At the end of April 1651, Shipu Castle - at the junction of Shipu River (Sanchez River) and the Black River, and on the construction site less than 20 kilometers east of New Berlin in later generations, a large group of Hejian slaves were under the supervision of black foremen (all of whom have served on the East Coast for more than three years, and they will basically be promoted after returning to South Africa). They were naked and working hard to build the wall of this newly established settlement. ↗

The building materials were transported from the Port of Guide to the west - the city of New Berlin on the Uruguay River. It was named after the first settlers were sold by the Yuyuan Army to the farmers of Guide Mansion on the east bank. In the town of Guide Port, which was also just two months old, several small inland steamers sent piles of building supplies and supplies through crude wooden docks, and then transported them to other places by heavy carriages, which strongly supported the development of these areas.

Shipu Fort is located at the river berth formed by the intersection of Shipu River and Heihe River. There is a rare forest on the prairie on the east bank. The sufficient water source in the river berth ensures that trees can thrive in the slightly dry summer. People on the east bank cut down a forest to use it as early building materials. Below the woods is brown forest soil, and a thick humus layer suitable for plant growth has accumulated on the land that has rarely been visited for millions of years. If the remaining shrubs and weeds on the ground are cleaned up, I dare not say it one or two years ago. From the third year, the output of this field will reach a surprising number.

The city of the East Coast is planned to be above the cut down forest. It is not very large. Fortunately, most of it is flat, which can save a lot of time to level the land. The city has just entered the initial construction stage, and a large number of Hejian slaves are working hard to build the city walls. They are struggling to carry bricks, lime, cement and sand and gravel. If they are lazy, they will be beaten by black foremen. They dare not resist. Because the group of patrol officers who are maintaining order outside are not vegetarians.

The Hejian slaves built the city walls and buildings in the city under the slaves, while the 1,500 Guide Prefecture farmers who had just emigrated by boat, led by the Corps Fort Students and some veterans, simultaneously built water conservancy facilities not far from the city - to be precise, they should be dams and reservoirs.

As we all know, Shipu Fort is located at the intersection of two major rivers. The nearby forest area is relatively vast and swamp wetlands are scattered. If you don’t spend a lot of effort to transform and renovate the environment, let alone farming, you may not even be suitable for people to live in - because the environment is conducive to the reproduction of bacteria; of course. To put it another way, if you spend a lot of effort to renovate and build a complete farmland water conservancy facility, it will be a very potential agricultural production base, almost comparable to the northern Yazi Lake basin. Therefore, the root of all problems is attributed to the farmland water conservancy facilities that need to be built, and this is what the people of the East Coast are currently working hard to build.

When Heihe reaches the lower reaches (flowing into Wujiang), the river is not only wide and the water is deep. Even the water volume is abundant, and the water flow speed is not generally fast. This is undoubtedly a valuable asset. It is a pity not to make good use of it. What the people of the East Coast are planning to use ready-made rivers and wetlands to transform it into a large-capacity artificial reservoir, and then build well-connected irrigation canals around the reservoir, which has a good foundation for agricultural development.

The large city wall produced by Jingjiang Branch of the building materials company south of the south (currently a brick-tile wheel kiln, and only part of it was completed and put into production) is made of strips of bricks, supplemented by cement and lime mortar that also transported from elsewhere. The dam is made of a pier dam, that is, the dam consists of a water barrier wall and a large number of piers supporting the water barrier wall. At first, technicians from the newly established Ministry of Water Resources suggested using specially made cast iron piers to support the water barrier wall, but considering the cost and installation difficulties, this design plan was rejected and replaced by the pier design of reinforced concrete.

This type of reservoir is an extremely advanced design in this era, and it is also an idea given by a traveler with many years of rural life experience based on what he saw and heard. It is very suitable for small and medium-sized reservoirs such as Shipu Reservoir. It was not until 1800 that someone built this type of dam in India, which shows its advancedness.

There are many drain holes on the waterproof wall of the reservoir. The biggest function of these drain holes controlled by the sluice is to safely discharge floods to ensure that when the water level of the reservoir reaches the warning line, the excess water can be discharged to the riverbed below the water surface of the reservoir through the drain hole. But then again, with the cement markings of the East Coast Republic today, the strength of the steel bars, and other engineering construction or material problems, the warning water level and flood discharge holes of these reservoirs must not be set too high, otherwise a tragic dam collapse event is very likely to occur, affecting the downstream farms or industrial workshops, causing unnecessary losses.

Of course, the Shipu Reservoir has just begun, and most of them are still only on the design drawings. To be honest, the only reservoir construction work that more than 1,000 settlers in Shipu Castle has completed is probably planting trees around the reservoir. Some of these trees are transplanted trees in nearby forests (mainly acacia trees), while others are introduced exotic tree species, such as oak trees that people from the East Coast plant almost every settlement (for shipbuilding, although the growth period is very long...), such as eucalyptus, known as the "plant pump", and some fruit trees.

