The construction of houses and the establishment of new rural areas are not only to restore agricultural production in Tianjin and stabilize the situation in the region, because the invasion of the Eight-Nation Coalition has caused great damage to the rural areas in Tianjin, and many villages have been basically destroyed, but also this is an important step for the crossing group to break the old rural system in Tianjin and establish its own grassroots ruling system.

Only by building new houses, reorganizing villages, and relocating peasants' residences can the old rural clan system be completely dismantled, the rural grassroots administrative system truly controlled by the crossing group can be established, and a sound taxation system can be established to become a source of financial revenue for the crossing group.

Li Songchen is the main planner and person in charge of promoting the new countryside plan, but the establishment of the new countryside is a project with construction engineering accounting for an important component after all, and Li Songchen is not a construction engineering technician.

The chief engineer in charge of the construction of the new countryside is called Tang Songlin, who is 65 years old, one of the oldest people in the entire crossing group, and has been engaged in construction engineering for more than 40 years. He was originally born in the countryside, only attended primary school, and at the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went with his father to work as a mason in the countryside to earn a little money. A few years later, he joined a construction team and began his career as a construction engineer.

Later, Tang Songlin through his own continuous efforts, study, and part-time work and study to complete the junior college, graduate studies, and finally step by step promoted to the position of chief engineer, originally this foreign aid project, is Tang Songlin's last work, after the project returned to China, he was ready to retire, did not expect to encounter the crossing.

However, living to Tang Songlin's age, he has also looked down on many things, and he has the free and easy psychology of coming and being safe, anyway, at his current age, he also lives a year to earn a year, and his children's careers are also successful, and the wife who stays in the old time and space does not have to worry about himself, so he has neither the ambition to be the king and hegemon in this era, nor does he complain about the sky and others, and complains about the crossing all day long, all of which is to make a trip through time and space.

But after being busy for most of his life, Tang Songlin couldn't be idle, and when he learned about the Provisional Executive Committee's New Rural Plan, he immediately became interested, because Chief Engineer Tang was originally a rural person, and he had built a high-rise building for a lifetime, but he had not yet built a rural area, and he also felt a little regretful, but he didn't expect to travel to this time and space to fulfill one of his wishes.

Therefore, Tang Songlin immediately volunteered to be in charge of the project of the New Rural Plan. After Li Songchen and Tang Songlin talked once, they listened to Tang Songlin talk and explain his construction plan, and decided on the spot that Tang Songlin would serve as the chief engineer of the new rural planning project.

Originally, Tang Songlin's plan was that the houses in the new countryside should adopt a unified modeling structure, which could speed up the construction and reduce the cost of the project, and the main material of the house construction was not to use fired bricks, but to use local materials and adobe bricks.

Those who have lived in the countryside in the fifties and sixties of the last century in the old time and space will not be unfamiliar with adobe brick houses, when the standard building materials in the countryside of that era, and until the time of travel, a large number of adobe brick houses were still preserved in the northwest of China. Tang Songlin grew up in the countryside and worked as a mason as a child, so of course he knew this construction method, and he also knew the process of making adobe bricks.

The so-called adobe bricks are made of ordinary clay, generally using loess, soaked with water, and adding straw or other fibers, etc., to strengthen the strength of adobe bricks, after mixing well, pour into the mold for compaction, dry in a sunny open place, and dry the finished product.

Compared with fired bricks, the materials of adobe bricks are easy to obtain, the construction is simpler, and they can be made directly on the spot without firing in a special brick kiln, which also reduces the transportation cost, and the cover tile can also be used in the same way, which can greatly reduce the cost of construction.

Although the strength of adobe bricks is not as high as that of fired bricks, it is enough for flat or two-story buildings, and in terms of thermal insulation and moisture retention, adobe brick houses have relatively good performance. Because the size of adobe bricks is larger than that of general fired bricks, there is enough thermal resistance, thermal insulation effect, and another performance of adobe brick houses is that they can maintain a certain humidity, and when the air humidity is too low, it can evaporate part of the moisture in the adobe bricks to improve air humidity. When the humidity is too high, it can absorb some water vapor to reduce the humidity of the indoor environment.

However, the biggest disadvantage of adobe brick house is poor seismic resistance, mainly due to the insufficient strength of adobe brick components, weak node connection, and structural system stability, so in the event of an earthquake, adobe brick house is easy to collapse, of course, these shortcomings, in the present, can be ignored.

Although there is a brick and tile factory in the Tianjin concession, the production capacity is too low, it is impossible to supply the bricks and tiles used in the construction of the new countryside, and the cost is too high, so the use of adobe bricks to build houses is the best choice at present, which is the main reason why Li Songchen chose Tang Songlin at once.

