them apart for easier photo-taking.)
7) As you move down your farm, alternate between your 1st (the one you used on the top layer) and 2nd (the one that needed all the annoying dirt digging) pad design. Remember, whenever using the 2nd pad design, make all the required adjustments to the farm pad!
8) If you’ve done everything correctly, water placed in the center of your topmost pad should flow down and cover all the dirt on that layer, while flowing onto the second layer, where the same thing will happen, etc. etc. until all layers of your farm have been covered with water! All with only one source block… it’s almost poetic. All that remains now is to replace that single water source block with a dispenser holding a water bucket, pointing down! This is your ONE redstone, and allows you to toggle the waterflow, allowing for semi-automatic harvesting of your entire farm! If you really want to be cheap, you can hold off a water source block with a block, and break that block when you want the thing to harvest! It’s about 5 seconds more work, but costs 0 redstone!
And there you have it! A tile-able, space-efficient, and semi-automatic crop farm, using 1-0 redstone! Not bad!
This farm works off of two key water mechanics:
1) Water will flow to the closet block of a lower elevation. If several blocks are an equal distance from each other, it will flow to all of them.
2) Water cannot flow diagonally.
Observe the diagram below, which shows how water flows on one of the “water pads”. I only used one pad because once you get the concept it’s easy enough to understand how the other one works.
1) Water flows from the above pad onto the current one
2) Since water cannot flow diagonally, water flows onto the 4 closest solid blocks. Note how each of the 4 blocks is surrounded by 3 holes; this ensures that the water will flow onto each one, as they are an equal distance away from a lower elevation
3) Remember the rule that if several blocks are an equal distance from each other water will flow to all of the blocks. This means that all of the “holes” in step 3 are an equal distance from all of the blocks in step 2. Thus, water will flow onto each of them. We then proceed to distribute the water across both the farm and down to the next layer.
See, it’s not that hard to understand! Once you understand the mechanics behind it, puzzling out how the actual “pads” work isn’t overly difficult.
If you approve of this build, feel free to sooth my barbaric urges and press that little green up arrow at the bottom of this post! It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside
If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, feel free to ask them below in the comments! If it’s a question, or your build isn’t working correctly, please post with a screenshot so I can adequately assess what’s going on and hopefully help you out.
If you really want to talk to me, meet me, ask me a seriously complicated question, or
troll megive me flowers, I can normally be found at Arcadia Games! That’s the server where I designed and built this thing from the ground up, and I’m working on building it in the Survival World right now!Server Website: arcadiagames.net
Server IP: mc.arcadiagames.net
Note:
1) I wrote this all in one sitting, so if there are any grammatical errors, tell me!
2) I wasn’t sure whether to put this into the redstone section or the survival section. If a moderator thinks it is in the wrong place, feel free to move it!
Servers Rules|Support Forum Rules|Show Your Creation Rules|Off Topic Rules
Thank you!
There are several ways to collect the harvested crop, which is kinda why I left it up to the reader. Here are a few below:
1) You could use water streams to direct the crops to a desired location. If you do this you'll use less hoppers, but transportation will be a little slower, and it's not very space-efficient
2) You can use a line of hoppers, all funneling the drops to a nearby chest. Since a hopper chain takes up 2 blocks when going diagonal, you're not actually using any more hoppers than with a square farm. This is a little heavier on recourses, but takes up less space and is faster
(Image curtesy of my survival farm)
P.S. Maybe you could also add in a video tutorial for those who don't want to read it.
Thank you! Feel free to give some feedback if you're actually building it in survival. And while I'd love to make a tutorial video, I currently don't have the software to support it