Demesne 253 - The Dehydration Shed (Patreon)

The day after Lori had set the markers for the charcoal burner and the outdoor mushroom farm's leases, Lori decided to make the dehydration shed while she waited for the carpenters to finish the preparation for roofing the new row of houses. The sawyers and carpenters were hard at work at it, taking measurements and cutting planks and beams. She had been told it would take a week, perhaps longer, to get the material prepared, and until them she could only wait for them to finish before she needed to be present to alter the walls to accept and secure beams and other fittings.

Since she still had some stone left—probably not enough, but it wasn't like she was in a hurry—the dehydration shed became next on her list. While it wasn't urgent, Lori viewed it as a long-term investment for when the winter vigas was harvested. It would also be useful in drying anything from wood to mushrooms, and while it wouldn't be as fast as her actively doing it, the intention was the dehydration shed could be used without her input.

It would also be very useful right now because of the regular rains. While they could build with green, unseasoned wood—despite it causing Lori to twitch inside as she thought of the potential warping—it was a bit harder to burn it for warmth. And while they were the demesne had a supply of deadfall and scraps in the storage sheds, they needed to be dried to use. The rains also meant that the mushrooms couldn't be dried as efficiently.

The first step was building a shed, which she placed near the entrance of the mushroom farm, not far from Rian's house. It had been a while since Lori had built one of the stone half cylinder structures, so she was a little slow in getting it up. Still, she soon managed to get back into the rhythm of constructing it arch by arch, using her stone shaping tool to see if each new arch was in line with the one's she'd already raised. She could probably have forgone this step and used the now mostly empty vigas storage shed—since most of the vigas was now in the third level next to the gristmill—but they'd need that to store the harvest when it was finally ready, and at the moment it was being used to store some wet firewood.

After a day of building and having the carpenters come in to measure the shed for a door, Lori then had to put in the bindings according to the flow diagram in her almanac. According to the diagram, she needed to have warm, dry air circulate through the building in one and be vented in the other. That the air was dry was key. It was strongly recommended that water in any form was prevented from entering the dehydrator, as that was exactly what they were trying to remove. That meant she needed to put a binding on the entrance and wherever the air intake for the structure was to keep out humidity.

First she made a small hole in the far wall of the shed—the wall that didn't have a hole for a door in it—to serve as an output vent for the air. Then she placed a binding for airwisps, firewisps and waterwisps across the doorway. When the shed had a door, she'd put the binding on an intake vent, but for now the open doorway was convenient.

Her binding generated a hot, dry wind, which was draw in and accelerated by the airwisps and injected with heat by the firewisps. She'd made sure that the temperature only reached a certain amount below the boiling point of water, since the point was for the shed to dehydrate, not bake. Any moisture in the air was drawn by the waterwisps in the binding to the edges of the door, where they congealed into liquid that flowed downwards and became ice on the ground, a substantial amount of the heat that the water had contained removed and infused into the air.

The result was a swift, hot wind that, while not exactly comfortable to be in, would draw out the moisture from anything that was left inside the shed over a matter of hours. Though she had to adjust the airwisps when it became clear that the wind generated was too strong and would send small objects—like mushrooms—flying. It became clear that she'd overcompensated for putting the binding on an opening the size of the doorway. After adjustment, the wind became much milder.

That step done, she put another binding over the small hole in the far wall, this one also consisting of airwisps, firewisps and waterwisps, then connected the two bindings with firewisps. The airwisps would pull out the warm and now-humid air in the dehydrator shed and send it outside, which would allow more dry air to be brought in. The firewisps would act to draw the heat out of the air—which would actually cause the humidity to congeal into fog once it had passed through the binding—and move that heat towards the intake to be injected into the dry air coming in. The waterwisps were there to make sure that no moisture could enter though the opening again the air pressure pushing outwards, such as condensation or water droplets, by rendering any such into vapor that would be carried out by the airflow.

