We talk as we go to the village and look at the projects there. I had planned to create the village with scattered 6x4 houses and 10x5 craft houses, but I have realised that it is a rather inefficient idea. It is a lot of work to build one of the 10x5 houses and they have a lot of exterior walls and roof area compared to floor space, and it is simply a relatively poor efficiency and floor plan in relation to the amount of work. Each building also takes up quite a lot of space with garden etc all around, and I will have many craftsmen and others who won't work from home. The workers have already made a lot on the second craft house, and it is intended to have a foundry at the back, so it is a bit special. But in the village I have changed the plan and there will be smaller residential buildings with identical apartments - ignoring that every other apartment is mirrored. The length of the building means that the 'long sides' of each apartment adjoin to the next apartments and becomes interior load-bearing walls, and this means that the apartments should have less heat loss, and I save about 25% of load-bearing walls in construction material, and 50% of exterior walls, and 40% of roof area, but each apartment still gets more space internally. Which affects in cost and material, and in the future the exterior walls of the apartments will get extra insulation like my mansion and the Academy, just not so thick, and I plan to make roof clay tiles instead of wood tiles, straw roof or slate.
Each apartment will be 60m² spread over two floors, with a small front vestibule and possible an root cellar for food. There is also a rear attached vestibule where the separating toilet will be. The rear vestibule is the 'kitchen entrance' and goes out into the back garden, but it goes through the bathroom-laundry room so that the kitchen doesn't become too small, and it makes pipe work easier. A good kitchen with good large work surfaces is so incredibly appreciated among those who have tried it, so it is a priority. The toilet will be unheated just like the vestibule, but you can go 'indoors' to the toilet, which honestly is worth so much when you get used to it. As long as you avoid rain, snow, wind and ice, the cold in the winter is manageable, and it is always less cold against the house than standing alone out in nature. Many toilets don't even have proper walls, so the wind blows and snow drifts in. The indoor toilets we have don't smell much, and these will be 'outside' and with easier and better ventilation.
The main entrance is from the north and you come in to a small vestibule for hanging clothes, taking of shoes and so on. A door leads into the living room which occupies most of the lower floor, and has a fireplace in the middle of the other long wall. The living room is 20m² with a larger window over the front porch and a smaller one towards the back in the kitchen area. Along the other wall at the entrance there is a staircase up, and beyond the stairs is the small laundry and bathroom with a shower, which leads on to the rear vestibule and toilet. There will be hot and cold water in each apartment, and the kitchen which is the rest of the south side of the living room will have a good kitchen counter with sink against the bathroom wall, so it is easy to lay pipes to one place in the house, put taps on both sides, and also drainage is in one place. The chimney heats the rooms upstairs and the hot water tank, and lies back to back against the corresponding fireplace and chimney in the apartment next door, and it will be the solution with cold air intake from below, air ducts, etc. The entire fireplace wall is intended to be masonry stone to partly function as a load-bearing firewall, and also stabilize the temperature inside. The roof of the apartments is intended to eventually become clay tiles both to be water tight and make maintenance easier, as well as feel more luxurious and be better against fire. I just need to manufacture those tiles. The ground is uneven and partly rocky and not optimal to build these buildings on, so only some apartments will have a small root cellar large enough to walk into which is reached via doors under the stairs, and a door at each end down to the basement improves the look and is better for insulation. Some apartments will sadly only have a cold storage pit in the same place.
The second floor has a 'larger' bedroom of 10.5m² to the rear with larger windows and views of the garden, and a smaller bedroom of 7m² to the front and north. It is possible to change places of the bedrooms if someone would like it, and also vary a little in size. There is also an open area of about 4.5m² above the front vestibule, and a similar area above the bathroom at the back, but if the area is walled up as a room, the room will be relatively cool because the wall blocks the heat from the living room and the floor below. I expect that the areas will be used for crafts such as a vertical loom etc, but there is a good chance there will be a bunk bed and maybe a curtain for the front area for more children, servants or residents. If the door or curtain is kept open during the day, it shouldn't be too cold as heat rises, and the outer wall will be well insulated. There will also be ventilation ducts downwards in all rooms where cold air along exterior walls and floors can fall down to the ground floor floor via the corners. I don't know how well it will work, but it is such a small thing that is easy to test by doing it in an apartment and simply try. If it doesn't work, we remove it, and won't build it in later apartments. Together with ventilation ducts outside and above the windows like my mansion have, there should be good air circulation, and relatively even heat inside. There will be a simple ladder to get up to the attic crawl space where it is also possible to store food and other things, but the attic will be hot in the summer.
