Tosra & The Auction, day 3
Planning failure.
As we're about to cast off to sail back to the Academy, many people see us off, and there were even more who already wished to meet again in the future. Of course Liv and Myrun, but also several of the Storman and most of the sejdwomen. Several of the richer people have said that we will see each other in 5 weeks at the Auction. Myrun also said that I was absolutely right that there are more things she will try to have improved on her estate. Not only new larger windows, because she wants to buy waterpumps, taps etc in the future as well, and a new kitchen is also on the list.
I like that Bodil seemed to have gotten an admirer she appreciates, who gives her a kiss she is happy to receive before we step on board. That's good. I want my guards to have a life of their own, too.
When we sail back, I think and talk with the others. In the future, it will probably become tradition to have a feast a couple of times a year for different people. The autumn equinox in combination with the Tosra gathering will be one of them, because it was a pleasant experience, and the nicest feast I have been to in this world. I look forward to experiencing what the smaller spring gathering will be like, although camping at the end of March will probably be unpleasant. Some form of tent stove would be a really good idea.
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Unn is terribly impressed by the mansion and the island, and she happily agreed to spend the night in a one of the small guest room so we have plenty of time to talk. She lives in a small community on the western side of Långsjön, and share a longhouse with two families, and she has of course never seen or heard of anything like my mansion. The size of the greenhouse and the amount of glass it will have, was just another huge shock to her. She is so looking forward to spending her future on the islands, and it will be a far too long winter before she can return.
We go for a walk on the island together with Masterbuilder Pedr, who I informed about Workteam Adam, and I also my rough plans for the village, the Academy and show other things. We discus the work agreement and I convince Unn that as long as she fulfills her job as an island Fjölkunniga and helps me and the Academy, she will receive a salary from me to be able to give healthcare those who live on my islands for free, and the house with its garden will be her to make a life in, even if the land will not be hers. If the resident wants services outside of free medical care, or if she grows and wants to sell herbs, vegetables or handicrafts, it is okay to charge and sell it. If she is sought out by people from outside my islands, she can charge them. If she wants to get married and have children, it's okay, because she already has an apprentice who can take care of her duties when she needs to take care of her child, and should the apprentice leave, she must train a replacement, and if the Academy tutors sejdwomen too she should get any help she needs. I do not intend to force a pregnant woman or a mother of a small child to work.
When will I learn that sejdwomen generally never marry or have children of their own, and that most of them want too?
I ask if Unn have any special request on where she wants to live, but she says anywhere works, but would appreciate somewhere with a sheltered location, good water supply and some land for a garden, but she won't need a large numbers of animals. Some chickens, a couple of two pigs, a goat, a cow and some sheep if possible, which I don't see a problem with. She already knows that I intend to let the residents have some animals for their own use, simply because they need it, and there will be shared grazing fields for their animals. I ask if she wants to live down by the coast, or maybe near my barn and guesthouse that is already being built? Or if she wants to live up by the large lake in the middle, or another place she thinks seems nice? She chooses to live north of the lake, a bit up the hill where no one else currently lives or is planned, and it is a bit sheltered with the mountain top in the northwest. Central and good location, so should there be problems, it will be easiest to get there for everyone, and will still be only about 300-400 meters from the mansion, and same to the Academy. It is a beautiful place that gets a lot of sunlight with a good southern location.
It is better to build a completely new and larger house design, that combines living and healthcare in one building instead of two. It is more efficient from a heating point of view and building-wise as well, and can in the future combine with a detached small barn or use the village common. Unn is of course be happy to take the slightly larger house, and I promise her that it will be ready by spring. Caecilia, who came along to act as personal assistant, immediately picks up the slate and chalk from my shoulder bag she is carrying. It's my usual notebook, and I have to get used to someone else wearing it. I am a Furste. So I start sketching roughly how the house can be, by extending a 6x4 house.
I sketch and she gets to make suggestions about design and room distribution. It will be a more elongated house than 6x4 and double the surface, and ends at 10x5m facing south, with added small unheated enterance hall of 3x2m that leads into the middle to a larger 6x3m room in the west part of the building, which will be for her business and have a stone floor, which has a 3x2m 'wet room' with a drain on the backside. A total of 24m² for healthcare, work, laundry and showers etc. There is a door to the east part which is her private living room of 4x5m, which has a door back to the middle where there is a small 3x2m bedroom or storageroom towards the back.
