Building an outhouse at a remote off-grid wilderness camp

[Music] how's it going everybody my name is Dave Whipple and you're watching Busch radical Brooke and I are at our remote property in the wilderness of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan we're setting up the wall tent for the summer we hopefully would like to get a cabin built by the time the snow flies but right now we need to build an outhouse if you get a remote property a farmstead a cabin in the woods and you want to build an outhouse and you're not exactly sure the way you should go about it I'm gonna show you guys wouldn't we to do it so grab a newspaper pour yourself a cup of black coffee eat a bean burrito and hang on tight we're gonna build us a crapper back here in the distance you can see the wall tap we're probably 45 feet away I think this is our spot dig in the hole that's always the hard part especially in ground like this that's basically in the woods tree roots and plant roots the first couple feet are always the hardest once you've got through that first few feet you could probably expect to get into sand that doesn't have any roots right now all about getting through that top layer [Music] once we get through the top where all the roofs are you can see that this ground is good clean sand the one thing that really matters when you're digging an outhouse is you need to dig in an area that you've got good drainage whether that's sand or whether that's gravel you can't dig an outhouse in solid clay it's gonna fill up just like a little pond even from just rainwater you need a good drainable soil [Music] I don't know about you but I've always found it really satisfying to dig holes you know a school that's as simple as a shovel you don't really think about it much if you got the time and you you've got the incrimination you can do a lot with a show [Music] here's Brooke in the outhouse hole one of the very very last times you want to be down in the hole of the outhouse after today it'll kind of be a no-go zone sort of there's the final product up five feet deep after you've got your hole in the ground you're gonna need two big heavy beams that's what we're gonna use to build the actual outhouse off of the beams straddle the hole and then you plank up one end of the beams and on the other end you build the actual outhouse itself so let's drop a couple trees so that's perfect I've got two sections of trunk I'm gonna measure him out to about 8 feet that's about what you want about an 8 foot piece I'm going to cut them off we'll use them in a minute now where these two trees were was right here and it was blocking all this blue sky and it was blocking this great big white pine that's right there [Music] [Music] now I have no use for logs what I really need is two beams I need two beams that are at least flat all the way down one side and then I need a 90 degree flat section on the other side the idea is you need the flat of a beam to nail your floor down to and then you're gonna have to have the sides of the beam flat so that you can nail your your plywood to it now I don't need a true beam that has four flat sides but I need one side flat and I need a section of another side to be black you'll get the idea [Music] [Applause] [Music] this will be a fantastic place to use a beam chick that you bolt to a chainsaw bar I have one in Alaska that I've used to build an entire cabin and I don't have it here in the Upper Peninsula with me so that 2x4 that I'm placing on top of the logs I'm using it as a guide I run the bar of the chainsaw about a quarter inch off of the 2x4 I'm doing this completely by sight that that 2x4 sure does a good job in helping you keep cutting in a straight line it's a good guide to use [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] this one goes on this this side and there's the two beams that are going to be the foundation for our outhouse [Music] [Music] [Applause] now the southouse is a very simple design it's got a single pitch to the roof the front of the outhouse where the door is is seven feet tall the back of the outhouse is six feet tall the two sides taper from seven foot to six glass at the top and then I generally cut them about four inches long so it'd be about seven foot four on the high side and six foot four on the low side that way it gives you four inches of plywood to screw to your theme you're gonna see that in just a second right now what I'm doing is I'm cutting the doorway out of the front piece of plywood it's a very very simple way to build an outhouse just a couple framing members to it which are two by twos screwed in the corners I'm just going to use the plywood for the door you can get quite fancy building an outhouse but there's no need to you're not going to be doing much in there you're kind of going kind of in and out [Applause] [Music] here I'm throwing a little piece of scrap underneath the bottom just to hold up the door portion a little bit I'm gonna cut a few inches off the bottom of that door that'll just help it open and close without hanging up along the bottom I like to run my skill saw almost to the corner but I don't want those cuts overlapping and going deeper than they need to go so I like to finish all the cuts up with a handsaw get a nice sharp corner [Music] and there in the background you can see my doorway and my plywood door now what I'm doing here is putting two sheets of plywood together making sure that they're flush up on the corners that everything's nice and even and I'm going to cut the sides of the outhouse like I mentioned before these sides are going to be seven foot four on the high side and six foot four on the low side I just need a little extra on the bottom so that I can lap over the edge of my beam and screw the bottom of that by which to the beam you might have noticed I've cut a few things 45 inch it's like the doorway that was cut down from 48 inches to 45 inches the reason being is that the roofing metal or in this case the clear plastic roofing it comes 24 inches wide that's considering the overlap you get 24 inches at each sheets like 25 and a half so it's going to be roughly 48 inches when it's put on top of the roof and I want the outhouse just a little bit