At least, that's how it was supposed to work. It would need to be tested to make sure it functioned as intended, and then tested again once the door was in place because obviously when the door was there she'd have to draw air in through the different opening, and she'd need to make sure enough hair would be able to pass through.

The door would be a problem, since people would need to use it to enter and bring the things to be dried, but that would also be a large point of entry for moisture. While she could put a binding of waterwisps across it to keep out moisture, that would be dangerous. While it was unlikely to effect the water in her idiots' bodies, having their eyes, nostrils, and other exposed orifices suddenly bereft of moisture, or at least filled with water vapor, would… well, probably be bad for them.

After consideration, Lori decided the best way to mitigate the problem would be to put the binding to keep out moisture on the door rather than simply across the open doorway. It would mean that moisture in the air would get in when the door was open, but that should be quickly mitigated by the binding that would circulate the air out. As long as the door was closed…

…

Her idiots would probably forget to close the door, wouldn't they?

"A door that closes on its own?" Rian said, looking both amused and bemused by the notion after she finished telling him what was needed.

"Yes," she said as she led the way to the shed. At this point, she was resigned to needing a second opinion to point out the things she had missed that probably should have been obvious. Though, if they were obvious, then she wouldn't have missed them, so Rian probably just thought strangely. "The door needs to be closed so that the whole thing will work properly."

"You could just tell people to close the door," Rian said.

"If it trusted that to work, I wouldn't need a door that closes on its own, would I?"

"I suppose that's true," Rian nodded. "Well, I can think of how it could be done with cleverly spiraled hinges on the door, but that will probably wear out quickly. We could do it with a metal hinge, but it would be complicated to make… Actually, the simplest thing I can think of is to just have a rope and a weight from the door to the door frame to pull it closed."

That… sounded doable. "That sounds doable. Have the carpenters build that in."

"Ah, as your lord in charge of dealing with people, I wouldn't recommend it."

Lori blinked. "Why not?"

"Well, if you had a door that was mechanically built to close on its own, on a building that people had to keep bringing things in and out of, then to get things in, people would either find a way to jam the door open so it wouldn't close on them as they were going in and out, or 'accidentally' cut the rope so it would stop closing," Rian said. "After all, no one's going to just stand there and hold the door open when we need all hands to be working."

Lori stared at him, and this nearly stumbled because she wasn't watching where she was going. "Colors!" she snapped. Ugh, that's exactly what her idiots would do, wouldn't they?-! "Argh!"

Rian nodded as she vocalized her frustration. "Yeah. So… taking people's most likely actions into account, maybe just tell people to close the door so that all that added work and infrastructure doesn't just go to waste."

"Then how do we keep the door closed?-!"

"Just tell everyone the door needs to be closed for the thing to work. If they've spent all that time moving things in to dry, it's not like they'll let all that effort go to waste by leaving the door open. Even if someone does leave it open, someone passing by will know to close it."

Lori let out an annoyed sigh. "Is that really the best we can hope for?"

"Well, we could assign someone there to make sure the door is closed, but that would be a waste of manpower. We could ask the children to do it, since it's easy work they can do, but you don't like the children being made to do things. Though if it's near the mushroom farm cave, we could tell the mushroom farmers. They're likely to be using it, and they of all people would know the importance of keeping the door closed."

That… was slightly more palatable. "Fine. Make sure the right people are made aware once the dehydration shed is operational."

Rian nodded, then pointed ahead of them. "Is that the shed?"

Lori nodded curtly.

"How does it work?"

As Lori explained how the bindings on the shed were intended to function, Rian listened attentively, nodding every so often. He followed her inside as Lori activated the binding to demonstrate it, holding up his hand as if trying to catch the wind, but hurriedly went outside well before Lori.

"This is distressingly warm," he said once Lori had realized he wasn't in the shed anymore and followed him outside in annoyance. "I'm not sure it's actually safe for people to go in there when it's that hot. We might have to put some sort of hatch over the warm air intake that people can close so they don't get cooked while they're carrying things in there."

