New shelter

[Celt_Ginger]

Myself and a friend began work on a new shelter on Sunday. It will be in the Lavuu style, but made from only forest materials. Now it is a work in progress and we only had an afternoon to get things started, but we managed to get a fair bit done.
We began by clearing our chosen site. It's in a mainly spruce forest, but it has a good scattering of Beech, Ash, Field Maple, oak etc as well. We harvested a number of dead spruce poles and selected 4 that would make the core of the shelter. we put these up with the root section attached and uppermost so we could lock the other poles into these. All were tied off with spruce roots. We then tied shorter poles cross ways to the 4 main uprights and again bound these on with roots. we then added additional poles at a shorter length to rest against the cross poles and added an "X" shaped door,and cut the upright poles to make a smoke hole at the top.

It always amazes me at how much hard work it is to make a shelter. A well constructed shelter takes a lot more time to make than you may think. It was a tiring afternoon and I can still feel the effects of our labours, and we didn't even finish it.
Next job to do is to make additional cross poles and perhaps weave more spruce roots around the structure to give us plenty of purchase points when we come to thatch the shelter.
More pictures will follow as work progresses.

 

[preacherman]

Looks the business. I would love to do something like that as my winter shelter for weekends out. I hope its being built where it wont be vandalised or inhabited by the local muppets !!!

 

[Celt_Ginger]

That is my hope as well.

 

[preacherman]

Fingers crossed. I will keep an eye out for these pictures as the shelter goes up. Any chance you can make the pictures a bit bigger, the one thats up now makes it hard to see the process. I'm sure there are plenty of people here that would like to see it.

 

[Celt_Ginger]

Sure. it was taken on a phone camera as I forgot the proper camera. the next set of pictures should be better.

 

[preacherman]

Good stuff. Look forward to seeing the progress.

 

[combatblade1]

Pictures of the Shelter look great very solid looking!!

 

[hedgepig]

Good stuff ... great way to spend the day

 

[Joe]

I love these teepee type shelters - very cosy if the thatching is thick enough. We've built quite a few of them in Scotland and for a completely warm and waterproof home these are my tips..

Sometimes in a dense fir plantation, the needle covered floor is so densley criss crossed with little roots and compacted needles that you can use a folding saw to cut a section of turf from an area of ground, roll it up like a doormat and use it as the first layer of thatching, starting at the bottom and overlapping as you work up - like roof tiles. You will be hard pushed to find a better shelter covering for total waterproofing. Be careful not to take it all from one area though.

Think about making a door of some sort. If you haven't started thatching yet now is the time to think about fitting a proper sturdy door post / frame to hinge it off. Sink the door post into the ground after scorching it in a fire to reduce rotting and lash the top end into the sturdy shelter frame work. Doors I've made in the past have been anything from a lashed framework thatched with spruce boughs or a sort of upright log raft or a woven 'hurdle' to a proper plank ledged and braced affair using split logs, flattened on the backs with an axe and pre drilling the nail holes using a drill bit in a bow drill, and hammering in hardwood ash 'nails' hardened in a fire.

If you intend to have a small fire inside and you're leaving the top open, consider making a conical 'hat' similar to the cowl on a chimney so that the smoke can still escape but rain is less likely to come in. You need to get the balance right doing this - make sure you still leave enough of an opening to let the smoke out or you will really get smoked out. Having a door will increase the 'draw' within the shelter sending the smoke upwards. Also burning only dry, split logs without the mossy bark on will create less smoke and having a good sized open container of water inside the shelter at all times and keeping the fire small is a good safety precaution. This is the only time I circle a fire with rocks as they will contain the fire and retain a certain amount of heat once the fire starts to die down before bed. We used a thermometer inside one of these shelters once to record the temperature one night when the group inside were making do without sleeping bags in mid November. It was around 26 c - they were all in t shirts!

 

[Mouldsy]

Nice one mate cant wait to try it out when we get it finished, but who is sleeping outside when the snoring starts.

 

[Gripper]

Looks great, we don't get too much chance to build shelters like that here in WA. Look forward to seeing the finished shelter...

Mark

 

[ScarletPimpernel]

I was in Tardree a couple of days ago - didn't see the shelter, though....

Loking forward to seeing how it progresses.

 

[preacherman]

Hi Celt Ginger. How is that shelter going. I was planning to try something similar myself over next weekend and wouldnt mind seeing a few new pics if you have them.