How to build an earth building hotel
The specific process is as follows:
1. Site selection and positioning. Before building an earth building, you must first ask a Feng Shui master to select the location. The areas where Fujian Tulou are distributed are mostly mountainous areas with many mountains. How to choose the ideal living environment is very important. Therefore, Feng Shui is extremely popular in the areas where Tulou are located. After selecting the site, it is necessary to locate it specifically. Taking the round building as an example, the first thing the Feng Shui master needs to determine is the plane position of the main entrance, which is the midpoint of the threshold. Then use a compass to determine the central axis of the building, that is, the line connecting the midpoint of the threshold and the midpoint of the back wall of the hall. And set up "Yang Gongxianshi" wooden stakes at the end of the axis, that is, positioning wooden piles, so that the position of the earth building is determined.
2. Open the foundation. If you build a round building, determine the size, number of floors, number of rooms, and radius of the round building based on the size of the site, the availability of financial and material resources, and the number of rooms required. It is not difficult to find the center of the circle starting from the threshold and along the central axis. Use a rope to draw a circle around the center and divide the spaces, so that the axes of the inner and outer walls of the round building can be determined. Then draw the gray line of the foundation groove according to the width of the foundation. This is the "setting line". After laying out the lines, a good and auspicious day must be selected to start digging the trench, which is called "opening the foundation" locally. The foundation trench of the earth building is generally dug into old soil (hard soil) according to the local soil conditions, with a depth ranging from 0.6 meters to 2 meters. The width of the building foundation is basically the same as that of the wall base, and some are slightly wider.
3. Crush the stone. After the foundation trench is excavated, the wall foundation and wall footings are laid, which is locally called "stone-laying footing". The base of the wall is dry-built with river pebbles or stones, and the inner and outer surfaces are jointed with plaster. Examining the existing earth buildings, it can be found that the earth buildings in the early Ming Dynasty usually did not have stone bases, and there were rammed earth walls above the platform base. Later, earth walls were covered with a layer of pebbles for the bases to provide waterproofing.
4. Walking wall. After the base of the wall is built, the formwork is then used to ram the earth wall, commonly known as the "walking wall". On the night before the wall is marched, a kick-off wine is eaten, and high-liter firecrackers are set off at the beginning of the march.
5. Offer a stand. Every time a one-story earth wall is rammed, a groove must be dug on the top of the wall for the wooden keels of the floor to be rested, and then the carpenters will erect wooden columns to frame the wooden beams. This process is called "scaffolding." The vertical pillars on the first floor should be installed at a good time, but not on the second floor and above. The vertical pillars start from the hall, and they also have to post couplets, set off firecrackers, and make glutinous rice snacks to ensure that the pillars are firmly erected.
6. Out of water. Large earth buildings can usually only be built one floor a year, while three or four storey earth buildings usually take three to four years to build. After the top wall is rammed, the tile roof begins to be built. This process is locally called "watering out".
7. Interior and exterior decoration. After the earth building is capped, the internal and external decoration work will probably take another year. Interior decoration includes laying floor slabs, installing door and window partitions, installing corridor railings, erecting stairs, decorating the ancestral hall, etc. Exterior decoration includes opening window openings, painting window frames, installing wooden windows, doors, decorating entrances, making building plaques and door couplets, repairing platform foundations, stone steps, etc. It usually takes four to five years to build a large earth building, and even larger ones may take more than ten years.