Chapter 474
Alexander's ability to build a 4 story building every 3 days was certainly very impressive, as evidenced by the fact the logistics of furnishing the building were unable to keep up with the speed.
And it might even sound like a complete farcical claim to some as such a building would take, even by modern standards six months to complete, though it could be argued that modern buildings needed a lot of internal finishing such as electrical wiring, plumbing, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), all of which could be skipped with Alexander's apartment.
But even then, one needed to simply give the concrete roof on each floor at least a month to dry and cure, where first the water on the surface would evaporate, leaving the dry cement.
Following this, the material would undergo a process called hydration and several chemical reactions would occur inside it to reach its optimal strength.
And this process always needed around 28 days to complete, and even if the cement felt dry in the meantime, it would still not be suitable to be built over, both because the cement might not be strong enough, and also because during the curing process the cement required a good flow of air and water to cool it.
The reason for the latter was during hydration, the cement underwent several complex exothermic reactions, all of which required water and all of which produced a lot of heat, meaning without water, the reactions would not occur, and also the cement would crack from the inside due to the excessive heat.
That was also the reason why engineers would tell people to keep any new cement structure wet or cool, or why workers would be seen spraying water on a recently build concrete structure.
So from all these reasons, it could easily be seen that Alexander would not even build a one-story building within 3 days, much less a 5 story building.
In fact, if one stopped to calculate, he would find that each building took Alexander around 5 months to complete.
A 50 times difference from that 3-day claim.
So what did Alexander really mean by saying he could build the building in 4 days?
Well, it was simple.
Instead of making the workers work just one or two days, and then have them sit idle for a month while the roof dries, Alexander simply moved on to start on a second building.
And once the first-story roof of that building was completed, he would move them to a third, then to a fourth, and so on.
You get the idea.
Since the cement took a month to dry, and he could simultaneously have 30 buildings in the construction queue, so by the time the 30th building's first floor was built, the 1st building would be ready to have its second floor started.
Upon the completion of which the entire process would repeat itself.
Now, originally these buildings were meant to be 16m x 16m housing eight apartments per floor, giving each flat about 300 sq feet in area.
So with the intention to house around 200 people there, it would admittedly be a little snug.
But Alexander had wanted to skimp on the materials and he was also of the mind that the people would not mind too much as they spent most of their time outdoors anyway.
But he would be proved wrong in this thought as his ears one day would pick up the following words during a regular visit to one of these buildings.
That day he was listening to Diaogosis say something, when he heard a worker murmur to his colleague, "I wonder who is going to stay here?'
To which the other man had replied in an almost disdaining tone, "Slaves probably. I would not live in them."
The man said it like living in this building would be beneath him.
So hearing this, Alexander then decided to find out a bit more about what the grassroots thought about the building, and found out that the people of this time were used to living in more open spaces than people like him, who had grown accustomed to the congested, urban life.
Thus, it appeared that there was a genuine possibility that the people might not get inside Alexander's apartment blocks, even if he made the things.
Hence, Alexander decided to double the size of the houses, hoping this would attract the masses.
So, the houses would now be 32 meters x 16 meters, with an 8-meter road surrounding them, giving each apartment block the dimensions of 40 meters x 24 meters. (Because each opposite and adjacent building would contribute half the road).
Which also meant the 1,000 buildings he wanted to build to house 200,000 residents would take about 1 sq km of area or about one-quarter of the city.
And realistically it would have to be double that as there would have to be other amenities in there as well, such as aqueducts to deliver fresh water to them, open fields for the kids to play, and even public schools that Alexander planned to open in the future.
Which meant Alexander would likely have to extend the western district past the city wall, or build a new wall surrounding it.
All to accommodate the bigger buildings.
But it was what it was.
Knowing it would have to be done Alexander had gritted his teeth and decided to do so, and face the challenges that came with it.
The very first of which was the increased material requirements.
Something that Diaogosis had reported to him some time ago.
According to the man, to accomplish Alexander's demand to build one floor every 2 days, compared to the previous 300 men and 15 tons of cement per floor, he said he would need 800 people and 50 tons of cement per floor.
And he even gave the breakdown.
2 days for laying the foundation.
And 2 days to build each of the four floors. - 1 day to build the walls, and 1 day to cast the concrete roof.
Which came to 10 days and 250 tons of cement per building without taking into account the curing.
Now using Diagosis's method, Alexander found he would be producing 15 buildings every 5 months.
This seemed too slow.
And so to speed up the process, Alexander did two things.
First, he divided the 800-man into 2 teams, with one working on the walls of one building, and the other casting the roof of another.
This way, one group would not have to sit idle waiting for the other group to get the walls up before starting on the roof.
And secondly, he decided to give Diaogosis 2,000 men as opposed to 800, and a daily quota of 100 tons of cement as opposed to 50 tons.
This would double his production output, getting 60 buildings in 5 months, or 1 every two and a half days, which was approximately about 3 days when taking into account the workers' weekends.
This was very impressive, as this with this speed, Alexander would be basically able to house 200,000 within a decade, even after taking into account any unforeseen delay.
In fact, if he could solve his bottleneck of cement supply, he would be able to finish it even sooner.
But Alexander also knew it was unlikely because increasing that would be hard.
Even if he could mine more limestone and build more kilns, creating the watermills to crush the clinkers would be a challenge as Zanzan was already running out of fast-moving water sources.
And those few that remained were likely going to be used by the aqueducts to deliver fresh water to the city.
While moving the cement production to an additional city was a no-go for Alexander at the moment.
And so with all those considerations, Alexander chose to delay green-lighting this immense project, instead letting Diaogosis, and now Farnaz do some more preliminary work first.
One of which making sure the cement he had invented was safe.
This worry arose because Alexander had no access to any of the modern quality assurance equipment one would need to inspect the magnitude of variables that determined a cement's quality.
Heck, Alexander even did not have a thermometer to check the kiln temperature.
The best he could do was look into the kiln blazing with fire and roughly guess the temperature based on the color of the flame which had been honed through his vast experience of working with various types of furnace
Hence, without knowing the quality of the cement, Alexander was of course worried about making a 16m story structure where people would live in using it.
This was not like building roads, where an inferior cement would only mean frequent potholes and an expensive maintenance.
So Alexander first decided to build a few prototype buildings to see how it all went.
In this way, the workers had the opportunity to gain experience working with this brand-new material and learn how to use it.
While Alexander also made sure that the cement he made would not just turn to clay and bring the entire thing down within a few months of its construction.
Because, just from his experience as a metallurgical engineer, Alexander could tell the cement he had made would be treated as fairly low quality in his times.
But as Alexander stood inside the finished structure and felt its sturdiness of it, he felt that his worries had been exaggerated.
The cement seemed to be good enough.
So he felt confident in going ahead with the project.
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