The purpose of afforestation is to beautify the environment, and to balance the water volume of the reservoir area, maintain the soil and reduce pollution, and to prevent large livestock from entering the reservoir area to gnaw on the grass. Experts from the Ministry of Water Resources once suggested that it is best to plant some coniferous trees in the reservoir area. The Wujiang Regional Administration has carefully considered this suggestion and has contacted the Spaniards and plans to import some coniferous saplings from Chile.

However, with such a rich amount of hydraulic resources, if you don’t do anything to make full use of it, is this the style of the East Coast people who want to spend a penny in half? Obviously not! So the East Coast people built many water-powered machinery near the reservoir according to local conditions. Don’t look down on hydraulic machinery. In principle, they are no different from steam engines. However, they are usually somewhat inefficient due to the unstable flow rate and the multiple adverse effects of the water level in the dry season. However, in Shipubao, which has a reservoir and fixed water discharge holes, all these unfavorable factors have been greatly compressed. In this place, hydraulic power is a high-quality energy that can be used stably.

Let’s not talk about small hydraulic presses that use hydraulic power and water trucks that lift water. This is not new. Whether at this time, the East Coast or the Old Continent, these hydraulic machinery are still very common. Let’s talk about the turbines that the East Coast people have in-depth research on hydraulic stone mills and other technologies. The prototype of this machine appeared very early. Water mills, water trucks, etc. can be said to have used this principle. It is precisely on this technology that the East Coast people began to develop water turbines based on this technology, supplemented by a small amount of theoretical foundation (I don’t know much about this knowledge) and a vague impression of later generations.

To put it bluntly, the water turbine uses the kinetic energy of water and then converts it into mechanical energy so that it can be used by humans. Generally speaking, the greater the energy of the water flow (potential energy, kinetic energy), the greater the force generated by impacting the turbine blades, and the faster the turbine speed will be (impact turbine). At this time, through a series of mechanical transmission devices, you can do a lot of things. In the early 19th century, the British and French used these turbines to grind the surface, and in the middle, the Americans began to use these turbines in mines.

As more and more people use water turbines to start working, the performance and efficiency of this machinery have been continuously improved. In the later generations, the efficiency of the axial flow turbine invented in 1843 has reached 83%, which is surprising. According to experimental estimates by technicians from the Ministry of Water Resources, if the water flow from the flood discharge impacts the turbine (buried under the water outlet of the flood discharge hole), each turbine may generate more than 1,000 horsepower.

The concept of 1000 horsepower is extremely amazing for the people of the East Coast! This number is so large that they could not imagine that such a large horsepower output is needed. Should they use a powerful machine of 1000 horsepower to grind the noodles? This is ridiculous, because it can almost polish the wheat in the entire Wujiang area. For example, you can see that a mine in Alaska, later in the United States used a 500 horsepower turbine. As a result, this turbine drove 240 pounding hammers, 96 ore mills and 13 ore crushers. This shows how amazing power 1000 horsepower is and what a huge fortune it is!

Perhaps a series of small factories can be built near the Shipu Reservoir, such as mills, weapons processing workshops, mints, water lifting stations, etc. The armor manufacturing workshop of the Dayu River Arsenal in Dongfang County, the capital has long been tired of the outrageous flow rate of the Dayu River, so it should not be difficult to convince them to move to the Shipu Reservoir as a whole. In addition, mints, mills, oil presses and other workshops can also be moved here to make use of the abundant and stable hydraulic resources here throughout the year (the lower reaches of the Heihe River maintain a abundant amount of water almost all year round, and the Shipu Reservoir will be in danger of exhaustion unless it encounters an extreme climate of drought for years).

Of course, the most suitable battlefield for high-power is hydraulic irrigation. Large pumps driven by turbines can completely pump fresh water elsewhere and then flow into dense irrigation canals (water flow will lose kinetic energy in the canal, so water needs to be continuously lifted into it), especially the orchards planned on some nearby highlands, which require water pumps to lift water for irrigation during the dry season in summer.

In short, although Shipu Reservoir is only a small reservoir with a storage capacity of only 2 million cubic meters, the experiment is of great significance. If the Ministry of Finance plans to invest 350,000 yuan in reservoirs and affiliated turbines, hydraulic presses (powering hoists, cranes, etc.) systems, the Executive Committee can even invest 3.5 million yuan, 5 million yuan or even 10 million yuan in the future to build larger reservoirs and turbine systems in the Neiheluo Reservoir not far upstream and the waterfall area near Daxing Port in the north, so as to provide more sufficient power for this country with faster and faster development. (To be continued, please search Piaotianyi, the novel is better, updated and faster!
Chapter completed!