Chapter 17 The Bathhouse

Princess Xiu's carriage rarely appeared in the Xueqi Army's camp. The Xueqi Army was currently engaged in a new round of camp construction, with the basic frameworks of many brick and stone buildings already in place. The entire construction site was a hive of activity.

The construction site was filled with dust, and the training ground next to it was equally dusty as soldiers performed individual training exercises. Tan Weishi had to cover her mouth and nose with her sleeve as she followed Ye Tao into a huge room. The large pillars in the middle of the room were encased in cement, and the floor was also made of cement. At one end of the large room, a pool-like structure of about ten feet square had been built.

"What is this for?" Tan Weishi asked. She had never seen a room with such a strange interior structure before.

"A bathhouse," Ye Tao said with a smile. "Once the cement is dry, we'll apply a layer of waterproof oil-based sealant and then cover the surface with tiles and mosaics."

"You...you...you actually brought me to a men's bathhouse?!" Tan Weishi was both ashamed and angry. "I'm going to tell my sister when I get back."

"It hasn't been built yet. No one will be taking a bath here now, so what's there to be afraid of?" Ye Tao said with a chuckle.

Yang Xiping, the chief guard of Princess Xiu, who was following behind Tan Weishi, asked with some puzzlement, "Don't soldiers usually just draw water from the well and rinse themselves off? How can this place accommodate so many soldiers taking baths?"

Yang Xiping had just been transferred from the Imperial Guards to serve Tan Weishi. There was no pressure in working for Princess Xiu, who didn't put on any airs. This was one of the reasons why Yang Xiping would interrupt to ask such a question at this moment.

Ye Tao then led them to the room next to the bathhouse, where a huge coal-burning furnace was installed. A considerable-sized brass boiler was fixed on top of it. In the room, there were also piles of long, ceramic pipes. A group of apprentices from the Ye Family Workshop were connecting the pipes together, as if to form a very complex network.

This time, even Tan Weishi understood. She asked, "Ye Tao, do you mean that so many soldiers can take hot baths at the same time?"

Ye Tao nodded and said, "Yes, otherwise, why would we build such a complicated bathroom? Just the tiles and mosaics alone are not cheap."

Tan Weishi listened to Ye Tao's explanation for a long time, but she still didn't understand how the hot water could flow out and allow so many people in another room to take a bath together. She also didn't know that this bathroom had actually become the most closely watched construction project of the entire Xueqi Army.

Thanks to good food and systematic training, the soldiers of the Xueqi Army were in excellent physical condition, but the rate of colds was consistently high. Everyone was covered in sweat after training every day. Officers had the means to boil water and take baths, but most soldiers, as Yang Xiping had said, simply rinsed themselves with well water and called it a day. That was fine in the summer, but in the winter, colds were almost unavoidable.

Ye Tao thought about it for a long time and planned for a long time before finally telling everyone that it should be possible for them to take hot baths every day. Then, he produced the blueprints for the bathroom and the design drawings for the most critical low-temperature steam engine. Ye Tao had no interest in launching an industrial revolution in this era. The current technological conditions made it impossible to produce qualified steam engines. Without advanced pipe processing technology and reliable sealing technology, the efficiency of the steam engine would be hard to guarantee. However, building one to boil water and using steam to provide pressure to a limited extent was still easy to achieve. In terms of current technology, ceramic pipes were probably the best available piping material. And in the absence of rubber, using plaster mixed with tar paper to wrap them, although still prone to leakage, could barely work. The boiler was divided into two parts: one that continuously heated the water flowing through the pipes, and another that generated steam to pressurize the hot water pipes, ensuring that the hot water had enough pressure to reach every showerhead. Speaking of showerheads, there were no ceramic ball valves or anything like that now, and metal valves were also difficult to process. So, when the water started to boil, all the showerheads would spray water together, and the temperature of the hot water coming out of all the showerheads would be the same, and it couldn't be adjusted. Due to the different distribution of the pipes, the water pressure was lower the further away it was from the boiler. After all, such a large-scale hot water supply was already a headache, and being able to take a hot bath every day was already a great luxury, so the soldiers weren't too picky.

