Su Tang, of course, had agreed to her brother’s little request. She also felt it would be good to have a large building with front and back courtyards. She estimated that she would need to continue her studies and also create more businesses in the future, so having a larger space would definitely be better than having a smaller one.
Su Nuo had been listening to the whole conversation so far, so when he suddenly heard Su Yongqiang’s question about the house, he couldn’t help but interject.
Su Yongqiang was surprised when Su Nuo suddenly spoke up, and he looked ever at Su Tang for confirmation. When he saw her nod, he understood that Su Nuo wasn’t talking nonsense, so he said, “If you plan to build such a house it will definitely take at least three or four months to complete. You will need to dig very deep to make a good foundation so the house can be solid. That way it won’t have any problems within a few years.”
Su Yongqiang said all this because he knew a bit about the geographical location of Sujia Village. Around here the winters were very cold. In fact, according to the orange cat’s observations from the past winter, the lowest temperature once reached minus 32 degrees Celsius.
The winters here were so cold that not only did the Qing River freeze, even the ground and soil itself would freeze. This was the so-called “frozen soil” phenomenon and, because of the local climate, the land in Sujia Village experienced alternating periods of hot and cold. Due to this, if a building’s foundations were unstable then it would inevitably start to tilt and there was a danger that it would collapse once enough time went by.
These people from the ancient era had no concept of the frozen soil phenomenon or of how heat caused expansion and cold caused contraction, so they could only use the most stupid method of digging the foundations even deeper. But, in fact, while it might be the most idiotic method, it really did work. After all, the same method of digging a deep enough foundation to go below the frozen soil to create stronger and safe buildings was used even in modern architecture.
And this was what Su Yongqiang was talking about. He knew that since Su Tang wanted to build such a large courtyard, it would definitely be necessary to dig the foundation deeper proportional to how much larger the courtyard was. Because of that, he felt that the time to construct the courtyard definitely wouldn’t be particularly short.
Su Tang nodded along and replied, “That’s fine. We definitely need to make sure the building is solid, or we might not be so lucky as to escape if it collapses again next time.”
Of course, Su Tang was referring to how the old house had collapsed last winter. That situation had truly been dangerous. Su Yongqiang nodded and said, “In that case, you can start construction of your new courtyard now and it should be close to being finished by autumn. Then, once the autumn harvest is over, you can take some of our Su family’s young men to go and bring your brother and sister back. After all, it’s more appropriate to move the gravesite during the winter.”
Su Yongqiang’s last words were somewhat subtle, but Su Tang understood his meaning. In fact, when Su Yonghe’s family had been killed by mountain bandits, it was Su Yongqiang’s son who had gone out and hastily found a place to bury them. Of course, at that time they fully intended to come back and claim their remains again later. They wouldn’t just let these members of their Su family stay outside and become lonely ghosts.
But then they found that Su Laochuan’s family had no money to go and bring them back, so matters had been delayed until now. Moreover, Su Yongqiang knew that his son had only been able to hastily set up a simple grave with a straw mat back then, so if they tried to dig up the remains and bring them back during the middle of the summer they would definitely rot along the way.
Thus, going during the winter was actually much better. During the winter when the weather was cold and the ground was frozen the remains would also be better preserved so, if Su Tang had a bit of luck, she would be able to bring them back and bury them directly without any issues.
“Since that’s the case, I’ll listen to Brother Qiang. I’ll have to trouble Brother Qiang to arrange things for us at that time.” Su Tang felt that Su Yongqiang’s suggestions were clear and reasonable, so she agreed to them directly.
Su Yongqiang laughed and said, “We are all one family, you don’t have to be so polite with me.”
Su Tang also smiled, but just when she opened her mouth to speak again, she suddenly heard another knock at the door. When Madam Luo went to open the door, she saw it was Su Yongyuan, Su Changle, and their wives outside.
“Third brother, third sister-in-law, sixth uncle, sixth-aunt, what are you all doing here? Quick, come in.” When Madam Luo saw who it was she was very surprised, but she still hurriedly invited them all in.
Su Yongyuan and Su Changle smiled, “We saw a carriage had arrived outside and wanted to see if Tang’er had come over, so we came to take a look.”
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