NOVEL SIMPLE [Vol.4] Ch.16 Windmill Part 2
We spent another twenty days getting the dome to rotate thanks to a small fan installed on part of the dome. There were a lot of small tweaks and changes we had to do to make it work effectively, but I'm glad the whole thing works now. It's also been about long enough now that I expect the road construction crew will be finishing up. Once they do, I want to have them add another layer to the artificial tide pool. I've also set a few goblins up with rock breaking jobs in the reservoir area. The larger and nicer shaped rocks get shipped to the road construction crew, and the more oddly shaped ones are used in rock dam construction along the stream.
The next part that I'm going to have to work on is the power transfer and mill portion inside. While I work on some portions of that, I'll have the carpenter begin making the fan blades, so we'll be able to move on to the final step quickly when we get to it.
I spent another eighteen days getting the internals ready for the mill, including the gearing, bearings, mechanical levers, and millstone to make the whole thing run. After fifteen days of working on it, the road construction crew reported that they finished building the road all the way to the harbor on the other side of the island. That should end up expediting our trade considerably. Since I'm over here working already, I decided that it would be a good idea for me to manage the construction goblins for expanding the artificial tidepools, and have Zeb build another inn along the new road, closer to the harbor.
Of course, I told both Zeb and the other goblins that they could relax in town for a week or two considering how long they worked on the road. None of them have started working yet, so I assume they're just enjoying a well earned vacation. In the meantime, the next portion of the mill is going to be one of the hardest to properly install. Getting the fan blades into position given their size isn't a task I can do myself. Thankfully, I can get help, and I've designed the blades to be able to be attached from below with some help from ropes. Once they're in the actual rotating portion, metal bars secure them, and the whole fan can be rotated to allow the next blade to be attached. Having the external walkway should really come in handy for all of this.
I ended up waiting a little bit for the fan blades to be made, which meant it ended up taking ten days to get the blades attached and checked to make sure they would rotate properly. By the fifth day of this process, a few of the construction goblins started work in the tidal pool area. Not quite all of them have returned to work here yet, and honestly, I don't blame them. They've probably got quite a bit of money saved up, so they can afford to take a break for a while.
I heard that one is doing some stone shaping for other goblins in town, and that's fine, as long as it doesn't interfere with city planning. Speaking of city planning, as the construction goblins came back from working on the road, I've realized that outside of a few projects here and there, I don't have many long term projects that I can just leave them to their devices to construct right now. That being the case, I think it might be beneficial to set some laws down, and train a goblin to be a proper bureaucrat.
Within a certain area of the city, I'd like to properly establish construction rules and regulations, and have planned sketches of where certain things can go so that the goblins can start being more proactive with their work. All the work we've been doing lately is in preparation for another increase in population, and this is already too much for two or three people to manage without written rules and middle managers.
It ended up taking a whole forty days to finish the windmill. I'm honestly quite disappointed by just how much fine tuning it took to get things right. That said, I always knew it would take some time to get the springs fine tuned for the orientation of the main fan blades. The biggest time lost was waiting for wind speeds to change to determine what needed changed in the springs. It's not perfect yet, but it's at least good enough to use. Whatever goblins end up working in this mill, I'll be sure to have them notify me if speeds are a little too fast or too slow on given days, and what the wind conditions were at that time.
It wasn't all wasted time though. I helped finish the layer for the artificial tide pools as more of the construction goblins filtered in. Zeb finished building the second inn during this time as well. Between the two of us and the goblins working on the tide pools, we actually ended up getting two layers finished. At this point, there is only enough room for about another two layers. As I mentioned before though, each layer has more space than the last, so the two layers we completed now have a little less area in total than the previous four do combined. Meaning we could hypothetically support twice our current population.
That being the case, the next task at hand is going to be getting the area outside the current set of city walls prepared for construction, which means roads, sewers, and clearing forest. Once Zeb and I work out where exactly all those are going to be built, I'm going to start work on a proper city hall building. It'll be a fairly large building, built right inside one of the gates of the current village. I'm oversizing compared to our current needs so that we can grow into the space as the village grows.
I'll plan on it having a large meeting area, something akin to a courtroom, multiple reception offices for handling different regulation and managerial matters, a few archives where documents can be kept, and a few other offices that aren't open to the public for handling other internal management issues.
I think that ideally, considering how our society currently operates, Zaka would likely transition to a role similar to a high court position. He presides over the rules and has to give affirmation of major decisions, but for a lot of the daily operations he leaves it up to individuals. Likewise, although I make a lot of executive decisions, in the long term I'd rather delegate a lot of the smaller planning and decisions to other individuals. I already spend a decent portion of my time just planning construction projects for the village, which I'd rather spend working on my own projects.
Of course, I've gained access to a lot of resources I wouldn't have otherwise thanks to the village's expansion, so I can't say it's been a waste of time, just that I'd prefer if it advanced on its own without me having to be concerned about safety or waste. Which is exactly why this city hall needs to be built. There, I can train goblins to do a lot of the individual tasks that I normally take care of, and make it their job instead of mine. Previously, we didn't quite have enough oversight jobs to justify doing this, but I think we're reaching the tipping point now with plans to expand the village again.
Getting the layout for the roads outside the existing city wall took a solid two days of discussion and planning, but I think we've settled on a reasonable layout for now. We'll have three concentric rings of roads, with crossroads branching between them like spokes. In some of these places, it overlaps with a field, and in those places, the field will eventually be moved further back after harvest season. On one side of the village, it'll mean we'll be cutting back another decent chunk of trees as well.
We've had another three goblins breaking rocks in the reservoir area this year, so they'll be first in line for cutting those trees down. The next in line will be the goblins who we are anticipating to hire on as guards for the new portion of the city. We still plan on keeping only four openings to and from this section of the city when we eventually build walls, but these gates will be wider than before, to allow more individuals through. For now it will remain unwalled, however.
We'll also be splitting the stream's flow into three channels. One that goes through the middle of the village, and one that goes around either side of these road rings we're making, following the middle road. With the increased flow from the aquifer that we accidentally dug into while making the road, and the potential to drill more water channels into the mountain as needed, we should be able to sustain all three channels fine. However, we will need to expand the downstream water infrastructure to handle the extra water and excrement. I'm not about to make a water treatment plant, but making sure that the sewer water actually exits to the ocean a decent distance from the artificial tide pools seems like a good idea.
However, all that will be after they actually finish expanding the roads and sewer, so in the meantime, I'll be working on getting the city hall set up.