In comparison, the system being installed in the Zhengyuan was much more exquisite. Because it only needed to provide two hot water outlets, the structure was not so complicated, and the requirements for steam pressure were also very low. The boiler system installed in the Zhengyuan used copper pipes for all the piping. The showerheads had both cold and hot water lines for mixing and were fitted with adjustment valves made of copper, with ivory-covered handles. Even the showerheads had devices that could be rotated to adjust the water pressure. Everything was very much like a modern bathroom. Perhaps the only thing that Ye Tao felt dissatisfied with was that it was still difficult to take a bath. The mosaic-decorated bathtub was not as comfortable as a white porcelain bathtub. After realizing how low the yield rate of such a large white porcelain item would be in this era, Ye Tao understood that he would need some time before he could soak in a comfortable bathtub. He was vigorously researching enamel technology, preparing to make cast iron bathtubs. In the future, using some steam pressure to give the bathtub a massage function, although posing higher requirements for the design of the pipes, was not something that Ye Tao couldn't solve. The boiler in the Zhengyuan even had an automatic coal feeding hopper, so no one had to stay by the boiler all the time shoveling coal.

About ten days later, the bathroom in the Xueqi Army camp was finally completed. After the boiler had been running for a while and entered a normal cycle, the windmill lifted the well water and poured it into the boiler. Some of the water turned into steam, which drove a simple reciprocating pump to pressurize the constantly flowing hot water in the pipes. In the bathroom, all the showerheads began to spray hot water, and the entire bathroom was instantly filled with steam. Another stream of hot water slowly flowed into the huge pool at one end of the room.

The soldiers watching outside the bathroom door looked at each other, they had never seen such a scene before. Finally, everyone burst into cheers, and a large group of soldiers rushed into the bathroom wearing their clothes.

"Hot showers every day, and the water just gushes out of the pipes..."

"Hundreds of people taking a bath together in one room, tens of thousands of grown men can all take a bath in two hours..."

"...What's that? Have you heard of the Ye family's Zhengyuan? The servants in the Zhengyuan say that in their place, the water can be hot when you want it hot, and cold when you want it cold."

Without any deliberate advertising, this simple technology, which Ye Tao saw as merely an expedient measure, quickly gained tremendous prestige. The Ministry of War actually sent people to the Xueqi Army camp in a few days to see what the rumored bathhouse was all about. The fact that people from the Ye Family Workshop moved into the Princess's mansion with a large number of pipes and other things within a few days was further confirmation. Everyone knew that when the Ye family had something good, the Princess's mansion would definitely be the first to use it.

Ye Tao was depressed. Bathrooms and boilers were not convenient things for those who were interested to visit, but so many wealthy families in Danyang, after hearing about such a thing, were somewhat interested. In the end, Ye Tao had no choice but to find a vacant factory building in the Ye Family Workshop and install a boiler to hold a simple product presentation, explaining what the collective showers in the army camp and the more exquisite version installed in the home were all about.

Afterward, the Ye Family Workshop began to receive an overwhelming number of orders, and Tan Weishi, who had originally been worried about the sales of mosaics and tiles, suddenly found that the goods in her hand were almost instantly sold out. If the tile kilns in Satellite Town couldn't start production soon, they would probably run out of stock, and "pirated" goods were already quietly brewing...

The largest batch of orders came from the military. The military was preparing to build ten bathrooms of the same scale as the one in the Xueqi Army camp in one go. The Imperial Guards and the City Guards both had this need.

In addition to orders from large aristocratic families, a surprisingly large number of orders for household boilers and bathroom piping systems came from the brothels of Danyang. When Ye Tao learned of this situation, it was inevitable that impure images would flash through his mind, but all in all, this was also a kind of "special" service, right?

"Our public sanitation is about to enter the steam age, but our road transportation system is still stuck in the age of animal power," Ye Tao said with a sigh after calculating the amount of coal used in Danyang if the existing orders for boilers were to be operated for one hour each day.

"What are you worried about? Someone must have already noticed this. Believe it or not, by the time you install all these things, the price of coal will not only not rise, but will actually fall slightly," Tan Weixin said with a smile.

Ye Tao always trusted Tan Weixin's judgment in business matters. He said with a wry smile, "I never thought that this thing could actually make money, and it's about to become a not-so-small industry. Originally, I just wanted to satisfy my desire to take a shower. It's really unpleasant to always bathe in a wooden tub."

"Yeah, I believe you," Tan Weixin nodded mischievously and said, "Turning bathing into an industry, that's not easy."

Ye Tao said, "Seeing your eyes rolling so fast, what are you thinking about again?"

"I was thinking, what kind of name would be suitable for the store after you've put in so much effort? Rinnai? Electrolux? Sapphire? Sakura? These names are too... nonsensical. And you haven't come up with Kohler, American Standard, Toto, or anything like that... It's really hard to figure out," Tan Weixin's words left Ye Tao feeling powerless.

After pondering for a while, Ye Tao slowly said, "I really don't know, but now that we're starting a Dàlàng Táo Shā (survival of the fittest), Tiānyá Hǎijiǎo (ends of the earth) or something, the conditions are probably ripe, right?"