People are used to living on each other and together, so there is a good chance that it will be the same here, but having a private life and space is a luxury relatively few ever have, so that can be attractive. In the end I will be the owner of the buildings, and I can make laws for co-inhabitance etc if it goes too far.
The apartment is basically a 'classic modernish' residential building design but with an open floor plan on the ground floor, and a modern town person would felt right at home in the apartment and manage well - as long as they could handle the fireplace - and that is Jane's opinion. However, Jane does not like me introducing residential housing like this, and thinks it will look silly when the front of one length with its road is facing towards the garden and back of the adjacent building. It should be front to front and garden to garden. Jane did not like my counter-question how smart it is to place a garden on the north side of the building and in the shadow of the two storey house. A road doesn't care that it is the north side and in the shadow, as there will be a small side road leading out to the larger road, and in this case the future road to the Academy. So one end of the building is towards the road and the lake, and the back gardens are in a fairly southern direction.
Each apartment will have an elongated south facing garden of about 80m², and we expect that people will build a small hen house, pigsty or maybe a goat pen towards the toilet, because people expect to have animals for their own needs and want it, and the garden will probably be for vegetables etc. Roof gutters will direct rainwater to a barrel at the back for use in the garden, and in the front to cisterns to collect rainwater, and away from the foundation of the building. There will also be a common sewer that will continue down the valley to treatment ponds etc, to eventually flow out into the sea to the south. The residential buildings will also be prepared for centralized water supply, because I plan to build a water tower and connect most of the village, instead of each house having to take care of their own water. It's inefficient. The building will also be prepared for centralized heating via a steam boiler, but just prepared for it with holes and so on for steam pipes and steam recycling etc. I doubt it will ever be installed because of the cost, but also because every household still needs to use the fireplace to cook. But might as well prepare for it.
The buildings ends are different, and the end towards the road will have a larger shop / craft room on the ground floor, but a workroom or possibly a home upstairs. In the future I hope for, with everyone who works for me and I who pay with food and wages, it is simply more efficient to plan to gather such things as a bakery, charcuterie, brewery, general merchant store etc as something dedicated people do and provide the village with, than that everyone should do it themselves and take care of their own animals and so on. Yes, there will be some personal animals in most gardens, but by collaborating it is possible to kill a pig and let many people share it more often, and thus overall more often get meat on the table. People do it now by bartering, but this will probably be more organized, and hopefully in the future have a centralized freezer to keep meat frozen. A person who bakes bread and provides everyone with it from a more efficient oven is efficient, instead of everyone having to bake their own bread. The same principle applies to the production of mead and beer, even if, just like slaughtering, it will not take place in the middle of the village due to smell and waste water. Overall, it will also save on the amount of servants and slaves, and I plan to remove slaves on the islands. I simply want to make the village feel more like a small modern village, and that also mean shop windows facing a road. There will be extra shop and craft buildings along the road that partially hide the gardens behind from the road, so that the residential building from above will be backwards L shaped and a row of buildings will look like L L L L. There will be a lot of glass in all the shops, and also prism glass to make the interior brighter.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Is shop windows unnecessary? Yes. Will I still pay for it just because I want it? Yes.
What the other end of the building will be, depends on where the residential building is located and in which direction. Some buildings like these in the middle of the village with a nice view of the valley will be an extra large and nice apartment, or a meeting room, pub etc. At least here in the middle of the village, it is now planned to be four small side roads with a residential building along each, and each residential building will have 6-7 apartments, plus a larger shop or craft home at the end toward the road. So, about 26 apartments that will be comfortable, and for most feel incredibly luxurious. A couple of similar buildings will hopefully be built north of the main road through the village, but they will be built as needed. Once the Academy is finished, I expect that these buildings and shops can be finished by the summer and just be empty until someone moves in.
I intend to offer even more luxury, and the top home will have double glazing for extra insulation and oiled pretty floors. The mansions floors proves that is a good idea that common people seems to love, and it is quite cheap. It is of course possible to buy and upgrade with such things as oil lamps, ice boxes and more in the future. I hope it will be a prestige to live in the village, and make a good impression on those who come here. I want to attract good craftsmen and that others are willing to pay me rent to settle and make a living here. I want there to be everything ordinary people need, and attract trade from the surroundings area. One of the ends will be a single large general store of about 130m² area ground floor with crafts, clothes, shoes, tools, utensils, craft accessories, interior decorations, kitchen accessories, spices, salt and so on. It will have a close connection and trade with my merchant business in Borgarsandr.
