How are ancient Chinese buildings ventilated

    Chinese culture is extensive and profound, with many excellent traditional cultures that have been regarded as classics by people. It has to be said that the wisdom of the ancients is inexhaustible. In that age when tools and materials are scarce, it is really a great skill to create buildings that are still well preserved today. Today let's talk about, the ancient people in order to ancient buildings breathable ventilation, made such a design, its role is very big!

    Wood material has good bending resistance, compression resistance and toughness, but there are also afraid of moisture, easy to decay and other material defects. Therefore, it is extremely important for the longevity of ancient buildings to keep the wooden components in a dry and ventilated environment all the time.

    However, from the perspective of construction process, it is usually to install the wooden column grid and beam frame first, and then build the wall. The walls of ancient buildings are very thick. When building walls near the intersection of wooden columns, the columns are often wrapped. The columns enclosed in the wall are prone to decay if they are not always ventilated and dry. In order to solve this problem, smart ancient Chinese craftsmen skillfully made an "air circulator" - ventilation by using ancient building bricks.

    That is actually a brick with hollow carving. Usually, the craftsman will leave a gap of about 5cm between the wooden column and the wall at the intersection of the wooden column and the wall, rather than directly contacting the wall. At the same time, a brick hole is left at the corresponding wall position at the bottom of the column, with the size of about 15cm wide and 20cm high. For the sake of beauty, craftsmen will use various hollowed out brick carvings carved with patterns to build the hole. This kind of brick with hollowed out patterns is called ventilation.

    Ventilation is a way of air exchange inside and outside the building by relying on natural forces such as wind pressure caused by the wind outside the wall, and heat pressure caused by the temperature difference between the air inside and outside the wall. This ventilation mode allows the building to adjust the humidity environment of the wooden column near the wall through natural ventilation, so as to ensure the drying state of the wooden column itself.

                                  
    In ancient times, on the wall with ventilation, one ventilation wall was usually set at the bottom and one ventilation wall was set at the top, and the two ventilation walls were kept on the same vertical line. The main purpose was to form air convection and circulation. The air enters from the bottom, flows upward along the column body, and then is discharged from the top of the column. In this way, the moist air between the column and the wall is discharged, and the column can always be kept dry.

    The use of ventilation, as a whole, has played a role of icing on the cake for ancient buildings, and has both cultural and artistic characteristics, reflecting the combination of wisdom and art of ancient craftsmen in China.