How to build a house

by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

Fig. 19.

As cellars were to be made under the whole extent of the main building, Eugène contented himself with ordering Branchu to excavate the entire ground to a distance of about a yard beyond the lines of the perimeter. Two labourers with their picks set to work therefore at once to mark out the excavation. “If,” said he to the workmen, “you find stone, as may certainly be expected, at no great depth, and if it should prove to be of good quality, you will take care not to break it up; get it out for walling stone; we will make use of it and pay you for your extra trouble. If you find boulders, let them be blasted, and lay aside the best pieces for use. To-morrow or the next day we shall give you the plan and section of the cellars. Meantime lay in a good store of bricks, lime, and sand; you know that in this district it is desirable to arrange matters beforehand if we would have the materials when wanted. It is September already, and our cellars must be built at least before the first frosts.”

“This being settled then,” added Eugène, addressing Paul when they were returning to the house, “I appoint you clerk of the works, and these will be your duties: You will come to the ground every morning, and take care in the first place that the orders given in your presence are strictly executed. For instance, you will have to take account of the quantity of stone extracted from the excavation, and to have it properly stacked in a heap about one yard thick, two yards broad, and of a length depending on the yield of the quarry. Having thus verified the daily increase of the heap, we shall be secure against any abstraction from it. You will keep a note-book in your pocket, in which you will mark its daily augmentation, and you will take care to have every leaf countersigned by Branchu. Your business just now will be only overlooking; but it will become more complicated as the works advance. If materials are brought you will take account of the quantity,—in numbers if it is bricks, or by solid content if it is sand or lime. For this purpose I shall have brought to the ground one of those road-labourer’s boxes, which are a yard square and half a yard deep. Each measure when filled contains therefore half a cubic yard.

“You will tell Branchu to get a wooden shed built to keep his tools in, and to keep the lime under cover till it is slacked. If we had a contractor, or some one with whom a bargain had been made, we should not have to trouble ourselves about the quantity or content of the materials brought to the ground; but as it is, we must employ elementary means, for Branchu has not capital with which to provide materials. We shall therefore give him the materials we buy, or which the estate supplies, on account. You perceive the necessity of preventing these materials from being abstracted or wasted. We pay him only for the labour. This plan obliges us to be more attentive and vigilant, but we are at least secured from being deceived as to the quality of the materials by a contractor, who might think it his interest, if he bought them, to supply us with some of a quality inferior to that contemplated in the estimate.

“We shall make the same terms with the carpenter. Your father tells me he has some oak timbers that have been cut more than two years, and put in the wood-yard near the Noiret farm. Let us go and have a look at them, and mark those that can be employed. Our figured plan gives us the lengths of the flooring joists.”

Passing by the side of the rivulet that flows along the little valley, Eugène was looking attentively at its steep banks, and was striking the rock faces with the iron-shod end of his stick. “What do you observe there?” said Paul.

“I think we shall find here good materials for our cellar vaulting.... Look at this yellowish stone, porous like a sponge. It is a present to us from this little water-course. It brings down in its waters carbonate of lime, which is incessantly being deposited on the grasses and vegetable detritus on its banks and in its bed. This rivulet thus forms a light and very porous tufa, which is soft and friable as long as it is thoroughly moist, but which acquires a certain degree of hardness in drying. Formerly this rivulet was larger than it is now, and it appears to me to have deposited a considerable thickness of this tufa as presented on its banks in their actual condition. Take this bit, and look at it attentively. You see that it is filled with cavities,—little cylindrical passages; they represent the twigs around which carbonate of lime was deposited. The twigs themselves decayed and disappeared long ago; the coating has remained and been hardened in the air. Observe how light this kind of stone is, being composed of cells scarcely thicker than egg-shells. Yet, try to crush it under your heel. It resists, and the pressure scarcely blunts its asperities. Well, dry it, and in a week it will be even harder. A smart blow with a hammer will be required to break it.

“This material is perhaps the best for vaults, on account of its lightness, its toughness, its cavities, and that roughness of surface which makes the mortar adhere so closely to the joints that it cannot be separated, and the whole, when sufficiently dry, seems to form only a single piece.

“We shall send two excavators to get out a few cubic yards of it. It is no difficult operation; and when this tufa is in a damp state in its natural bed, it can be very readily cut up into brick-shaped pieces.”