After being appointed by Li Songchen, Tang Songlin immediately found several of his students, Zhou Xiaopeng, He Xin, Li Shijun, and Xu Shan, to immediately go to the countryside to conduct on-site surveys, and negotiated with Li Songchen about the functional requirements of the house and the village, and then carried out the deepening design.

Three days later, Tang Songlin's team came up with a preliminary design plan, according to Li Songchen's plan, the total number of houses in each village is between 120 and 150 households, and 5-8 villages form a township, so that each village is not big or small, which is easy to control and manage, and there will be no oversized village, which will increase the difficulty of management.

The body to each house, covering an area of about 80 square meters, 10 meters wide, 8 meters deep, the foundation is raised about 30 centimeters, compacted, and the slope is placed at 45 degrees to ensure the stability of the foundation.

The entrance gate is located in the middle of the house, and recessed into the roof about one meter deep, the threshold stone is made of a whole piece of stone, the height and thickness are about 15 centimeters, on the left and right of the gate, there is a stone squat, and the door is made into a large slope.

The layout of the house is as follows: after entering the door, there is a hall house, 4 meters wide, about 5 meters deep, there are two rooms on the left and right, the length and width are about 3 meters, the partition wall between the hall and the room is made of 5-6 cm thick wooden plank wall, and the adobe wall in the room is smoothed with lime. The hall and the back of the room are lined with kitchens, toilets, and livestock pens, and are separated from the front halls and rooms by adobe bricks. And there is a back door in the kitchen, which can be used to the front and back. However, only the two rooms outside have windows, and the two rooms in the back are black rooms, and the window frames are naturally made of wood, while there is only one small glass factory in the Tianjin Concession, and the production capacity is limited, so it can only be temporarily replaced by cloth and paper, and then replaced after the glass is produced.

All rooms have pit beds, which is also a feature of northern China, while the kitchen also has an adobe stove, and in the toilet, a septic tank 2 meters wide, 1.5 meters long and 1 meter deep has been dug out. Because in this era, the main fertilizer for agricultural cultivation is manure, according to the calculations of agricultural experts in the old time and space, every 100 kg of rice needs to absorb about 2.2 kg of pure nitrogen, 100 kg of corn needs about 2.5 kg of pure nitrogen, 100 kg of wheat needs about 3.0 kg of pure nitrogen, which is equivalent to 500~600 kg of human or pig manure, so these manure and urine can not be wasted.

The livestock pen is also a feature of rural houses, with a size of about 2 x 4 meters, which can support about two large livestock, and 5-8 small and medium-sized livestock or poultry, of course, not necessarily for raising livestock, but also for other purposes.

Such a room can basically meet the life of a family of 6-10 people for three generations, and it can be said that the average rural family is enough to live. Moreover, in the countryside of this era, it was a pretty good house, and ordinary peasant families could not live in such a house at all.

The layout of each village will depend on the topography of the house, and it is not generalized, but it is a group of 5 to 8 houses side by side, with a 3-meter aisle between each group. The distance between the horizontal rows of the house is about 10 meters, and a sewage ditch is dug at the back door, which leads directly to the nearby ditch river, which can discharge domestic sewage, and reserve the inlet pipe culvert, and reserve the cable pipe culvert in front of the house.

Overall, the planning and design made by Tang Songlin's team made full use of the existing conditions and construction convenience in Tianjin's rural areas, and at the same time reserved enough room for water and electricity in the future.

After the design was completed, Tang Songlin's team also made a rendering of the new countryside, that is, the one pasted on the construction site, and the design and construction plan of Tang Songlin's team was also approved by the interim executive committee, so it approved 3,000 captives to invest in the construction of the new countryside, and pulled out a batch of project funds, although the bricks and tiles are homemade, and the wood can also be cut by itself, but there are still some materials that need to be purchased, such as glass, lime, cement, etc.

The traversers who participated in the project were selected by Li Songchen and Tang Songlin, and more than 400 people were selected together. After the personnel and funds are in place, they immediately began to organize the construction, because there are now a large number of free labor force in the group, and Tang Songlin's team has quite rich experience in construction organization, which is good at organizing the construction of large-scale projects, and can fully arrange the flow of construction, so these captives are divided into four batches, and six villages are built at the same time, and other technical types of work are selected.

In fact, among the soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance, there are also many people who can work as masons or carpenters, and the construction technology of the new countryside is not complicated, so these people are naturally entrusted with heavy use, while other people who have no skills can only do some physical work, mainly digging soil, mud, brick making, compaction, etc., in short, each pays its own responsibilities, each performs its own duties, plus Tang Songlin's team has strict supervision and management, and the project is also carried out very smoothly.

By this time, the village that first started construction had already completed more than 80 percent of the project, and had already built more than a dozen houses, and Li Songchen's office was one of them, and it was estimated that in about 10 days, this village would be completely completed, and then transferred to the next village; and the slowest had almost completed 60 percent of the project, and it would be completed in less than a month at most.