4rd May 1574"Sir, the furnace is hot!"
Standing quite a far distance away from the quarry site, I could see how the first conveyors we implemented in the entire area were pulling huge blocks of limestone towards the grinding machine, where huge steel jaws were crus.h.i.+ng them apart, only to spew them on another conveyor that would take a turn around, lead them to another set of jaws, and so on.
Only when the pieces would be as small as the concrete-making process required them to be, the conveyor would lead them to the furnace almost exactly the same as the iron blast furnace, with its only difference being that manual loading was completely replaced by the steam-powered conveyor belts!
Just by powering up one out of twenty rollers on which the belt was moving, the entire thing could be set in the constant motion, pus.h.i.+ng the raw stones to the mouth of the furnace, while the charcoal required to sustain the fire underneath the furnace mouth was moved on top of the belt form a nearby warehouse by a set of workers.
Compared to the iron blast furnace, this thing had one additional part inside. A brick floor, normally storing all the burning clinker to the backside of the burning chamber, but when lifted by a concrete-iron pipe, it would force everything inside the furnace to pour out of its mouth to the forms prepared before lighting the entire furnace up.
Regretfully, with the current design, constant production that was achieved with smelting the iron ores, was impossible. Whenever half of the furnace was filled up, a special lookout would give the sign to the loaders that busied themselves with putting the huge blocks of the limestone on top of the conveyor belts, because by the time all the fine limestone dust made out of them would reach the furnace, its belly would be already filled!
"Turn the next set of fans!"
Even though the temperature required for the proper reaction to start up within the furnace was quite similar to the one required to purify the metal ore into pig iron, the greater the heat we could achieve, the greater the quality of the clinker would be, allowing us to make more durable concrete in the end.
With all the fans now supplying the insides of the furnace with an ample amount of fresh air, I could see its mouth already spewing out the flames high up in the air, explaining one of the reasons why I didn"t want to load it with the manpower, opting for the first use of the conveyor belts in the world instead.
But with the furnace now going, there was no need for me to remain in this place. Rather than wasting my time on waiting for the clinker to be properly prepared, I moved to the great ditch, where workers were busying themselves with setting wooden barriers every few steps or so, separating the entire area into a set of small cubes that could be filled with the concrete one by one rather than forcing me to produce enough of the concrete to fill the foundation for the entire place all at once.
"Sir, the testing area is already prepared, that"s why I dared to move my workers to work here…"
"Don"t worry, I know."
Considering how the entire city was laid out according to my own plan, we still had to go through the trouble of checking if the outline I proposed had any problems that we didn"t realise before. No matter how awful that sounds, I was going to put a simple shed all over the testing grounds, connect them all to the main sewage hole in the foundation and get enough men to fill all the places after feeding them some oil food.
After all, if the hole and later the pipe was too small to cope with the potential use of all the toilets connected to it, as soon as I could somehow import coffee and introduce it to this city, I would end up with quite a s.h.i.+tty problem!
But even before this place would be put to a test, I had to make sure that another digging project was going as planned!
"Sir, so far, we didn"t encounter any problems… But are those wet holes really necessary?"
After thinking the entire matter through, I decided that with how small this river was, there was no way to have just some cranes mounted on the factory that would serve to feed the products on top of the boats. Rather than that, creating a something akin to a wet dock where the s.h.i.+ps could be kept while the products would move up the portable conveyor belt all the way to their board was something that was at least feasible with the current technology we had.
"Sadly, but yes. We need to make sure that the s.h.i.+ps will be safe while docked. We don"t want them to rock on the waves while we will move our wares on top of them."
Wet holes were quite a simple invention. After digging up enough s.p.a.ce for most of the s.h.i.+ps that existed in the current time to fit comfortably in, the place where it connected to the river itself would be covered with the dirt dug out from the hole itself, before the entire place would be dried out, hardened with concrete and a proper, metal gate would close it off. After those steps would be done, the dirt would be loosened or just dug out, allowing the water to fill the stable docking port once again and turning it into a safe heaven for any s.h.i.+p that would come by!
"Well, the digging is going rather smoothly, but with how much earth we have to move around, I"m worried that we will waste weeks trying to move it aside later on!"
With how both the wet holes and the foundation area for the enormous carpentery plant were dug out simultaneously, it was no wonder that the manager responsible for this project of mine was worried about the leftover soil!
After all, if we just kept dumping it around whenever we required the place it was currently left at, in just a short time, more than half of the work in this entire place would turn into moving the soil from one temporary holding place to another!
"Don"t worry about the earth, I already have a project in mind for how we can use it!"
While covering the entire future town and the important factories with walls was simply impossible, doing so for the key places and erecting an earthy wall in a place where I wanted to construct a safe spot for all the locals in case of any attacks occurring, would allow me to turn this useless waste that was only taking up the vital s.p.a.ce in the area into the first line of defence against the raids of either the neighbouring n.o.bles that were sure to react to all my investment sooner or later, or even when the war with powerful Russia would inevitably start!