Living in the woods

[woodstock]

I have friends who live in woods 24/7 365 days of the year and are very capable people but still find it a challenge at times, myself I have lived in a tipi completely off grid I now live in a eco village in south Wales again off grid but i pop in and out of mainstream when I feel like it.
to the op. If I were you I would do it in stages I know people who have jumped in with both feet thinking they had the knowledge and skills to go it alone fortunately they lived to regret their actions, but best of luck on your venture.

 

[birchwood]

OK lets just pretend that this is a serious post and not a wind-up.
`I want to live in the remote wild away from people` - but only a days walk away from a village that has a shop.
Oh and I have walked a day to get there so I have a rucksack with my food and water, sleeping bag,tent etc for the trip there. Unless I stay in a hotel for the night and set off back to my wooden mansion the next day.
Oh wait, villages in the remote woods are unlikely to have a hotel or a shop. better be a town then.
Then the next morning I will set off with my two rucksacks, one full of water and tinned food.
Of course the locals wont wonder where I am going with all this stuff every week.Especially when I wander past with my two rucksacks and a woodburning stove on my head to heat the massive cabin I am building in the far North,not far from where they live.
They wont notice a massive clearing of trees and the tin roof I have also carried in,oh unless I was going to lift massive trees onto the roof to span the 10m .
They wont notice the path I am following/making with all this trekking backwards and forwards with tinned food and water.
As I have never heard of water purification,and other skills, I am probably not much good at navigating through the forest.So I need the path.
But never mind cos I asked if it was legal and I did it anyway, and now I have a nice cell and 3 meals a day.

 

[sandbender]

It's a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I like Maths. So let's throw some maths at the problem.

Density for Norway spruce is approx 0.43t per m³. So, a 200mm diameter log of 1m length has a weight of:

((pi x 0.1 x 0.1) x 1) 0.43 = 0.0135t aka 13.5kg per linear meter. So a 10m length for one wall would be 135kg...

To make the wall 2m high, you would thus need 10 pieces of such wood. Making a 10m wall, 2m high, built from 200mm diameter logs would involve shifting 1.35 tons of wood... a full 10m x 20m cabin (ignoring roof, any internal walls, and the floor...) would come in at 1.35t x 6 = 8.1 tons. Give or take...

This is of course all purely academic and has nothing to do with any legal aspects of the idea. It's a nice thought experiment.

On a related note, if you fancy working out what this would be in Oak or Chestnut, then replace the 0.43t m³ with 0.74m³ and 0.56t m³ respectively...

Idly wondering how many trees that would be, making the assumption that each tree has 10m of usable trunk that is all 200mm diameter[1], to make a 10m x 20m cabin 2m tall, you would need 60 trees...

With one tree every 5m, and them all distributed evenly[2]... Those 60 trees would be 1500 square meters of land... ish. But then this is into the rolling of dice area of maths, as unless they are planted in a regular plantation form (meaning they are a crop and no wild and you *REALLY* *SHOULD* *NOT* cut them down, that's someone's crop), they will be more irregularly spread out than that, and for every tree suitable there is likely to be 2-3 that are not suitable...

Ok, enough maths, you get the idea. Back to the drawing board...

Julia

PS, either my maths is wrong, or Norway Spruce is considerably less dense than I thought it was.

[1]Yes that's a hell of an assumption, but it makes the maths easy and this is no exam paper, just a thought experiment.
[2]Sssh, I'm just making up numbers now, maths is fun remember...

Brilliant.

 

[sandbender]

"...This time - now knowing your interpretation of this particular rule which is clearly different from mine - I will not include my personal opinion regarding legalities..."

That would be best I think.

