With the gradual development of various constructions in auspiciousness, the demand for bricks and cement has become more and more urgent.

Wang Xuan had to personally guide the work so that it could be completed and put into production as soon as possible.

With Yongsheng porcelain factory as a blueprint reference, the layout of the brick and tile factory is reasonable, and the construction difficulty is small, but the brick kiln has been expanded four times due to the characteristics of the product, and the brick drying area is divided separately, and the area is four times that of Yongsheng.

The warehouse is not large, and once the bricks and tiles are fired, they are placed directly in the open air, and the warehouse is only used to store tools and molds.

Wang Xuan designed the place where the bricks are dry as a terraced structure, which can not only make effective use of space, but also facilitate the shelter and drainage on rainy days.

The current way of covering is to make bones from wooden stakes, tendons from wooden boards, and meat from cloth, which should not only maintain good ventilation conditions, but also prevent direct sunlight.

Weeds and shrubs have been cleared around the factory, leaving only rows of trees to shade the bricks, and a tertiary road to Yongsheng is under construction.

The recruited lords were engaged in the work of carrying and leveling the land, and many of them were women and children.

The components and furniture of the board house at Seongnam Farm have been basically completed, and the panel factory has been fully engaged in the production of orders for the new factory, providing construction beams, doors and windows, wall panels, furniture, wooden tools, molds, etc.

Due to the large demand and urgent use of goods in each factory, there are trucks waiting in the plate factory every day to pick up the goods and then load them on ships.

The plate factory is also built along the river, located on the west bank of the Liuyin River, and the location here also takes into account the factors of transportation costs and nearby materials, and the water transportation is not only large but also more convenient, and the supply of wood products for the brick and tile factory is transported through the Liuyin River.

Wang Xuan was not worried about the construction of the factory, he specially transferred four technicians from Yongsheng who participated in the construction of the factory to provide on-site guidance, and he was worried about the firing process and temperature control.

This is not complicated, at least several orders of magnitude lower than the manufacturing difficulty of Yongsheng porcelain, but the auspicious construction urgently needs bricks and tiles, Wang Xuan has no time to leave them to explore and experiment, and only wants to fire it successfully in the shortest possible time.

The first is to take the soil, and the clay mined will be exposed to the wind and sun for a long time to decompose and loosen its interior, and then crushed and sieved, leaving only fine pure soil.

At present, it is not required to be so fine, a little bubble, or larger particles do not affect the use, and the delicate brick firing is reserved for the construction of luxury buildings or high-end decorations.

The next step is to moisten the pure soil with water, and repeatedly mix it like dough to make it thick. Here, the kin is trampled on by feet rather than hands, and livestock can be used if necessary.

Manpower mud turning and refining about five to six times, this process is particularly important to the quality of bricks, is the top priority of the whole process, personnel to go through professional training before they can take up their posts.

The clay is molded through the billet mold, the clay should be compacted during shaping, and the place where the bricks are placed should be covered with fine sand to prevent adhesion.

The bricks should be dried in the shade and not exposed to the sun, otherwise the bricks will crack or even deform.

When the bricks are completely dry, they can be fired in the kiln, which is the difference between success and failure.

The general bricks use coal as fuel, while the filter bricks with higher density are slowly burned with fuels such as wheat straw and pine branches, and the auspicious choice is coal.

After several days of firing, the green body will be sintered, which is divided into two situations: if the outside air enters the kiln slowly, it will come out of our common red bricks;

Finally, it is cooling, when the bricks and tiles are almost burned, they should be cooled by releasing water to achieve the purpose of maturation and shaping.

These are only theoretical bases that need to be tested and revised through experiments.

Now some of the bricks and tiles have entered the drying process. Due to the auspicious climate, the time of drying in the shade takes too long, so Wang Xuan plans to improve the status quo of "watching the sky and eating" after stable output, and use wind to shorten the shade drying cycle.