Slightly to the east of the middle of the building there will be a large fireplace with two separate fireplaces and flutes up - one for the work room, one for her private living room, both with cooking facilities and accessories with hooks etc, but the living room side also gets a small bread baking oven. And as I talked to Pedr about before, there will be some air ducts to draw cold air from the floor and hopefully improve room heating by heat the air. The bedroom is heated by the back of the chimney and a few air ducts. She might think that two fireplaces is unnecessary, but I have no idea what she might cook up for healthcare, so its better to separate that from foodmaking. A ladder in the workroom leads up to the attic, which is divided into two parts, cold storage at the north and west side, warmer storage due to the chimney in the middle and to the east. There will also be a cold storage under the wooden floor in the living room.
Unn gathers courage and asks if it would be possible to arrange cold water from the wall in the same way as the mansion has, and I just smile and say that I have already planned it. It is very useful in her profession and saves time, so of course I want her to get it. Its not very expensive either, because even if copper costs, it doesn't take much to make a small water system. I say nothing, but she will have a hot and cold water system, and I draw a symbol for a shower in the wet room. She has already tried the mansions shower, and it can be very effective in cleaning herself if something happens. Masterbuilder Pedr smiles and shows that he understands due to two watertanks and how one use the chimney for heating. The wet room can be separated from the business room with a curtain and used as a bathroom, laundry room etc, so it doesn't get too cold or splashing everywhere, or just a thin plank wall separating, although it will be colder. The ventilation should allow warmer air to be drawn in there, but the fireplace might just means it draws colder air from the outside. The fireplace have a cold air intake from some of the space under the floor, but it is not ideal. Experience from living in Unn's house will be used to improve future buildings.
I ponder her work, and sketch a small 'rough entrance' with a toilet outside the northwest corner that can be reached via an 'outer door' from the wet room. So the door doesn't mess up the house insulation. It will be cold on the toilet, but atleast no wind, rain and snow going there. I heard Unn's appreciative comments about the mansions toilets, and it can be practical and more sanitary if she has patients who can barely move or need to be close to the toilet. The toilet barrels can be reached from the outside via a hatch in the wall. In the end, Unn's house is an experimental building in several ways, and we get to see how well different things work. Maybe I should make similar buildings for other craftsmen or people that need some kind of store area or buisness room. It is also a good knowledge to have for Laxlandas future Inn.
Pedr estimate that Unn's house shouldn't take more than a month for a small work team, because the mansion is basically finished, and if I prioritize it, the 10x5 house can be started after existing houses and barn, while the Academy's foundation continues to be cleaned up, prepared and all the stonework done. It is actually the windows that may delay the completion, but we will stick to a couple of standard dimensions, so it is flexible where we put the windows we get. They will also take the opportunity to paint the existing houses while the weather is good, and it will be a slightly reddish-brown toned semi-transparent wood color.
Unn is excited when she bravely asks if it would be okay to move in then, before winter instead of later in the spring. It is practical to get a medical woman here as quickly as possible, and then we will have more time to prepare for spring and use the greenhouse. Pedr nods, so I say yes. The house will just be unused until she arrives, and should her house not be finished in a month, she can always stay in the guest house by the barn until her house is finished. Unn is overjoyed and promises to return. She says she has a week's journey home, and will stay there for a couple of weeks and arrange her business, and then week's journey back here.
She might return there in the spring to pick up herbs etc, if she doesn't find them here in the area, and some need to be planted in the fall, so it may be too late, but she will take some with her and try. This is the coast, and if the winter is mild, it should go well, and the growing season should be at least a month longer than what she's used to in the inland, and be less cold. Unn is really looking forward to my greenhouse and what it makes possible.
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I have realised a big problem with the mansion, and that is the lack available water power. I need some machines, and would have preferred to have electrically powered machines in my workshop, but making good electric motors is problematic, and then there is the problem that I have to create and save power as well. I mainly need rotational energy, so the easiest and most efficient is to have the machines be water-powered, but I don't want to have to go down to the village to work. I am lazy and want it to be convenient. The only practical method is a central belt drive along the west side of the workshop, which is driven by a small steam engine up on the workshop attic, which can hopefully take steam from future boiler systems. It will be powered by low steam pressure but decent steam volume, so should work with a larger cylinder surface, and I do not need much power right now. Honestly, something like 300-400W is enough, like half a horsepower, but I can not really calculate it like that because steam, electric power and internal combustion engines develop power in different ways. The same steam engine with a several times higher steam pressure will be quite powerful and certainly work well for a smaller boat. The steam engine can also generate electricity when I need it.
