Pipe quick facts
- Carries Water from a Pump to a Liquid Vent
- Ignores every other block, machine, or pixel
- Cannot move Lava
- Removed only with the Pipe Remover tool
Fluid transport
Sandustry Pipe: The Invisible Line That Moves Your Water
A Pipe is the narrow, non-solid thread that ties a Pump to a Liquid Vent. It does nothing to blocks, machines, or pixels on its own — it only carries whatever liquid the Pump pulls, and it hands that liquid to a Vent to be released.
Pump → Liquid Vent
Non-solid · place anywhere
Only Lava is excluded
Official wiki numbers
Verified against v0.5.5 on 2026-08-20
Official source
Run a Pipe Line, Step by Step
A Pipe is less a machine and more a route. It matters because of what it refuses to touch, not because of what it processes. Bring each end of the line online in order.
Start flow at the Pump
A Pipe cannot pull liquid by itself. It only moves what a Pump has already collected from the tile the Pump sits in, so a dry Pipe is usually an unpowered or blocked Pump.
Checkpoint: liquid is actually entering the Pipe at the Pump.
End the line at a Vent
The liquid a Pipe carries is deposited out of the Liquid Vent on the other end. No Vent, no release — the line simply holds the water in place.
Checkpoint: water pours out of the Vent at the far end.
Keep one liquid per network
Pipes can reach several Pumps and Vents at once, but the inputs and outputs are shared. Pump in more than one liquid and the system splits them evenly across every Vent, so keep each liquid on its own line.
Checkpoint: each Vent emits a single, unmixed liquid.
Plan the route before burying it
Pipes share a tile with any placed block and stay drawn behind it. Because only the Pipe Remover deletes them, leave room to reach a line you might want to reroute later.
Checkpoint: you can still reach the Pipe to reroute it.
When the Pipe Line Stalls
A stopped pipe line is almost never the Pipe's own fault. Check the source, the end, and the liquid in the line before tearing anything out.
Nothing reaches the Vent
A Pipe has no pull of its own, so a dry stretch usually means the Pump upstream is blocked or dry. Fix the source and the Pipe goes back to work.
The line has no release point
Without a Liquid Vent on the far end, water just sits in the Pipe. Add a Vent and the flow has somewhere to go.
One network, two liquids
Because inputs and outputs are shared, pumping a second liquid splits both across every Vent. Separate the lines to keep each output clean.
Lava will not ride the Pipe
Water and the other pumpable liquids travel freely, but Lava is the single liquid a Pipe will not carry. For that material you need a different path, not a longer Pipe.