My Kingdom for an Outhouse!
written January 29. 2008
As you can imagine, when you start a project like this, developing completely forested land into a lakeside retreat, planning is important. Obviously, priority number 1 (and number 2, in a manner of speaking) is to build an outhouse.
This seemingly simple endeavour serves as a useful warm-up for building the cottage. Many of the same questions arise. Where to put it? You can’t build it too close to the lake. There are restrictions about that. And you don’t want the outhouse to be where you might ultimately decide to build your cottage! It shouldn’t be the centerpiece of your landscaping when people arrive at your place, but you don’t want it to be so deep in the bush that anyone who needs to use it in the middle of the night will need to wake an escort to guide them (especially when that escort is me!). And then there is that all important decision: build it yourself or hire someone. Well, sometimes you get to do both, as was the case for me.
Early in the spring of 2007, I went to the local library to research plans for building an outhouse. library. I chose a design and adapted it, mainly to simplify it so it would be easier to build. At the same time that I was planning my project, I tried to contact someone in the area of the lake who would be able to come in with a backhoe to dig a good size hole. The soil is very rocky and the project would be completed much more quickly if I could hire someone with the right equipment to do that. When I called one of the local contractors, I was speaking to his son Roger. I explained my project and he told me he could build the outhouse. I asked some questions and he assured me it would be no problem as he had experience building cottages. Well, when he offered to do it for a reasonable price, I decided to go for it. It would save me a lot of work. Besides, if he had experience in construction, how much could he screw up an outhouse project. Well, I was about to find out.
I was pleasantly surprised when Roger called to tell me he had finished the outhouse in mid-June, just a week after I contacted him. I thanked him gratefully and raced up to the lake the next Saturday in excited anticipation of inaugurating our new facility. Now I know I have led a somewhat sheltered life, but every outhouse I had ever been exposed to was situated over a hole in the ground. And I had stipulated in our agreement that the hole should be a minimum of six feet deep. Evidently, Roger thought this feature was optional. The hole was about two feet deep! That was one problem but not the only one, sadly. There were several ..uh .. design flaws. While many of these could be tolerated, a couple would impact directly on the functionality of our new structure. Now, my friend Roger is about my height, 5’8’’, so I was a little more than surprised to find that he had built my outhouse for someone seven feet tall. You see, the toilet seat was so far from the front of the bench that when you sat down you couldn’t bend your knees and your legs had to stick straight out. Obviously, this wouldn’t allow customers to get much traction, to say nothing of the comfort factor. The second major design problem with the outhouse was the floor. Every outhouse I have ever visited had one thing in common: The floor stopped at the bench, allowing for free and unobstructed flow from the seat area down to the hole, whatever the depth of the hole. Our outhouse was very special. We had a complete floor that continued under the bench, right to the back wall. However, in recognition that the building could be used as an outhouse, there was a 12 inch diameter hole cut into the floor more or less positioned below the toilet seat. And to assist with your aim, there was a bucket with the bottom cut out inserted into the hole in the floor - a crude kind of funnel. “Roger” I said, imagining cries of “Daaaaaaaaaaaaad!” when someone failed to hit the target, “I don’t know about your family, but without wanting to be indiscreet, the people in my family aren’t as good an aim as you may have been lead to believe.” So he agreed to make the necessary adjustments. First he moved the toilet seat forward on the bench. He had to improvise some hardware though, as the bolts to secure the seat to the bench broke.
You can see from the picture that this left a potentially dangerous situation. Full marks for creative use of beer caps though!
Then he cut the hole in the floor a little wider and tried to dig the hole deeper – he got to three feet. So eventually I had to take charge. I replaced the bench with the right measurements for the average person. I cut out the floor beneath the seat to allow gravity to make its full unobstructed contribution. Then I found a local resident, Ken, with a backhoe and he came in and dug a proper hole and pushed the outhouse back over it. It wasn’t quite perfect yet though. Digging the hole deeper caused the sides to cave in making the hole wider, so wide that the rear of the outhouse almost fell in the hole. In the end, many people had a hand in this outhouse....project.
Thanks to Billy for helping me clear the path through the mess of fallen trees. No one works harder in the bush than Billy Two Sheds. And thanks to Doug, who helped me secure the building and prevent it from falling into the hole. We finally have a fully functioning facility. I hope you'll make this your excuse to invite yourself up next summer.