Lori frowned. "It's not that hot," she said. "Pleasantly warm at best."

Rian gave her a bland look. "You forgot that thing around you that keeps you cool, didn't you."

…

Oh, right!

Lori concentrated for a moment, deactivating the firewisps around her that adjusted the temperatures she experienced. Instantly the air around her cooled, becoming sharp and chill, if not exactly cold. She shivered as she felt a breeze on her face, and her hands grabbed the front of her rain coat to keep it closed. Resisting the urge to let go and have the firewisps around her do as they would again, she turned and headed back to the dehydration shed, sticking her hand in—

"Ah!" she exclaimed as the hot air surrounded her extremity, and she let go. Instantly the firewisps around her moderated the temperature, and the extremes of heat and cold faded away, becoming pleasantly warm and unremarkable, respectively.

Rian nodded. "Yeah, I'm going to call the carpenters and have them make a hatch for that." A thought seemed to come to him and made him smile. "We can connect it to the door so the hatch covers the intake when the door is open. Then you'd really have to close to door for the dehydrator shed to work."

"See it done then," Lori said waving her hand to dispel remembered heat. "Anything else?"

Rian titled his head thoughtfully. "I think you might need to make some kind of overhang in front of the door and over the intake and output vents," he said. "Keep rainwater from getting in. I know your binding might be able to take care of it, but I remember hat happened to that heat binding you made when too much snow was passed through it. Best to physically keep off as much water as possibly to keep the thing from being overtaxed."

Lori sighed, managing to push down the familiar annoyance of missing the obvious. Well, at least it was something she could do easily with a little stone shaping. "I'll make a note of it. What else?"

"You should probably put lights inside," Rian said. "Wouldn't want people fumbling around in the dark, after all. Given you'd probably need a wall to have an air intake in, leaving the door open probably won't let in as much light as it would in the wood curing shed." He blinked and snapped his fingers. "Unless you can build the air intake into the door? That would take care of the 'people needing to close it' and the 'too hot for people to be inside when the binding is working, problem."

Lori blinked, tilting her head as she considered the idea. "That… might actually be a workable solution," she said. She'd have to make some changes to the binding, especially regarding where the water extracted from the air went, but that would be a simple alteration. "Go get the carpenters so they can measure the door again. I'll have my own specifications to add."

"Yes, your Bindership, " Rian chirped, turning to do just that. Then he paused, and turned back to her. "By the way, what is this going to be dehydrating? Wood or food?"

Lori frowned at him. "Both, of course. If need be, I can easily make it bigger if we need more capacity."

Rian nodded in understanding. "You realize we're going to need two of these, right?" he said.

Lori blinked and looked at him. "What?" she said flatly.

Her lord  shrugged. "Obviously we can't dry firewood with the food. The vigas might be all right, but food needs to be clean or it will rot or go bad and make you sick. Do you see anyone going to the trouble of cleaning dead wood they just picked up off the ground, covered in dirt and rotting leaves, the same stuff that caused you to get infected when you tried to ride that rock, just so it can be put next to food that's going to be dried?"

Lori stared at him. "Surely the moving air will keep that from being a problem?"

"And when it's all being loaded in? Imagine loads of dirty wood going by food that we're going to be eating, shedding bits all over them— " He stopped as he saw Lori shudder. "Well, at the very least have to distinct and separate rooms for the two things? Or, you know, make this a food dehydrator and turn one of the wood storage sheds into a firewood dehydrator?"

"I'll take it into consideration," Lori said, still twitching slightly at the thought of dried food and—no, no, stop thinking about it! "Now go get those carpenters before they get started building a door to the previous dimensions."

"Yes, your Bindership!" He turned away again, and this time he kept walking, heading towards her Dungeon where the carpenters worked.

Sighing, Lori turned towards where she still had some stone piled up, softening a handful so she could get started on building some overhangs to keep rainwater off.