smaller so I've got just a little bit of a rough plastic overhang on both sides now let's start putting the outhouse together this is very very simple construction method I'm overlapping the plywood four inches I'm to the side of my beam that flat section that was about four feet long that I cut onto the side of the beam and I'm just filled it up kick a little bit of dirt up underneath the log to hold everything upright and then I'm gonna move on to the other side now I filled about four outhouses using this method where you have two large beams that straddle the hole and then you basically just put a light building and a fix it to the beams one of the beautiful things about building like this is with just a few screws you could unscrew the building from the heavy beams and move it right out of the way and then take the heavy beams and then move them to another site in the event that you have to move the outhouse now I've cut all these planks 45 inches so they'll fit right on the inside of the outhouse what I'm doing right now is I'm laying them all into position just so I've got a temporary platform to work off of while I built this area of the outhouse now whenever I touch something you can see it moved the building at this point is incredibly flimsy because it's just white plywood and 2x2 framing members but once everything has been put together and each part of the outhouse is screwed in solid to the adjoining part of the outhouse it becomes a very rigid building this is an incredibly efficient way to build you can tell that this outhouse is not very decorative or artistic it's a very utilitarian structure but it's going to be very very solid once it's all done [Music] you see here on the fixing a scrap of the polycarbonate roof material that I'm going to use to the inside of the seat face in the outhouse this is a pee shield to be frank what it does is it keeps the front of the outhouse riser from being soaked with urine to be blunt without this particular piece that wooden front section will become saturated and it's foul makes your outhouse fall apart that is one of the most critical aspects of an outhouse is that pee shield now here I'm getting measurements to the inside to the riser and to that 2x4 nailer and I'm transferring those measurements to the outside so I can run screws through the outside of the plywood and hit that 2x2 nailer underneath the seat and the riser that'll make that building nice and rigid this is one of the most difficult sections to put together not because there's a whole lot to it just because that is it's a pretty floppy piece of material that we're putting on for the front doorway area once I've cut the door out of that area it's just basically a giant hoop of plywood that's not very sturdy once I get that screwed in there it'll help out make everything square up and get rigid now our property in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is down the dead-end road down another dead-end road and down another dead-end road and at the end of a goat trail were eight miles from the nearest power pole and probably 20 miles from the nearest building store so I did a lot of the prep work at home before we headed up to the U P this weekend to put up the wall tent and build the outhouse it's always easier to kind of break a job like this down into the subsections and as long as you know the dimensions that you want to build the outhouse itself you can cut individual parts of it and get them ready and you don't actually have to be on site so long as you know what you want to build beforehand I'm cutting the foam section of the seat very important not only for comfort but also warmth in the winter time you sit down on a piece of foam like this and it's immediately warm anything other than foam like a hard plastic toilet seat it's just murder once it's cold check the fit all good now I'm gonna throw on the roof hands one thing you'll notice is that there really isn't much rough framing on this outhouse well this is big snow country and I'm going to have to really reinforce the underside of this room I'll probably put a 2x4 about every six or eight inches but I don't have to worry about that until November so what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to I'm going to tack this in place I'll put one more brace in the center and call it good for now now the toilet seat riser area has been screwed in through the walls so it's solid and rigid now I can build the floor on the inside of the outhouse do the dimensions that actually exist what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna take this board that's gonna be the farthest out and I'm gonna scribe fit it into the cutting out an area for that 2x2 cutting out a little strip for that plywood face what I want to do is I want to get that board so it fits in there perfectly and then what that will do is it'll leave me a gap I don't know what its gonna be it might be two and a half inches might be three and a half inches we'll find out afterwards and then I'll cut a very thin piece of board to fit in that gap what I'm doing here is I'm cutting out little tiny strips for that whywould door face you see in the background there I've cut out a section for that 2x2 framing member that's in the corner like to finish these cuts with a handsaw that way you're not running the cut way past the corner run it right to the corner and I'll just trim up the very last a little bit of what came out of that cut I think we're just about there let's take this board over and see how our measurements panned out fits perfect let's screw that sucker down now I'll get a read on what that gap is that's left and cut a piece of wood to fill that gap from here you can do the rest of the job pretty much with your eyes shut once that little piece of board goes into that gap and is screwed down everything else can just get screwed off all the planks that are inside the outhouse all the planks that are out front of the outhouse they can all get screwed down tight and you've got a good solid floor the only issue I have is that some of these boards are not as solid as others I have some boards here that are made out of open I have some boards made out of a cherry and there's one or two that