 

[forrestdweller]

OK lets just pretend that this is a serious post and not a wind-up.
`I want to live in the remote wild away from people` - but only a days walk away from a village that has a shop.
Oh and I have walked a day to get there so I have a rucksack with my food and water, sleeping bag,tent etc for the trip there. Unless I stay in a hotel for the night and set off back to my wooden mansion the next day.
Oh wait, villages in the remote woods are unlikely to have a hotel or a shop. better be a town then.
Then the next morning I will set off with my two rucksacks, one full of water and tinned food.
Of course the locals wont wonder where I am going with all this stuff every week.Especially when I wander past with my two rucksacks and a woodburning stove on my head to heat the massive cabin I am building in the far North,not far from where they live.
They wont notice a massive clearing of trees and the tin roof I have also carried in,oh unless I was going to lift massive trees onto the roof to span the 10m .
They wont notice the path I am following/making with all this trekking backwards and forwards with tinned food and water.
As I have never heard of water purification,and other skills, I am probably not much good at navigating through the forest.So I need the path.
But never mind cos I asked if it was legal and I did it anyway, and now I have a nice cell and 3 meals a day.

could not have said it better myself...

to the OP: i have no idea how old you are but i presume you might be a younger person...?! if you need some time out in a remote area maybe you could sign up with WWOOF and find out if there's a small community or likewise in the area you wanna go?! i have been wwoofing in places which were long way away from towns (incl. 2month with australian aborigines) and found it a great experience! in this way you wo'nt breaking any laws and still can get away from the majority of humans! + you could learn some news and interesting skills...

 

[santaman2000]

That's about the diameter of a telegraph pole and I doubt anyone on the forum would be able to shift one of those on their own

Yes! Exactly like a wooden telephone pole as far as diameter. I certainly couldn't shift one alone if it were also the length of a telephone pole. On the other hand there are a couple of methods that might work:

1) back to somebody's previous suggestion of getting a mule. This would also involve knowing enough old fashioned log building techniques to use an inclined log to slide one end of each log up the wall at a time as it gets higher.

or

2) use the "short log" method. All logs cut to about 6 feet in length. For longer walls logs are placed end to end on each tier and the next tier up is staggered as masonry would be.

 

[GGTBod]

Even Jerimiah johnson had to use 2 big horses and a Native American bride to get the job done

 

[santaman2000]

It's a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I like Maths. So let's throw some maths at the problem.

Density for Norway spruce is approx 0.43t per m³. So, a 200mm diameter log of 1m length has a weight of:

((pi x 0.1 x 0.1) x 1) 0.43 = 0.0135t aka 13.5kg per linear meter. So a 10m length for one wall would be 135kg...

To make the wall 2m high, you would thus need 10 pieces of such wood. Making a 10m wall, 2m high, built from 200mm diameter logs would involve shifting 1.35 tons of wood... a full 10m x 20m cabin (ignoring roof, any internal walls, and the floor...) would come in at 1.35t x 6 = 8.1 tons. Give or take...

This is of course all purely academic and has nothing to do with any legal aspects of the idea. It's a nice thought experiment.

On a related note, if you fancy working out what this would be in Oak or Chestnut, then replace the 0.43t m³ with 0.74m³ and 0.56t m³ respectively...

Idly wondering how many trees that would be, making the assumption that each tree has 10m of usable trunk that is all 200mm diameter[1], to make a 10m x 20m cabin 2m tall, you would need 60 trees...

With one tree every 5m, and them all distributed evenly[2]... Those 60 trees would be 1500 square meters of land... ish. But then this is into the rolling of dice area of maths, as unless they are planted in a regular plantation form (meaning they are a crop and no wild and you *REALLY* *SHOULD* *NOT* cut them down, that's someone's crop), they will be more irregularly spread out than that, and for every tree suitable there is likely to be 2-3 that are not suitable...

Ok, enough maths, you get the idea. Back to the drawing board...

Julia

PS, either my maths is wrong, or Norway Spruce is considerably less dense than I thought it was.

[1]Yes that's a hell of an assumption, but it makes the maths easy and this is no exam paper, just a thought experiment.
[2]Sssh, I'm just making up numbers now, maths is fun remember...

No idea about the maths TBH but I have no reason to doubt yours. I do know that as a teenager I got extra money paperwooding (cutting and selling trees by the truckload for the paper mills) In those days the prescribed length of a paperwood log was 5'3" of any diameter at all. We would lift them onto our shoulders, carry them to the truck (varying distances) and load them crosswise onto it by hand (imagine a caper toss only with a shorter log) the diameter got to heavy. The top tier of logs on the trucks was always over our head. As a teenager I had no trouble carrying and loading pine (also the most common pole used in log cabins here and probably very like Norway Spruce there) up to 10 inches or so regularly and occasionally bigger before we'd have to resort to using the PTO (an exception would be when the height of the logs loaded on the truck got to about shoulder height; then I'd resort to the PTO)

Another log used in cabin building here is cedar for it's insect repellent qualities but cedar logs will generally be a bit smaller than pine ones. Hardwoods are almost never used. So I expect your Norway Spruce would be the likely prospect for a source.

