I built a manor in the Middle Ages

Chapter 34 Charcoal Kiln
This was the first time that little Charlie cooperated with Luke in hunting, and he won the first battle with great success!
Little Charlie bit the mouse to death, turned his head and spit out the head, ignoring the corpse, wagging his tail and sticking out his tongue, ready to receive Luc's praise.

Luke laughed and climbed out of the cellar, followed by Ryan, who had dealt with a few more rats.

"Come on, Charlie, what a capable guy!"

Luc waved his hand, and little Charlie ran over, shaking his head, and snuggled into Luc's arms and started rubbing against him.

Pushing away the dog's head that was still covered in blood, and stopping Charlie's urge to lick himself, Luc stroked its smooth fur. While deciding to give it a snack in the evening, he said to Ryan:
"We've dealt with this nest of rats, but as long as we have food, there will definitely be another batch. We still have to come up with a good solution."

"Master, when I was in Provence, I heard that many nobles had clay pots specifically to keep out rats."

"The base of that clay pot was very narrow, and the tray was semicircular and smooth," Ryan recalled, holding a string of dead rat tails. "Rats couldn't climb up into it to hold food."

“It would be nice if we had this kind of pottery too.”

"Yes."

Luc nodded. Not only pottery, but also if bricks and stones could be used to surround the cellar, it could effectively prevent rats from digging holes and entering.

But whether it is pottery or bricks and stones, all of these cannot avoid a building.

Burn the cave!
Luke had already told Ryan last night that after dealing with the rats, it would be time to build the cave.

In fact, Luc originally wanted to build the cave house in the spring, but there was a rat plague, so he had to build it early.

Throwing away the rats, the two men first surrounded the food with a pile of stones, and then covered it with a large stone. In cold weather, this could temporarily serve as a temporary ice kiln.

After dinner, Luke took a shovel and hoe and led Ryan to the foot of the mountain west of the cabin.

Before rebuilding a cave for firing bricks or pottery, you must first make another thing - charcoal.

To successfully fire bricks or pottery, the temperature must be high enough, which can never be achieved with ordinary firewood. Only higher-grade fuels, such as charcoal, can burn to over 800 degrees.

And the benefits of charcoal are not limited to this. Compared with burning firewood, the smoke produced by charcoal is basically negligible and can barely be called smokeless. For example, Luc's current fireplace was forgotten when the fireplace chimney was designed. Although the temperature inside the wooden house is very high, there is still smoke, which often makes people cough.

Secondly, charcoal can burn longer and is more convenient to carry, so in the Middle Ages, charcoal was also a valuable commodity.

After turning a corner, we came to the southern slope, which was the sunny side. We used a shovel to push away the thin snow on the top of the slope and finally stopped at a place where the soil was relatively dry.

The autumn had brought a flood of fallen leaves, now rotting into the earth, but these leaves, combined with the intense sunlight, had kept the soil frozen to just a few inches.

"Let's dig right here!"

Luke knocked twice, and Ryan beside him immediately made two "Pooh" sounds on his palms, swung the hoe in his hand, and dug hard on the hillside!
The frozen soil on the surface was very solid, and the iron hoe hitting it felt like hitting hard rock, causing Ryan's arms to feel numb from the shock.

"Damn it, why is it so hard!"

Luke pushed Ryan away, grasped the shovel with both hands, turned the shovel upside down, and hoeed off a piece of dirt at an angle. He turned his head and said to Ryan unhappily, "I'll break the soil layer first, and then you dig it. The surface is all frozen soil, and it's vertical. There's no way you can dig it through."

Ryan scratched his head embarrassedly. This time, Luke didn't plan to dig a hole, but to dig a cave on the slope according to the hillside.

Charcoal-burning earthen kilns are far less demanding than brick and pottery kilns; the only requirement is to ensure airtightness around them during firing. After Luc broke through the outermost layer of frozen soil, it was finally Ryan's turn to work. Luc deliberately shoveled a slope from top to bottom on the vertical hillside to facilitate the swing of the hoe.

Ryan swung the hoe very quickly, and soon he made a gap at the bottom that was as long as an arm and wide enough for a person to enter and exit.

"No need to expand it any further, this size of hole is enough."

Luc grabbed the sand that flowed out of the gap, picked it up and smelled it. There was not much damp smell.

The fundamental reason for choosing this place to dig is that building earth caves in winter is inherently uncertain. If the permafrost at the selected location is very deep, once it thaws in spring, it is very likely to cause the earth cave to collapse.

Seeing that there was no problem, Luc felt relieved. The next step was both simple and arduous. It was to dig deeper inward without destroying the size of the hole until a five cubic foot space was dug out.

This space can hold about one hundred pounds of wood, and if the charcoal burning is successful, more than twenty pounds of charcoal will be produced.

In winter, the days are short and the nights are long, so it took Luc and his team three days to complete the project.

It took another half day to smooth the top of the cave, and in the afternoon we started to study the construction of the chimney.

It is common sense that an earthen kiln must have a chimney, but where to build the chimney is a question worth discussing.

Luc bent over and crawled into the cave. The height of the cave required him to lower his head and shrink his waist.

Luc faced south and pointed his finger at the northeast corner. If a chimney was built here, the smoke would be discharged well.

However, there were two chimneys in the northeast corner. After thinking for a while, Luc decided to build the chimney exhaust vent at the bottom, in the northeast corner close to the ground.

Don't underestimate this adjustment. A slight difference can make a huge difference. When the flame rushes into the cave, it will first burn the wood above and then move to the bottom. If the exhaust vent is built on top, the air will enter first, and the flame will be blocked and cannot turn the wood on the bottom into charcoal.

After setting the position of the chimney, Luc did not rush to do it, but instead turned to chiseling out the outside fire hole, which is the stove mouth.

After licking his fingers to feel the wind direction, Luc decided to set the stove on the west side, ten inches to the left of the cave entrance.

The stove mouth is the place where firewood is added to the kiln. It must be consistent with the wind direction and exactly diagonally with the position of the chimney in the earthen kiln.

The stove mouth is a space completely independent of the earthen kiln, with only a passage drilled through the top layer where the two sides are connected.

After instructing Ryan to activate the yellow mud, Luc went back into the cave and built an exhaust vent at the bottom. Of course, Luc would not be stupid enough to dig all the way from the hillside to here. He only needed to dig deep vertically between the upper and lower corners on the west side, and finally cover everything except the bottom vent with yellow mud.

After Ryan brought the prepared yellow mud, Luke also dug out a passage and directed Ryan to go to the position above Luke's head and break the soil layer downwards, and an exhaust chimney was completed.

At this point, the excavation of the earth kiln is completed!

As night fell, a cold wind blew in from the cave entrance. Luc crawled out and blocked the cave with stones to prevent animals from entering. Then he and Ryan returned to the cabin.

The next morning, when Luc looked at the snowflakes that had stopped for a few days and started falling again, he sat back in his chair helplessly.

"It seems we have to wait a few more days before we can start burning charcoal."

(End of this chapter)