Ancient wooden buildings were afraid of dampness and decay. How did the ancients keep dry and ventilated?

Wood materials have good bending resistance, compression resistance and toughness, but there are also some defects of wood, such as fear of moisture and perishable. Therefore, it is extremely important to keep the wooden components of ancient buildings in a dry and ventilated environment for prolonging the life of the ancient buildings themselves.

However, from the perspective of construction technology, it is usually to install wooden column net and beam frame first, and then build walls. The walls of ancient buildings are very thick, and near the intersection with wooden columns, the columns are often wrapped when building walls. If it is not ventilated and dried frequently, the column enclosed in the wall will rot easily. In order to solve this problem, clever ancient craftsmen in China skillfully used ancient building bricks to make an "air circulator"-ventilation. Air circulator is a kind of modern scientific and technological equipment, whose main function is to make indoor and outdoor air circulate continuously and achieve the purpose of air exchange. For ancient wooden buildings, how to keep wooden components in a dry and ventilated environment has become an important standard for "prolonging life" of ancient buildings because of their defects such as fear of moisture and easy decay.

"Ventilation" is actually a hollow carved brick. Usually craftsmen leave a gap of about 5 cm between the wooden column and the wall, instead of directly touching the wall. At the same time, there is a brick hole at the bottom of the column, which is about 15 cm wide and about 20 cm high. For the sake of beauty, craftsmen will use various hollow bricks with decorative patterns to build this hole. This kind of brick with hollow pattern is called breathable brick.

Ventilation is a way to promote air flow and exchange air inside and outside the building by relying on natural forces such as wind pressure generated by the wind outside the wall and hot pressing generated by the temperature difference between the air inside and outside the wall. Under the condition of ensuring the building function, this ventilation method allows the building to adjust the humidity environment of the wooden column near the wall through natural ventilation, thus ensuring the dry state of the wooden column itself.

In ancient times, ventilation walls were generally one at the bottom and one at the top, and the two ventilation walls were kept on the same vertical line, the main purpose of which was to form air convection and circulation. Air enters from the bottom through ventilation, flows upward along the column body, and then is discharged from the ventilation hole at the top of the column, so that the humid air between the column and the wall is discharged and the column is always kept dry.

In the long-term construction of ancient buildings, we have accumulated rich experience in ventilation production. They don't stick to just opening holes in solid bricks to meet the ventilation needs of wooden columns in the wall, but carve brick carvings into colorful patterns, such as the ventilation of lions. Lions are the most common beasts in China traditional culture. It is the embodiment of wisdom and strength, representing courage, kingship and majesty, and symbolizing status, dignity and auspiciousness.

The application of ventilation plays a icing on the cake for the whole ancient building, which is both cultural and artistic, and embodies the combination of wisdom and art of ancient craftsmen in China. Ancient House —— In ancient China, the online+offline mode, architecture+internet plus culture, inherited and developed architectural culture, implanted traditional excellent culture into building materials, made architecture have culture from the source, combined the essence of China culture with modern science and technology, integrated Chinese and Western cultures, and applied them to modern construction industry, advocating that excellent traditional culture should enter people's daily necessities.