Oential item, even though we don't actually , would be a mana powered salt evaporator, usi fluorite and a rge brass bowl to boil off the water. If we ever open trade back up, that would be a potential free source of ine. I suppose putting fluorite lights at the gates of our city might be a det idea, though it won't end up using that much fluorite. Something I'm more ied in making would be a lightstone processing facility using copper fluorite, but that also won't use much fluorite, and will take loo make and design than the fluorite it will actually e.
In other words, I don't know that we actually have a good use for all this fluorite. Though the sed we end up needing a lot of it, I'll be gd if we've stockpiled it given its long turn around time. he-less it feels like a waste just having all of it sitting around, especially the smaller ptes that we have hundreds of. Perhaps I should just give a handful out to some of the goblins in town, and see if any of them e up with iing uses for them.
I myself pn on spending the winter w on what I for the cableway, while also digging out a new area deep underground for mana crystal growth chambers. I want to keep it retively secretive as well, so I think I'll dig it out off of the temporary ste room most of the way down to the fluorite area. Very little fluorite is stored there anymore, though we do still store the fluorite gss before it's melted down in the room. I'll probably dig to the same depth as the other room. I'm hoping that I'll have the growth chamber done by the time the current crystal is ready for it, meaning I have about a year.
I took a dozen of the smallest heat ptes to the city, and gave them to a few different goblins w in different industries. Depending on how things go, and what they e up with, I'm more than willing to give out some more, as long as we keep the tration of the ptes to a minimum. If we mao grow a mana crystal to the size of ParTor, then we install more ptes around. Though they might o be adjusted if the mana tration is too high, but that'll be a problem for a few years from now.
I myself focused in on what work I could dh winter. The wall around the facility is getting closer to pletion, so I'm hoping that during springtime, I'll be able to borrow a stru team to assist me in excavating the mana crystal growth chamber, so until then, I've only been digging out the stairwell down to where I'll eventually work. I've also been taking more time to tinue clearing a path up the mountaihe pylons will go for the cableway. I'm leveling at pretty much the same rate as before I evolved. So, despite how many trees I've been cutting down, I haven't gaihat many levels really.
Though cutting down all those trees did give me an idea for something that we could use some stirling engines for. Our current milling operations of all kinds use windmills to power them. However, the windmills require quite a bit of maintenand stant resourput. Between wood, and our ever dwindling roofing supplies, I think it might be worth verting them to run on stirling fluorite engines.
In fact, I'd prefer to try to teach a demon with stoneshaping and a long history in stru how some of this meical version and power works. Before now, our ability to install meical devices to power things was so limited that it was retively fihat I was the one who knew how it all o be hooked up. Now though, I've started lining up multiple projects that could use that sort of skill, enough that I'm falling far behind the avaible produ of it.
Besides just flour mill, paper mill, and our charcoal pellet press, we also have the lead ore roasting area that could do with switg from wind to magic power. I'd also sider it reasoo set up a rger charcoal pellet press and meical lumbermill up the mountain closer to our dedicated tree farms that we started setting up many years ago. I've been passing them on my the mountain each year, and they're reag the point where the earliest farms will be ready for cutting soon, so getting a perma processing facility set up would be a be there.
I've got just about ten days left before the new year now, so I'll try to talk to Zeb about pulling at least one senior demon from his stru teams for this purpose. Ideally whoever I choose would end up with their own mini-team of assistants as well.
Zeb had quite a few stiputions to put oaking away a senior stru team member alongside a handful of other demons. First, and this was ohink is actually preferable, Zeb would also be ing along to get a gist of the job, and the new meics team would report to him sihese rge stirling engines are being installed in buildings anyway. I agreed to that one readily, though I did also inform him that he'll probably want to start appointing managers for each department at some point as he gets more and more workers, rather than managing all these borers himself.
His sed stipution was that this would actually only be part-time work. Rather than split apart aire stru team, he'd rather just have a whole team join in the process as needed. He agreed that the meics portion would take priority for any jobs that e up. His is that after the handful of pnned buildings get built arofit, there won't be any new work for them for months, and he doesn't want their bor to be wasted. I agreed that that was a reasonable requirement as well. Thinking about it another way, oh stru panies would normally have plumbers, electris, and hvac guys to do all the specialty work for their stru anyway, so this is a sort of mirr of that.
