Building material for the homes came in the form of quarried natural stone or clay tiles dried in the sun.

• Natural stones (mussel chalk stone or sandstone), also called sawstone.
  Krasna had no quarry. The stone had to be purchased in other villages and transported from there. There was musssel chalkstone in the Bulgarian village of Dewelatsch and in Alt-Elft. According to a chronicle from Alt Elft it was sold to Krasna for a good profit.
  The Tarutino area had a quarry with hard sand stone and plenty of sand. Klöstitz also had a quarry. Natural stone was used for the more expensive structures (church) and at least for the corners of the houses. Wells had to be shored up from a depth of five meters.
• Unfired tiles (Batzen, of clay from the clay dig in Krasna):
  One used clay, sand, (in the final years chalk was added) short straw and water. Running the horses over the ingredients, one achieved a good mixture. The finished mass was formed into a form (tile or Batzen model), smoothed and arranged in rows to dry in the sun. These clay tiles were excellent building materials for the steppes. Albert Rüb ¹⁾ has some interesting observations on the subject.

Image 40: Making Batzen: Clay Tiles Taken from the Form Are Spread Out to Dry

• Fired tiles (for instance from a tile factory in Friedenstal)
  Gotlieb Leinz was looking at establishing a tile factory in Krasna, but tests showed that the clay of Krasna was not substantial enough for this.
• There was a shortage of wood in Besarabia. The Budschak had no forests when the settlers arrived. The trees planted there were not suitable for construction wood and it had to be imported. Wood for the houses came often from Ismail. In the last two decades Tarutino had lumberyards with wood in stock.
• Clay, sand:
  Krasna had a supply of this.
• Chalk:
  Prepared chalk, made right on the building site. Raw chalk came from out of town.
• Roofing material:
  Initially the houses were thatched with reed. Reed was cut on the shores of the Kogälnik. Later, tile, shingles or tin was used. Beginning in 1890, tiles of cement were used. There were rarely any tin roofs. Often the year of construction of the home was either inlaid or painted on the roofs.
  Later, (after the turn of the century) building materials such as wood, chalk, cement, roof tiles, nails, paint and other itmes were available for sale in Tarutino.

Eduard Ruscheinsky says: Initially, at the founding of the village, the houses were either stomped out or built with clay tiles (Patzen) and thatched with reeds. Even later, the houses were rarely made totally of stone. The basement was usually of stone as were the corners of the houses. Stone was expensive and the rest of the walls were built with sun-dried clay tiles (clay Batzen). These houses were quite durable.

Houses were finished inside and out with a mixture of sand and chalk or clay and chalk. For stables and other utilitarian buildings a cheaper combination of clay and fine chaff was used.
The buildings were always painted white. Annually, the walls and often the houses, as well, were newly white-washed, usually at Pentecost. Thin flowing chalk was used for this. ²⁾ The same material was used for interior walls, adding the desired color of paint. Doors and windows were painted in oil paint or shellacked .

The utility buildings were of a similar construction as the houses, just simpler. The colonists built them themselves, usually with the help of neighbors or relatives.

Bricklayers were usually Russians or Bulgarians from the surrounding Russian or Bulgarian villages. Krasna had carpenters and bricklayers in the village.

Bessarabia had no firewood and no coal One had to make do with what was on hand. Mayer’s lexicon from 1890 notes: It (the Budschak) is devoid of shrubs, reeds and dung and a strange steppeland grass called Burian are the only heating materials. Even in the 20th century one heated with straw, dried corn stalks and dung.

• Straw was the major heating material it used. In the beginning, even the steam mills were operated with straw. Long columns of straw laden wagons had to keep up the supply. See 4.4, Mill in Krasna
• Corn stalks and cobs, left over from feeding the cattle were valued as a heating material.
• The best heat was derived from animal dung ³⁾, but the preparation of it was time consuming. The dung collected over the winter was piled in the yard, then spread out, compressed and cut into squares, then stacked to dry. These squares resembled the turfsod which was used a heating material in northern Germany in earlier years.

Max Riehl remembers: Plant matter which was not suitable for animal feed, was used. The animal dung was collected in dung heaps, where it rotted. In the early spring, this mass was spread on the threshing area and compressed with a roller, making a 10-15 centimter-thick slab which was left to dry. Then it was cut into 25×25 centimter squares with a well sharpened spade or hay cutter. These squares were then put on end to dry. After they dried, they were stacked into towering piles and could be stored for several years without losing their heating value. Heating value of dung varied; it depended on the amount of straw and the degree of rot. The German colonists had copied this method from the native Tartars, who lived in Bessarabia when they arrived.

Image 41: Stacking the Heating Dung

All of these heating materials produced dirt and because of the relative small burning value, huge amounts had to be brought to the ovens and then the ashes had to be removed.