The towering water tower stood tall and upright in the castle backyard. Its body and framework was made out of welded iron, giving it a triangular shape. Attached to the top of the tower — with a diameter of two meters and a height of three meters— was an iron bucket. The water valve within the bucket made it very convenient to control the water level. The tower was welded by Anna and afterward covered by a rust-proof coating by Soraya, and finally, with the help of Hummingbird’s magic, they eliminated most of the weight in order to install it on the previous erected cement base.
Due to the height of the castle, the water tower in the castle backyard was even higher than Redwater River’s river bank, with a height of 12 meters it was almost level with the castle’s peak. In order to prevent the tower from collapsing, Roland surrounded the tower by a wall and in this way connected the tower with the castle.
The steam engine was set up outside the backyard and used to supply the water tower with water by pumping up water from the well in the castle’s back garden. Taking a closer look, it could be seen that it was already the third generation of the steam engine, with the biggest improvement being the great reduction of the working noise.
At each connection point of the steam engine, a spacer was equipped — the light blue spacer was drawn with Soraya’s sky coloring, making it soft while also being very though, significantly reducing the machine’s vibrational noise. The inside of the cylinder and the piston’s edge were covered with a grass coloring, which lessened the leakage while at the same time also improved the operational efficiency. Components that were prone to tremors, such as the exhaust pipe, had been entirely replaced with coated hoses.
In order to prevent that the steamer from getting scorched and drenched by sun and rain, as well as for further noise reduction, Roland built a small house around it, and had Soraya coat all of the inner walls with a honeycomb design, which was used like a porous sound-absorption material. The practical test showed that even during the night, the noise of the machine would be so faint that the people sleeping inside wouldn’t be woken up.
However, Roland’s attempt to automatically feed the steam engine failed. He originally envisaged that the steam engine would be regulated by a fly ball which would control the valve in the wood box. As the steam pressure dropped, the fly ball was meant to open the valve, so that the firewood in the wood box would roll into the furnace, but that way the regulator would have to do a lot of work, otherwise with the weight of the fly ball alone it couldn’t drive the valve.
After a lot of deliberation, Roland finally decided to give up. At the beginning, the wood box would have to be filled to the maximum, and when it was used up it had to be filled again by a workforce anyway, in that case would be better to arrange for staff to just fill the water tank with water each day.
The final step was to install the water system into the castle — which included faucets, showers, pipes and the corresponding drainpipes.
The castle wasn’t like the brick houses of the newly constructed district, the holes, roofs and walls built out of stone caused the transformation of the castle to be very inconvenient. So this step had taken nearly a week, but in order to live a happy life, Roland personally directed Karl to change one room on the second and the third floor into a bathroom.
For this, Soraya’s new ability once again played a vital role, after the drainage pipes on the ground were paved with cement; she painted a thin layer of grass over the ground, not only making it waterproof, but in this way walking in the bathroom was like also as comfortable as walking on grassland. When she’d done this, Roland directly permitted her to coat the whole room. Turning the ceiling into a blue sky and clouds, while on the surrounding walls far-off valley and grassy areas could be seen and the walls of the bathtub became crystal clear, just like a jewel.
On the day at which the water system was working, the Prince called all of the witches to the bathroom to let them finally experience for themselves this wondrous achievement.
The water tank in the backyard was filled with water, so when he turned on the faucet, the water rushed out of the pipe.
“From now on, there is no longer the need to get the water from the well,” Roland proudly proclaimed. “It is not necessary to use the same bathwater for three days. You only have to stand under the shower and pull the lever.”
“Where does the water come from?” Lightning stuck out her tongue and tasted the water, “It’s sweet.”
From below Lighting, Macy stretched out her head and followed her example, “Very sweet
Seeing a third one trying to taste the water, Roland stopped Nana, “Those who want to drink water, can only do so after it has been boiled. The water from this can only be used for hand washing and bathing.”