Creating something new, day 33

2 September. 2 days later

Waterpump & Doors

Two days to just make drawings for everything I need to make, and think out small things and parts. So many parts. But every waking moment havn't been work, or weapons training, because Kari wants me to spend time with her, and I need to find a healthy mix of work, relaxation and fun. Ciara might be the champ at getting a desperate look when she thinks she's done something wrong, or made me dissatisfied, but Kari is the champ at making me feel guilty for neglecting her - even when I don't. In some non verbal way, she makes me feel guilty, like she's disappointed that I missed her birthday or something, but doesn't want to draw attention to it, so that I don't feel guilty for having so much important work to do. Its annoying and very effective, while I can hardly complain that my beautiful concubine wants to spend time, cuddle and have sex.

One thing that has become more and more clear in the last month, is that Kari loves to have body contact and intimacy, and she seems to prefer moments of going at each other like horny teenagers, instead of just sitting and talking, if we are alone. If Kari has nothing to do and I don't actively work on something, it only tends to be a matter of time before I have her in my lap and her tongue in my mouth, although it usually don't last long. If I stand behind and massage her neck, she can gently take my hand and plunge it down her neckline. It feels a little uncomfortable, as she really seems to be in love with me and see everything about me and us through rose tinted glases, as I don't really feel the same for her. Our relationship feels dishonest and skewed. Yeah, she 'forced' me to accept her as my concubine, but I still feel like it should be a serious honest two sided equal relationship.

Man, I'm so whipped.

Yesterday we spent the middle of the day on the beach, or rather mostly on the grass between the rocks where I tested my Boomstick. Much more secluded and deeper water directly, and it is possible to dive and still easy to climb get back up on the rocks from the water. The sea still has an acceptable bathing temperature, and its still around 23 degrees during the day, so when in shelter from the wind, its really nice. A day at the beach isn't something they really do here, though the women around me seem to have picked up the concept fast and have been swimming and sunbathing a lot in the last month, although they usually keep it to an hour or so to avoid sunburn. So we sunbathed, talked and took short dips, while waiting for Ciara and Hillevi to bring dinner when it was ready.

But, I should have counted on Kari planning more than swimming and food, and our nude bath included extra intimate activities both in and out of the water. This time I brought the sunprotection lotion with me, since I thought we could make it more special, and figured Kari would enjoy the experience. We both enjoyed it, and I hardly complained when she layed completely naked and stretched out in front of me, and with a satisfied smile wanted me to rub it everywhere. Then she rubbed it on me, even more thoroughly, until it escalated. On the grass and in the water, we don't have to worry about preparing for squirting, and when waves partially washes over us as we layed on the warm cliffs, I got a mental flash to the movie 'From Here to Eternity'.

Gunhild demonstratively sat on a rock and looked inland most of the time, and also warn us that Ciara and Hillevi were on their way. After spending many years as her guard, Gunhild can't avoid seeing Kari as some kind of adopted little sister, which is okay as Kari doesn't like an audience, even though she enjoys that Gunhild and the others know what we are doing.

Alith, on the other hand, kept an eye out for dangers in our vicinity. I don't like that I have started to get used to and accept Alith's voyeurism, but its undoubtedly practical to have a guard who is more than comfortable with it, as long as she actually guards us at the same time, which Alith does. Kari is uncomfortable with Alith's overwatch when we have sex, but she wants Alith to guard and protect. She just can't really relax, and its obvious when Kari's in the heat of passion and forgets, and then remembers that someone is watching.

It feels nice that Bodil isn't afraid of water anymore, even though she respect it, and that both she and Ciara have learned how to swim. Ciara showed that she have become good enough to swim about 90m to a cliff and back over shallower water, which I and the others congratulated her on. She was so cutely proud of her achievement while we ate. I should establish something like the Swedish 'Simborgarmärket', which is a small pin to show that you can swim 200m, and can be taken yearly. Swimming pins are common in Sweden, and its something that can be a reward or motivation to improve swimming, and usually collected on a small feltcovered plaque. I intend to ensure that everyone spending time at my Academy learns how to swim. Actually it will probably be everyone on the islands.