 

[santaman2000]

Even Jerimiah johnson had to use 2 big horses and a Native American bride to get the job done

Yeah a helper and a horse or mule would be ideal. I'm not advocating trying to build a large cabin alone (or even at all for what the OP's suggesting) just thinking of ways it might be possible.

 

[GGTBod]

I enjoyed the visual image of your teenage work days paperwooding, sounds like you were put to work as hard as i was when i ran away from home with the travelling fairground and became a Carni (I think i got the American slang correct there), except i think you might have got paid better than we runaways did.

I'd love to live in a self built log cabin but after watching the videos Alone in the Wilderness 1+2 about Dick Proenneke and seeing his construction of his log cabin i got a realistic picture of the work and time involved and realised it wasn't happening for me anytime soon without a small workforce to help me.

 

[vestlenning]

Anyway, what I wanna do is gather up a bunch of gear (an axe, a saw, etc.) and go deep into the wilderness in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia - they all have large uninhabited woodland areas. There are no cities, no people living there, and probably nobody owns the land. What I'm thinking is take all of that and go there, deep into the wilderness and build a small house just for me. Then live there for a while.

Norway has a lot of uninhabited woodland, yes. Fine for tenting etc, but if you try to build a log cabin you will be noticed and picked up by the authorities.

 

[Bishop]

just thinking of ways it might be possible.

Something smaller in the style of a Mors Kochanski's Super-Shelter perhaps?

[video=youtube;NGSC8iYhC7k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGSC8iYhC7k[/video]

 

[Robson Valley]

Canada has a lot of uninhabited woodland/boreal forest. As an "outsider", you will not be welcome at all.
Not by us locals and certainly not by any level of government.
If you don't want any of us to know that you are there, very friggin' hard to hide = do your best.
If you don't want any of us to know that you are there, we won't come looking in 20-30' of snow to check on you.
The next 500lb Grizzly that busts down your door in the springtime (now), you got a plan to keep from getting killed and eaten?
By then, the Wolverines have demolished whatever you liked to call home.
It just does not work out that way.

I know some local bush people. I'll guess that it took them 15 years to build their camp. Then, facing winter, late October, they got
burned out, totally. Lost everything. Bunch of folks got together, lots of money and material donated. My job was to haul food and fuel, supplies, for the building crew.
Buttoned up a totally new cabin in less than 3 weeks. Wood cook stove, windows, doors, you name it.

 

[Hammock_man]

The OP has a dream, nothing wrong with that.





Now wake up and get on with life.

There is a reason why life expectancy 100 -150 years ago was half want it is now.......

 

[Robson Valley]

Yeah, Hammock-man, at the end of the day, you're absolutely right.
The OP has a dream that I can totally appreciate. It's just horribly complicated to bring it off.
The pit-house that I linked to is on/in the edge of the university property. It was built with absolutely everyone's blessings.
Just simply living in it for a week in winter would have been a challenge.
Even as I know after 40 years in the central interior what I might possibly expect.

 

[forrestdweller]

Yeah a helper and a horse or mule would be ideal. I'm not advocating trying to build a large cabin alone (or even at all for what the OP's suggesting) just thinking of ways it might be possible.

somehow i doubt the OP would find any native girls/women volounteering as brides....

 

[Lacijag1]

I would not even bother to built a log house. That is a time and tree consuming job.
I would just build a pit house, something like this (from 3.30) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-lfefLNv3U

 

[santaman2000]

somehow i doubt the OP would find any native girls/women volounteering as brides....

Yeah that could be a problem. So find a like minded woman before you leave home and take her with you?

 

[Robson Valley]

"I would just build a pit house."
OK, here's how the local native community lived in winters with real cold (-30C) and real snow (5-15').
I can't imagine my level of preparation needed to spend so much as a week in the winter.

http://www.unbc.ca/releases/34692/official-unveiling-pit-house-saturday

 

[Trojan]

Did the op go?