How to Build an Outhouse

Want to learn how to build an outhouse? Check out these simple outhouse plans and create a properly managed privy.

By Elizabeth Allyn
Updated on January 16, 2023
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by AdobeStock/ehrlif

Want to learn how to build an outhouse? Check out these simple outhouse plans and create a properly managed privy.

One of the very first and most important buildings needed on a remote homestead is a privy, which isn’t as complicated to construct and maintain as you might have imagined. Both the surface privy and the pit outhouse are simple, straightforward, and easy to understand. As long as you follow some general rules for building an outhouse, you can hardly go wrong modifying either type to suit your own particular materials, skill, or location.

black and white illustration of a pit for an outhouse

How To Build An Outhouse

A properly managed privy is at least as healthful for people and land as a septic system and is far more than a place to evacuate waste. Ours is a sanctuary in which to be quiet with no one to ask why you aren’t busy; to think or read with no one waiting to get in to shave; to watch a small, pretty piece of the day pass outside (one of the clapboards on our outhouse has a crack that’s perfect for viewing through, like Arctic sunglasses). It’s a place where body and self are at peace with the rest of the natural world.

black and white illustration of a surface-style outhouse
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