If you want to improve the blank, you must first improve the mold. Wang Xuan designed the abrasives for billet making into a lattice the size of half a door, with an interior divided into seven inches long, three inches wide and two inches deep. When making bricks, the clay is directly placed into the mold for compaction, and then the mold is separated from the brick to enter the drying step.

As the first "joint venture" factory, the brick and tile factory caused no less sensation in Jixiangling than Yongsheng at the beginning.

After private capital has a high-quality investment direction, it has become completely active, driving various investment booms.

There are also many investment directions to choose from, and it is now recognized that it is to invest in government-sponsored enterprises such as brick and tile factories, cement factories, mosquito coil factories, etc. If you are not strong enough or fail to catch up with this wave of high-quality investment opportunities, you can also turn to the supporting industries of these factories, such as collection, vehicle leasing, small project outsourcing, etc., and it is also possible to set up a mobile stall around the factory.

A considerable number of the people who worked around the week were family members of small investors, and although they were only in charge of food and did not receive wages, they were full of enthusiasm to make the factory put into operation as soon as possible and earn dividends, and they were running it as their own industry.

Wang Xuan is very satisfied with the current scene, which is also an important reason why he introduced private capital in the first place, the mascot is hardworking and tenacious, but there is no sense of direction, they don't know how to change the current dilemma. Once someone points out a clear direction and path, the energy and persistence that they burst out with are terrifying.

The Employment Office has recruited a group of workers, and the major shareholders have also recruited a group on their own, which has now met the employment needs of 300 people in the first phase.

As for the second phase or the subsequent three phases, it depends on the speed of Jixiang's development, according to the development plan, there must be at least four brick and tile factories with 1,000 people to meet the construction needs of Jixiang in five years.

Most of the people who have been busy with the farming are involved in the "soil digging" work, and although there is only one lunch, they are still enthusiastic.

Being able to participate in the development and construction of auspiciousness made them extremely excited, and maybe the house where the young master lived in the future would be made of clay that he picked.

According to the calculation, if the wall of one square meter is built in two rows of bricks, 200 bricks are needed, and 15,000 bricks are needed for a single-storey house with a length of three zhang, a width of five zhang and a height of one zhang. A double-storey building with a balcony of the same size uses at least 20,000 bricks and 16,000 bricks for the courtyard wall, so the minimum brick requirement for building a simple house is 50,000.

If the renovation of Jixiang City starts in the second half of the year, the reserve of bricks and stones will not be enough to build the office building of the Government Council.

Considering that the brick-making cycle is long, and the output of a brick and tile plant is difficult to meet the current construction demand, the construction of the second brick and tile plant will start after the first brick and tile plant is put into operation, and the Ministry of Construction is preparing for site selection and related matters in Hedong.

This consideration is also forced by reality, the large amount of bricks needs to increase the number of brick factories to increase production, and Hedong is the location of the planned industrial zone, the amount of bricks must be higher, and the advance reserve is also a rainy day. In addition, if several brick and tile factories are built in Hexi, it is not easy to transport, and it is not in line with the principle of factory location close to the consumer market.

Wang Xuan originally wanted to build a factory to produce decorative bricks such as tiles and floor tiles, but in the end he gave up. The functions of this new factory overlapped with the current brick and tile factory and porcelain factory, and the limited resources of auspicious could not be split at will. In the end, the design plan and ideas were handed over to the porcelain factory, although it was positioned as a mid-range product, but both the demand and practicality were more promising than porcelain.

The brick and tile factory can produce some high-grade floor tiles for the pavement decoration of pedestrian streets and green belts, and can be designed into various shapes and sizes.

Wang Xuan stayed in the brick factory for six days, watching the mold making and brick molding, and returned to Jixiang City after the dry link, and he focused on the steel mill.

There are three technical difficulties in the steelmaking plant, one is coking, the second is the construction of small blast furnaces, and the third is to remove impurities in the iron and turn it into steel. Once the steelmaking plant can be put into operation smoothly, supplemented by the help of cement with a little less difficulty, there will be no technical obstacles to the infrastructure construction of Jixiang, and the development of Jixiang will also change with each passing day.