At Home in the Wilderness

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

THE THATCHED HUT

Thatched huts are commonly used as year-round dwellings in tropical and semitropical climes, and can offer satisfactory shelter for spring, summer, and fall living in temperate zones. If properly constructed, these seemingly fragile structures can withstand high winds and prolonged downpours and will provide excellent protection against the heat of the baking sun.

The only possible skill-related obstacle to building this shelter—unless you always carry some type of rope with you—is that the hut's construction requires several yards of cordage (that is, any rope, cord, or twine fashioned by hand from natural materials) or long strips of inner bark from certain types of trees. (See my article "Making Natural Cordage" in MOTHER N0. 79 to learn this important survival skill.) Once the cordage is at hand, however, a thatched but goes up in as little as a day and can last several years if properly maintained.

I prefer a tipi-shaped but that's tall enough to accommodate an elevated sleeping loft; it leaves plenty of room on the ground floor for storage, working, and moving around. For two adults, the optimum size for a tipi-shaped thatched but is nine feet across the base and ten feet high. While long-stemmed grasses make the best thatching material, reeds are also excellent—and cattails, ferns, and evergreen boughs will suffice if nothing better is available.

To construct a thatched hut, locate several long, stout saplings that can be placed upright in a typical tipi shape. These upright saplings should be strong enough to hold your weight (you'll have to climb on them during construction) when their butts are spaced evenly around the diameter of the hut's base. (I recommend sinking the butts a few inches into the ground to increase the structure's stability.) Before standing the poles up, lash their tips together by wrapping them with cordage where they will cross at the apex of the tipi (Fig. 1).

The next step is to weave parallel hoops of long, flexible saplings horizontally between the upright tipi poles to form a latticework, securing these crossties to the uprights with square-lashed cordage (Fig. 1, Inset A).

The first (lowest) round of horizontal crossties should be located no more than a few inches above the ground, with subsequent rounds spaced at even intervals up the tipi poles. To insure that the overlapping rows of thatch will provide a proper shingling effect, the vertical spacing of the crossties should be no more than half to two-thirds the length of your thatching material. (For example, if you'll be thatching with bundles of grass that average 18" long, the horizontal cross-ties should be positioned at 9" to 12" intervals up to within a few inches of the top of the hut.)

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print