What I want to drive is a simpler lathe and some form of band or leaf saw that can handle brass, and preferably a grinding machine and a simpler column drilling machine. So I need to get many parts made, for each machine, which will take time, so I will order it at future Borgarsandr visits. Then add a lot of parts for non-powered machines, such as a simple bench-mounted sheet metal scissors, a bending machine and rolling machine. I also want a simpler hoist to lift the heavy parts, which in turn need more parts, even if there are quite a few that I can design to be multi use in several machines. Shafts, gears, bearings, link arms etc can be used for a lot.
I will do all the finishing myself, and I will need to improve everything as I build and refine. In addition to the sheet metal scissors and the bending bracket, I have to start with the simpler balancing machine, so I can balance flywheels and the like, as well as a simpler lathe to make things round. A steam engine and central belt drive will require many many round wheels and parts.
I'm worried about gaskets in the steam engine pistons, because the only options I've come up with are several laps with rope, or leather as an alternative, so the design is based on few gaskets. So I will solder some parts together so it will be tight and then use screws to withstand the force, and a wide channel for several loops of rope as an O-ring where it is needed. Or two to get 'double O-rings' on pistons etc. The lubrication inside the pistons will be rendered fat. It will probably squeak and leak but I can only accept such things as part of the function and lower efficiency. It probably will make people have more respect for the steam engine, as steam is hot, and I will probably need to build the steam engine in a wooden box to keep the sound down, and can then lead leaking steam out through the small attic window or similar. The steam pressure will be really low for a steam engine if I use the steam boiler as the steam source. Everything must be able to be maintained as well, and it is one thing to take something apart for maintenance, one another thing to manufacture those parts with limited access to machines and machining.
The design is both manual and automated control of steam to the steam engine via a centrifugal regulator, double-acting piston or pistons if I have more than one cylinder in the steam engine. Then a condenser and finally back to the steam boiler. The valves for the cylinders become piston valves instead of slide valves, because it is more difficult to make fine sliding surfaces and I will need a lathe anyway. Everything will use fixed pipes and stationary pistons, so the flywheel is driven via a link arm. It will be a vertical system as I will still aim for such a small size that the compactness of horizontal machines doesn't really affect, and I am a little worried that gravity will cause uneven wear if it is laying down. A compact steam engine is preferable, but I have to choose a relatively large surface area to get good power in it. I really have no idea which size is appropriate, and I only have a few facts from Stanley Steamer and the Doble steam car in my head - so I'll just build something and see how it goes. What I do know is stuff like a horsepower is about 0.74kWh, and that a kilogram of pressure per square centimeter is about 1 bar. This steam engine will be powered by the steam boiler system, and there I want to keep the working pressure low. So, order two different engine sizes. One with 6cm diameter and one with 10cm steam cylinder, because the power is about surface times pressure, times the amount of steam. The smaller one has a 28.3cm² surface while the larger one has a 78.5cm² surface. I do not know the steam pressure or the amount of steam.
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In the evening I gather everyone so we can discuss the mansion. Sambos, Jane, guards and staff. All the furniture has been assembled together, the windows that arrived have all been installed and the copper roof and the water system are finished. Now that we have atleast partly lived here for a few days, they have had time to discover things that have been missed or should be fixed. Of course, it is fun to hear what works great, or they just love, but its more important to hear everything else. So we write lists of what needs to be bought that was forgotten, or is just nice to have.
Some are quite obvious as bathtubs, which is a bit embarrassing that I forgot, but the showers work and are appreciated by everyone. Nobody seems really interested in bathtubs right now, but we still want it. One smaller for the small bathroom and one larger for the large bathroom. Sometimes its just nice with a big hot bath, and if the tub is big enough to share it with someone, that also has its bright sides, because I have some volunteers for it now. So it will basically be a big oval tub. The bath tub can not be too large due to the limited amount of water from the hot water tanks, and the dimensions of the doors and the hall. Of course with headrest to lean against.
Obviously there are also more kitchen utensils, more spices and food, and we need to start building up food stores for the winter, and we need to collect the agreed animals from the surrounding area. Pigs because they can live on the waste and give us meat and pork. Cows for their milk, cream and cheese, and goats are somewhere between a pig and a cow and eat anything. Chickens for the eggs and the meat etc. We also need animal feed for the animals and horses for the winter, and we can buy a lot because it has been a good year. Atleast in the local region.