I have designed two different waterpumps about as simple as it practically can be manufactured, with the limitations here. Like there not being any rubber O-rings. The only option here is pretty much leather or coils of rope. A future steam engine will be tricky.

The simplest pump is a classic suction hand pump of the type normally seen on top of wells for filling a bucket, which suck and lift on the handles downstroke, and just move the piston down through the watercolumn inside the pumphouse on the upstroke. Few and simple parts; pumphousing, top plate, handle, piston, two valves and a suction pipe, and a few knick knacks like bolts and axles. Its good enough if the watertable in the well isn't far down, which our wells on the islands won't be, but its bad to force water high up in a pipe. The reason they're a classic is because they work well for filling a bucket and have quite a good flow. They might freeze if the lower valve is too good, as there will always be water in the pumphousing, and the pump is exposed above ground. Usually the seal isn't perfect and slowly leak so the water drains away. But they shouldn't be used when its freezing, as it might destroy the seals depending on design. I'll have Digraldi make a few of these as they work and is a good backup.

My mansion require force to pump water up to its storage tanks. The one I designed for that is still a manual pump with a handle, but I've chosen to make the piston pump section separated so it can be mounted down low under the well cover, while the pumping handle and outflow can be at the normal comfortable height on top of the well. The reason is that the pump and its valves will be slightly better protected against freezing, and I can connect the outflow pipe down there, to protect it too. The plan is to bury the water pipe about half a meter down into the ground so its protected from frost and movement on top of the ground.

The well is shallow so suction shouldn't be a problem, and its more critical what pressure it will be able to deliver water with, but thats mostly force applied throught the handles lever vs area of the piston and the weight of the water being pushed up. The handles length, stroke and force being applied is pretty much decided by a elf will be using it, although I made it a T handle so two can make it easier. One liter of water weights a kilogram, so a smaller pipe will help, and so would a smaller piston size, and less water volume moved in each stoke. Its all a balance, but not that hard to simply accept the limitations and design after that. It will be a whole lot of pumping to fill the tanks, but it is as it is.

To figure out the force and length I took a thick branch, cut few notches in it and layed it on a fulcrum. I hung a bucket on the short end, and asked a few from my company to have a go to see how much work it would be, what lever length they chosed and what stroke length they did, with both 5 and 10 liters of water in the bucket. Its good we do these tests in our garden, or the rest of the farms inhabitants would look at us funny as I had them pump 100 strokes by their chosen load. Not a perfekt simulation, but it was a good practical application of test to get data, then use that data in equations to find a result, and use that result to design the pump and pipe specs. Its one of those valuable instances where they all understand why understanding physics and math is important.

A complication with this pump is the discreet handle on the side that choose whether the water will be pumped to a nozzle up at the pump handle for a bucket to hang on, go out to the pipeline down in the well, or the bottom position that lets the water run backwards and emptied back down into the well, so there is no water in the pipes that can freeze and crack them. It requires more pumping before something comes out at the other end, as the pipe must be filled each time, but the tanks require a lot of pumping anyway. It feels like a good idea during winter, even if it might form an ice coating on the inside of the pipe if its cold enough. We may have to limiting the water pumping, and the idea is that the tanks are large enough to not have to pump up water every day anyway, so we should be able to skip the coldest days. If its freezing for many days, we might have to reduce cloth washing and bathing as well, or just starting to use buckets.

In the future, a windmill pumped watertower would be a nice idea, to have water on demand, and there's more than enough hills around here that it doesn't need to be a tower. Hell, we might get away with just making a new larger well futher up and connect the pipe directly in.

We head in to Borgarsandr, but split up, because Kari needs to visit the seamstress guild, while being eager for me to be someplace else, so I go to Digraldi, the potter, glasmaker and others, and Ciara comes along with me.