A minor change that is linked to the change village plans is that there will be prepared pipelines under the road for drinking water, sewage and rain water, and in several places. The Academy will be located on a hill at the southern end of the village, so it will probably be a water tower that will feed most of the village and the Academy from there. No matter what, I want water pipes and other things prepared, and the Academy will also get sewage with water treatment that flows down into the valley and on to the sea in the south. There will also be special pipes under the main road through the village that is fed from the lake. One is planned for irrigation in the valley because I hope it will be possible to build automatic sprinklers or similar in the future. Another pipe is primarily intended to have the possibility of additional water wheels on the north side of the road.
As I walk home, I talk with Pedr about trying to change the interior windows on my mansion and attaching the interior glass to the outer window. Basically making a more modern double glass pane window. If the glass just sits 20mm apart the distortion should be far less, and the view to the outside improved. The tricky part is making the inner window openable for cleaning, but that is doable.
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The bell is complete, and it works great. It rings clearly each time I push the button, and Ciara covers her ears. Alith soon looks in along with Elvira. I just tell Alith that the planned systems are moving forward, but no one understands how the bell can just ring like that without someone hammering on it. I almost want to say 'Angry Pixies', but that is a stupid idea.
I'm bad at sticking to one project, so I'm fitting the parts together for the new bench lathe's frame, but it seems to sit flat and be quite straight. Final adjustment must be made when the lathe is in operation. The stability is aided by the thick heavy cement block with rebar and built in strong foot mounts that Pedr had the craftsmen do. The lathe then stands on a very strong and stable workbench, where I can store some tools and accessories on the shelf underneath. Balancing and trying to make the sliding surfaces on the frame really flat is a bit fussy and tiring. But it needs to be done, and done well.
The biggest problem is the chuck, followed by balancing all the gears and fitting them against each other, and then filing and doing the finishing work on all the lead screws. To some extent, I cheat and use fine polish to wear the surfaces together. There will be play, which is not good, but this is a prototype and I intend to use this lathe to make improved parts and replace them afterwards.
At least the drive is a relatively solved problem with the line shaft system.
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It's evening, Iselin and I have our second movie night, and this time it is the movie Johan Falk: Alla råns moder, ie 'The mother of all robberies'. I explain it's a fictional story about bad people trying to carry out a huge robbery and the guards trying to stop them. I explain what a police officer is, and there is violence etc in the movie, she will get a fairly realistic view of a modern Midgård society, with modern weapons used in the robbery scenes and it is recorded in this kind of area, she will see a modern big city.
Of course she doesn't understand much of the dialogue because it is so different, and don't understand the technology. Mobile phones and radios are easier to explain, and she have a hard time keeping up with cuts and scene changes, but she appreciates seeing how my world is, even if the story is imaginary, but possible. So many amazing things like watching helicopters fly and motorboats without sails. Incredibly tall residential buildings. The size of it all and incredible amount of people in a large city. How fast the vehicles travel on the roads, and the huge tunnels.
After the movie - which she really takes impressively well - we listen to some music, dance, and I try to explain the lyrics in a couple of songs from Rammstein and other groups. I will let her bring a powerbank and the MP3 player with her when she leaves, and that alone makes her so very happy.
Iselin's reaction to Within Temptation 'Dangerous' video with Wingsuits is so damn wonderful to see. She would so like to fly like that, and growing up as she did among Norwegian fjords, I can just imagine that extra attraction. She loves the music, but she is completely fascinated by wingsuits and hang gliding, and sees parables with the kites we made and played with. She seems to totally ignore the risk that it is dangerous, or that the person filming part of it died several years ago while filming another jump, so I avoid confirming that a large enough kite can lift a human. Elf. I explain that it won't happen in our lifetime. Special material and so on, plus hundreds of practise jumps. The music video takes such a long time to watch for the third time as we basically see it frame by frame. Iselin will definitely try to convince Jane that she wants a piano, and that she should teach Iselin to play.
We borrow a tabletop figure and make a simple parachute that we release from my attic. We fold paper sheets and throw paper airplanes across the room, and from my attic. Something as simple as a paper airplane and paper spinners that spins when we drop them, and Iselin loves it. But she has always loved the Boomerangs and kites as well.
Eventually she calms down, and we try to combine just feeling each other's presence with me trying to get Iselin to know how much I will miss her. Neither of us care about sleep that much, and she can't do much else than rest on the boat.