We need to order more furniture for guesthouse, seafarers house and Unn's house. We can just as well order additional furniture that is obviously needed for other houses or the Academy. Kari also wants a vertical loom, and she and Iselin want lots of thread as we do not have any sheep of our own to do it from. Yet. Sheep are something I do not really care about, as they are not worth it from a food point of view, and their sole purpose is wool, but I prefer to pay for finished garments and let others do that huge work. But my sambos want sheep, and we have terrain that is suitable for sheep, goats and pigs, so there will be a lot of sheep as well in the future, as well as goats that will be used to clear forest land. Goats eat everything, whether you like it or not.
I have of course not thought about a couple of mirrors - which here are polished brass plates - and I hear a "... and the fools doubted your manliness!" in English from Jane. She loves to use that phrase, and unfortunately she gets many opportunities for it. I decide there needs to be a mirror in each bathroom, and might as well have one in each bedroom room as well, including all the bedrooms in the wing and its staff room, which is really appreciated.
Elvira and Jalida carefully point out that there are no real laundry or cleaning aids at all, and they have had to borrow. No brooms, buckets, scrubbing brushes or anything else. When I just face palm, Jane and Iselin first start chuckling, but it spreads and we all get a laugh from it, which increases when Jane this time in bad Nordic repeats her comment about how manly I am. Thank you Iselin for teaching her that. Which is reinforced by Iselin's comment about how many plans and backup plans I've made for most other things. But not the least for cleaning and washing, which here is female work. My protest that all the women in my company havn't thought about it either, falls for deaf ears, and I might as well just take the blame. The mansion at least has a laundry room, it just is not finished yet, and there may be two washbasins with an agitator.
We ask one of the maids to come along during the shopping trip and point out other things we need that I obviously don't know shit about, and also things to take care of the milk, make cheese, etc. Of course, most people are well aware of this. Especially Iselin, who grew up on a large farm, and she is used to doing these chores - but she too can forget to think of something, which has been proven. Elvira and Jalida discreetly and quickly make some rock-scissors-bag variant and winning Elvira looks so pleased.
A couple of shovels, picks, some buckets, etc, will be needed for the outside work and barn, so it is also added to the lists.
Everyone takes a tour inside and out to see if anything pops up, which, among other things, oven ware do for me, along with a simpler hand-cranked meat grinder, grater, cheese planer and vegetable peeler. The last three I can make myself in iron or brass. I would have preferred stainless steel, but I don't have it.
There will certainly be more additions to the lists.
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Bodil's proposal to oil in the entire mansions oak floor is a really good idea. I don't have much knowledge about that, but she points to some furniture and explains that there are oils that after it has dried and hardened in a couple of days, will not stick and will be easy to care for and keep clean. It will not absorb water or be discolored by dirt in the same way as untreated wood. It costs a little and it would be best to have two layers with a little polishing in between, but considering all the silver I spent...
We will buy a few barrels of the right oil, and fabric or brush to apply it with. Personally, I have only thought about linseed oil, but I myself have rubbed some other oil on the wooden parts for my Boomstick, and seen the finish on many furniture and other wooden items such as blinds, so a little 'doh' there.
Considering the lack of cleaning things, I describe to Bodil's how I intend to make a couple of floor mops with squeezing forms to be placed on top of a larger bucket. Not advanced at all and mostly in wood, and a mop is mostly just a long shaft with fabric strips tied on in one end. It will work well enough, and it will help keep the stone floors cleaner. When the oak floors are treated, it will work there too.
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Kari reminds me of Jane's old boyfriend Tom and his things that I wanted to buy. I thank for the reminder and it is best to do so after we return from Borgarsandr. There are also several sundials that need to be installed so we have to send Iselin on a new round for installations. She will among other things install two more sundials here. One in the village where the side road to the Academy meets the main road across the island, which in the future will be made into a small square by the lake, and one on the other island between the main farms. Kari says that she can try to sell a sundial in Njalhamrar and Kambsnes. She has learned how to install them, and can use Asta for taking out the direction, which sounds like a good idea, and I will send four sundials along. Partly to get them sold and the silver, partly to spread it to more places as a small PR thing, and teach people the clock and the numbers. Its a nice bonus purpose of the trip, and it can serve as a cover for the real purpose.
Iselin understands that I don't like that she needs to leave me for a few days, but she just gets a devilish smile and whispers we must try to catch up both before and after. I concur. I also don't like that Kari will leave, but I don't have the same feelings for her as I do for Iselin. But this night is Kari's.