His final stipution was that I stop springing so many surprise, short order requests and ges that have high priority on him. He doesn't mind helping out, ahe value in what I've been w on, but it's very disruptive and many of the stru teams get quite frustrated when they're suddenly sent all the the mountain to dig a rge pit. He also said that Zaka and I both are far too imposing to voice their frustrations to directly, even if both of us would be uanding of it. This has only beore true siurned into a va demon.
While I couldn't promise that I'd never have surprise stru projects, I agreed that many of them could wait a few months as needed. It'll be somewhat frustrating to have to wait to work on some projects, but I've got enough stockpiled projects myself that I easily work on a different one while I wait for a stru team to help with the first one.
Speaking of, I figured I should bring up that I was hoping to use the teams building our walls at the research facility this spring for excavating out a new mana crystal area. Zeb rolled his eyes, si definitely seemed like I wasn't learning my lesson. He'd already pnned out rojects they'd go work on after finishing stru of the wall, so I would essentially be pulling them off of pnned work to do something else. After a short discussion, I'll be getting one stru team to help me sometime this summer, though I'll have them for a longer period of time so I get the b more effectively id out.
After ing to this agreement, I took Zeb and one of the senior stru teams over to the research facility to first introduce them to the heat crystal powered stirling engines. I decided to split their crash course training into two parts. Theory, then practibsp; Since I'm the only one who doesn't o sleep, each day they'd go home, theurn the day to learn more. I also required that they agree to some amount of secrebsp; While I won't really be able to hide the stirling engine design from simply being looked at, I have them agree to not discuss how we make them or how to maintain them.
The first four days were spent teag them the basic meivolved, alongside how to assemble the engine from parts, and repy worn out parts. I also showed them the sizes of stirling engine we have avaible, alongside the heat ptes. Most of them were pretty qui the hands on portions, but most of them struggled with uanding the theory behind how engines work. I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised, it's actually a little bit plicated. A windmill is straightforward, wind pushes the bdes and turns them. However, the cept of hot air expanding, and how pressure and temperature are linked is multiple steps more plicated. It gets even more plicated when you try to expin how you're harnessing that, and why things like a regeor help signifitly with efficy.
Ultimately though, the theory portion wasn't really that necessary for the tasks they'll be doing, and I only taught about it while they were already w on eapo it was reted to. The sed half of their crash course ran for the remaining six days in the year, and involved determining what size engine is needed for particur applications. I figured if we worked together on the most plicated meical building, the paper mill, it would be the best pce to start.
The paper mill has twe windmills p it, with multiple gearboxes sending the windpower to different maes. The building is a bit of a meiightmare as a result. There were two options for retrofitting it. First, simply repce the two windmills with powerful stirling engines, and leave everything else in pbsp; While that would increase the uptime on the paper mill, it wouldn't resolve much of the other potential problems ihe mill that should be sidered for retrofitting.
I didn't describe this to them, but I like to think of the ambient mana as wireless electricity, and these stirling engines as electric motors. Thinking of it that way, each mae should simply have an appropriately sized motor, which would simplify the yout of the building. How I went about describing it to them was that the plicated gearboxes add plexity that requires additional maintenand repair. So a baneeds to be struck between the maintenance schedules for the engines, gearboxes, and any torque shafts in the building. For this particur building, I'd probably switch to a handful of engines, each dedicated to either a rge mae, or one eo a handful of smaller maes, such that the total amount of maintenance is lower.
I didn't fet to remind them that the engines are desigo have repceable parts, unlike most of the other meical pos here. So the stirling engine repairs will be quite simple by parison. Though after I expihis to them, I pulled Zeb aside and told him that I'd probably want to get a few low level stoneshaping demons in the near future that I could train to be maintenance workers who just go around and dur maintenan these engines. He rolled his eyes again, but agreed to send some newbies my way after we're done.