NOVEL SIMPLE [Vol.5] Ch.42 Hurry Up and Wait
I knew it would take the goblins some time to produce all the glass for the greenhouse, so I'd have extra time to work on the greenhouse's overall design. I gave them guides for sizing the glass, so they could cut and break the pieces to the right size, and after they had a few made, I went to Karsh to start making the metal frames to slide the glass into. I'll need quite a few parts, so I left him with some of the glass sheets to use as guides, while I went to start work on the rest of the facility.
The whole greenhouse is planned to be thirty feet long, and twenty feet wide, with the majority of the inside being a shallow evaporation pond. After I marked out where all the corners of the greenhouse are going to be, I started the deep excavation work. Under the pond, there is six feet of stone, and then a large open cavity spanning the same size as the pond. The roof of the cavity is checkerboarded with stalactites measuring two feet long, which I hope will act as condensation points for water.
Then, beneath the stalactites, I dug a fairly deep pit, with a walkable area around the perimeter. Ultimately, I ended up having to compress all the stone in the cavity and coat the walls with lightstone to prevent salt water from seeping in, which I discovered was a problem during construction. From one side of the cavity, you can enter and exit via a stairwell, which I also used for construction. The stairs only descend a total of twenty feet, but it's noticeably cooler down here than on the surface, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
On either end of the cavity, a vertical hole 6 inches in diameter goes up to either end of the greenhouse, which I later plan on installing two small fans inside, one to push, and the other pull air, circulating a small amount of the air from the greenhouse down into the cavity. The volume of air being forced around should be fairly low, compared to the total volume of each space, with the cavity behaving as a dehumidifier, and condensing the water into the cavern.
Once we actually have the greenhouse built, I'll then add in the windmill that will drive both of the fans, as well as a simple screw pump to pull water from the cavity up to the surface. I spent 34 days working on the cavity, so I'll be quite disappointed if it doesn't work at all. Right now, about half of all the glass has been made, so it'll still be a little while before everything gets assembled. Karsh has finished the frame pieces at least, so I'm going to start working with him on the windmill parts for this facility.
After the spring rainy season ended, I moved the bathhouse crystal back to the second valley's shore, and the construction crew resumed excavation for the second artificial tide pool. I expect that they'll probably finish its construction this winter, meaning we'll have access to even more easy fish relatively soon.
While I was working with Karsh on the windmill parts, Zeb informed me that he'd gathered the volunteers to start making the aesthetic changes to the architecture of the city. Which meant I had to take a detour from working on the greenhouse design, though I actually didn't have much more work to do while I waited for glass to be finished.
So, I started discussing ideas with the group, who consisted of four goblins and one hobgoblin who all had stoneshaping. They were all quite open minded individuals, which I figured was probably going to be beneficial in the long run, but also meant that getting initial designs figured out ended up being a headache. Each individual had their own preferences for different designs that I showed them, and all those preferences clashed with one another.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have gone about the process by showing them various different architectural designs from earth, and asking which ideas they liked best. One liked Greek designs, another prefered Japanese. One liked the idea of having finely detailed ornaments, another wanted to keep things relatively simple. So, ultimately, I decided to mandate a few things while granting them certain freedoms as a compromise.
I am partial to the ease of replication of the greek designs using stoneshaping on existing buildings, so for overall theme, that's what we'll be going with. Many of the buildings will be improved with decorative pillars, and stylized roof ornaments. For the one who wants to keep things relatively simple, the pillars will prove to be exactly that, a simple, uniform task that is repeatable, but adds character. Along the bases of the pillars and along certain walls, I'm giving them free reign to make whatever designs they want, as long as the building itself remains symmetrical.
Then, every so often, I'll have a monument or garden space that I'll let one of them have full control over the design. Once they get a few buildings completed to a satisfactory level, I'll give them their first one, which seemed to motivate them to work hard, though I did have to keep an eye on them and correct a few issues in the first ten days of their work.
After all that was finished, I was only a few days away from having the last of the glass panes made for the greenhouse, so I decided to start assembling the building. By the time I had all the components, including the windmill finished, I'd spent another fifty-two days working on this project. If I take out the thirteen days I spent helping the new design team, and the day I moved the crystal at the end of spring, I spent seventy-two days to get this greenhouse built.
Initially, some of the goblins were skeptical of if it would work, which, if I'm honest, I was a little worried about as well. Though it was clear after only a few days that it worked, and worked well. The water seemed to be evaporating at a bit over 3 times the normal rate. Though I did end up spending eight days fixing an issue I had neglected to think about.
The greenhouse was very hot. So hot, in fact, that it made harvesting the leftover salt incredibly oppressive, and there was no real way to air out the greenhouse. So, I had to change a few sections of the warehouse to be openable windows, so that the greenhouse can actually be cooled when it's time to harvest the leftover salt.
The green house having three times the normal rate of salt harvesting wouldn't be worth it on it's own, but considering it'll also provide us with salt year round, it's probably closer to 10 times the annual productive output from this one pond. Not to mention that it's producing a decent amount of freshwater. I got a very rough estimate of the volume of water being produced, and it comes out to about 20 gallons per hour, which was actually quite impressive.
It also made the ambiance in the cavern underneath the salt pond very unique. It's practically raining inside the space. As the humid air gently blows through the few hundred stalactites, it condenses, and runs down to the point before dripping down into the collection pool. The stalactites closer to the air inlet drip faster than those near the outlet, but they each average a drop every few seconds. It's honestly quite relaxing down there, enough so that I'm thinking about expanding the area underground there, and opening it up for others to enjoy.
If we figure out how to artificially make the fluorite heating crystals though, we could potentially build a mana powered desalination plant, which would produce significantly more water and salt than our entire existing output combined. This would also mitigate a separate issue I ran into, which was that the glass production used all our available soda ash that I was planning on having go to iron production from pyrite.
Every time something like this happens, where we're short on some natural resource like soda ash, it makes me more and more keen on trying to colonize another of our islands or improve our infrastructure. If we had a small settlement on another island, they could harvest some of that island's natural resources, like float vine, and trade it with us for other goods. Though the soda ash issue could also be resolved by adding more roads and trails on this island to allow better access to our own resources as well, or by adding a new boat.
Unfortunately for me, all of these problems have the same underlying requirement, a higher population, which fundamentally just takes time to grow. To colonize another island, we'd need to have a decent way to communicate and travel between the two islands without losing control of them. Building roads requires stoneshaping goblins, which takes time, and while we can make some trails around the island, navigating the craggy terrain without tunnels is practically as bad as not having a trail at all for the purposes of moving goods around. I've also shot down the idea of adding more large boats until we have a harbor for them. So I'm left with the last option, hurry up and wait.