Digraldi accepts all of my orders for water pumps, lanterns and other things, and he has completed previously ordered stuff. There have been more messangers to the farm, from people wanting to buy sundials and have a installed, so I order a new batch of 20. Its a rather ridiculous profit on them so far, but I suspects that the demand will quickly be satisfied. Eventually, people will realize that they can make their own simpler version with just two pieces of wood and a knife, because sundials are that simple. I assume there's quite a lot of them in Alfheimr, just not here in the north, but one reason I did use the more complex design I did, is that it works better, looks better and is harder to copy straight of. The easy design of an angled piece standing on a flat piece, would have been copied faster.

I need to try to make lead-acid batteries and ask him to try making thin lead plates on a rough sand bed to create poles for the battery cells. The rough surface is to increase the surface on a smaller scale, so he might have to try two different types of sand. All my orders since I got to Borgarsandr, have made me his single largest customer ever, which makes him eager to bend over backwards to accommodate my weird requests. And I have nothing to complain about his craft, so I'm happy to continue until I get my own craftsman on the island.

My doors are absolutely awesome! Since I forgot them, I 'pick them up' almost a week later than I said I would. The outside woodwork is nice, and more like furniture than a common door, and they even inlaid patterns in the wood. Real heavy, but solid oak doors also weigh, and the weight on these are manageable as the hinges work well, although I probably want to polish up the surfaces a bit with some kind of paste, as well as lubricate so they move nicer and quieter. I'm not worried that the doors will start to jam, as it is a steel frame holding the door, so it should keep its shape far better than hinges fasten directly to the wood wall with a few big nails. Sure, doors with hinges on the inside would be better from a safety view, but even if all three hinges on each side should be cut in some way, the doors will be locked to the frame with its core of crossed ironbars, strong lugs and the iron frame everything is in.

Alith who knows how the doors suppose to work, look on in wonder as we try the secret lock wheel that move the locking lugs in and out.

Someone using a battering ram will have to work a lot to take these doors down, especially since the iron frame the doors sit in has an ledge on the inside, so even if the middle of the doors are deformed, they will still rest against top and bottom. It is literally pushing a large reinforced iron thing through a smaller iron hole, and the frame will be attached to the masonry foundation at the bottom, and all exterior doors have extra reinforced ceilings and sides inside. The weakest exterior door is my balcony door because it doesn't sit against a stone floor, but that door will also be the hardest to use a battering ram against, and with far less force. The iron frame of the doors also provides extra reinforcement in the middle, and if the doors are deformed by a battering ram, they become a battered deformed iron mass that probably becomes even more difficult to separate and open, unlike a wooden gate where damaged planks can be removed or chopped apart to make a hole. Smart assaulters will attack the windows instead. They are far less secure, and a battering ram will work well.

I get six keys to the door locks, but in the future I may need a couple more. In addition to the fact that it is a legal requirement that a wife receives keys to the house as one of the last part of the marriage ceremonies, I want important people to have a key, and just me, my three sambos and the Captain of the guard are five people, so the sixth key will be lent to the person that need it just then. We shouldn't lend out our own keys, its a matter of principle and status.

I wish I had thought about my logo before I ordered the doors, because then it could have been included in the beautiful facade, but it is possible to make a wooden or metal plate with my logo. Maybe in copper? I will probably make a similar front door solution on my future mansion in Skiringsalr.

I pay a little extra for the doors to be delivered to my own ship in about three days, but we will send someone to notify him. The Millennium Eagle should return tomorrow, but I hope to get the ship's crane in place before the doors are delivered, and be able to use the crane to lift the doors down into the hold. They're heavy and big, so perfect cargo for the crane to prove itself on.

Kari meets up and all agree that the doors look very impressive and beautiful for their size. Not as high or big as at the Castles throne room doors thats obviously built to impress, but also not badly made wooden gates. Then again I chosed the ceiling height to be 2.5m, which is very high for a home here, in relation to how tall the average elf is - not counting longhouse great halls thats open all the way to the roof - so the 2.3m high main entrance doors are quite impressive anyway. But their function is far more important than how impressive they are, and these doors are much nicer than most, with far less windgap. There is a leather seal against the inside ledge. I suspect the mansion as a whole, and the large copper roof that extends down and out over the entrance, is more than enough to impress visitors.