are made out of pine I basically just used whatever I had so I'm going to take this extra board and screw it in from underneath to kind of bridge all of those pieces of plank so that the ones that aren't quite as solid they're going to be attached to their neighbor and it's going to help make the floor feel much much now it's just a job of running the screws in and you're done now of course the inside of the outhouse needs a floor but you also need this porch area out front so that when you walk up to the outhouse and you open the door you can walk comfortably into the outhouse without stepping over a void or something like that it just makes it much more user-friendly well let's check the floor that seems good and rigid now let's move on to installing the outhouse door now installing a door like this this flimsy plywood it could be incredibly frustrating the door needs to be lifted up because I've cut it a bit short and you're gonna have to screw a screw through the hinge into that flimsy door so we need to kind of engineer this site so it's very conducive to working by yourself I'm gonna take these scraps of wood and screw them to the backside of the doorway so when I set the door in place it's going to kind of set flat against those boards and it's not going to push in when I screw the hinges to the door but I also need a way to lift that door up I'll just use my axe what I'm going to do here I'm gonna take the axe stick it underneath the door panel set the door in place and you'll notice that once the door is set firmly in place it's setting up against those boards and it's ready to be screwed to the hinges it's got that gap across the top I'll just tap in the axe raise that door right up into place run some screws into the hinges before you know what we'll have this job done now we need to give this door something to stop again so when you push it closed it doesn't just fold up inside the arrow so I'm gonna take a couple blocks a 2x4 and just screw them in the corner so when you shut the door it's got something to shut again now we're to a wonderful point in the process where to the point where basically all the hard work is done all that's really left is to put a good handle on the door let's do it this 90-degree chunk of branch I think that's gonna work good I'm just gonna take the chainsaw put a nice parallel cut across there make a good handle let's go try that out I think that'll work just fine every outhouse needs some kind of a lot so when you step into the outhouse you can shut the door and you can lock it so no one else barges in on you and and you of course keep the door closed you don't have to hold it yourself I'm just gonna use this chunk of maple that came off of the the beans from underneath the floor I cut a little chunk off what was left we'll use that as our lock last but not least let's talk about the three tips that you need to know to make your outhouse way better than the other guys outhouse very simple things that need to be done but it's gonna make all the difference in the world number one you want a clear roof now polycarbonate roof panels like this they're gonna let in all the light when it's dim outside you're gonna be able to see just fine now you don't have to have clear roof panels you can have anything you want but what you do need is you need some natural light in there so that you can see as well as possible if you just put on a solid roof and you have solid walls and you have tight joints you can build yourself a box that's about pitch dark in the middle of the daytime and that's not what you want so whether it's translucent green whether it's translucent white or whether it's a clear panel like you see here use some kind of roofing that's gonna let the light in number two don't put toilet paper in an outhouse number two very very very important point all that toilet paper that's put down on the hole is going to fill your outhouse up in about half the time that would otherwise it's not gonna break down the same as everything else it's in the outhouse it's just gonna accumulate much much faster and this is not a Forest Service outhouse nobody's gonna be buying a week to pump it so keep your toilet paper out of the outhouse what you want to do is put a paper grocery bag in the outhouse take your paper and throw it in the paper grocery bag when it's full burn it and then it's gone it doesn't go in the hole it doesn't plug up your outhouse you know this is not a vault system this is an old-school outhouse whatever goes down there's probably not going to be coming out so you want to last as long as possible burn your paper put it in a paper bag don't put it in the hole number three if you look down inside the hole here you're gonna there's a polycarbonate panel stapled to the front of this outhouse area the reason being is when you pee you're going to be peeing on the polycarbonate it's going to slide down and drip off and it's not going to soak into the wood lots of outhouses out there have skipped this I've neglected it or didn't know about it in the first place and they reek and they're destroying themselves this whole wooden front area is going to just get saturated with urine over time and it's not only going to get destroyed it's going to be rancid so when you buy the roofing that's gonna go on your outhouse make sure you've got enough left to make a splash guard pee shield that's going to go right in here on the inside of this wooden face those three things are gonna let everybody know that you're an outhouse Pro that your outhouse is better than the next guys outhouse that your stuff don't stink well there you have it there's the outhouse from the ground up from the hole to the roof as it is with any camp or any cottage or any homestead this is the most important building it's got to go up first and this is one way to do it thank you guys so much for watching Busch radical my name is Dave Whipple be radical I see you soon [Music]

Channel: Bushradical

Views: 502,575

Rating: 4.9438763 out of 5

Keywords: off grid, out house, outhouse, how to build an outhouse, wilderness camp, cabin, tiny house, camp toilet

Id: dTeo8OOxodo

Length: 27min 31sec (1651 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020