Here’s an interesting side note to end this post: Ken, the backhoe owner, turns out to be Tim’s brother in law. And his cottage along the Picanoc River is where Tim and I launched our canoe on my very first trip to the Lake nine years earlier.
written January 29. 2008
As you can imagine, when you start a project like this, developing completely forested land into a lakeside retreat, planning is important. Obviously, priority number 1 (and number 2, in a manner of speaking) is to build an outhouse.
This seemingly simple endeavour serves as a useful warm-up for building the cottage. Many of the same questions arise. Where to put it? You can’t build it too close to the lake. There are restrictions about that. And you don’t want the outhouse to be where you might ultimately decide to build your cottage! It shouldn’t be the centerpiece of your landscaping when people arrive at your place, but you don’t want it to be so deep in the bush that anyone who needs to use it in the middle of the night will need to wake an escort to guide them (especially when that escort is me!). And then there is that all important decision: build it yourself or hire someone. Well, sometimes you get to do both, as was the case for me.
Early in the spring of 2007, I went to the local library to research plans for building an outhouse. library. I chose a design and adapted it, mainly to simplify it so it would be easier to build. At the same time that I was planning my project, I tried to contact someone in the area of the lake who would be able to come in with a backhoe to dig a good size hole. The soil is very rocky and the project would be completed much more quickly if I could hire someone with the right equipment to do that. When I called one of the local contractors, I was speaking to his son Roger. I explained my project and he told me he could build the outhouse. I asked some questions and he assured me it would be no problem as he had experience building cottages. Well, when he offered to do it for a reasonable price, I decided to go for it. It would save me a lot of work. Besides, if he had experience in construction, how much could he screw up an outhouse project. Well, I was about to find out.
I was pleasantly surprised when Roger called to tell me he had finished the outhouse in mid-June, just a week after I contacted him. I thanked him gratefully and raced up to the lake the next Saturday in excited anticipation of inaugurating our new facility. Now I know I have led a somewhat sheltered life, but every outhouse I had ever been exposed to was situated over a hole in the ground. And I had stipulated in our agreement that the hole should be a minimum of six feet deep. Evidently, Roger thought this feature was optional. The hole was about two feet deep! That was one problem but not the only one, sadly. There were several ..uh .. design flaws. While many of these could be tolerated, a couple would impact directly on the functionality of our new structure. Now, my friend Roger is about my height, 5’8’’, so I was a little more than surprised to find that he had built my outhouse for someone seven feet tall. You see, the toilet seat was so far from the front of the bench that when you sat down you couldn’t bend your knees and your legs had to stick straight out. Obviously, this wouldn’t allow customers to get much traction, to say nothing of the comfort factor. The second major design problem with the outhouse was the floor. Every outhouse I have ever visited had one thing in common: The floor stopped at the bench, allowing for free and unobstructed flow from the seat area down to the hole, whatever the depth of the hole. Our outhouse was very special. We had a complete floor that continued under the bench, right to the back wall. However, in recognition that the building could be used as an outhouse, there was a 12 inch diameter hole cut into the floor more or less positioned below the toilet seat. And to assist with your aim, there was a bucket with the bottom cut out inserted into the hole in the floor - a crude kind of funnel. “Roger” I said, imagining cries of “Daaaaaaaaaaaaad!” when someone failed to hit the target, “I don’t know about your family, but without wanting to be indiscreet, the people in my family aren’t as good an aim as you may have been lead to believe.” So he agreed to make the necessary adjustments. First he moved the toilet seat forward on the bench. He had to improvise some hardware though, as the bolts to secure the seat to the bench broke.
You can see from the picture that this left a potentially dangerous situation. Full marks for creative use of beer caps though!
Then he cut the hole in the floor a little wider and tried to dig the hole deeper – he got to three feet. So eventually I had to take charge. I replaced the bench with the right measurements for the average person. I cut out the floor beneath the seat to allow gravity to make its full unobstructed contribution. Then I found a local resident, Ken, with a backhoe and he came in and dug a proper hole and pushed the outhouse back over it. It wasn’t quite perfect yet though. Digging the hole deeper caused the sides to cave in making the hole wider, so wide that the rear of the outhouse almost fell in the hole. In the end, many people had a hand in this outhouse....project.
Thanks to Billy for helping me clear the path through the mess of fallen trees. No one works harder in the bush than Billy Two Sheds. And thanks to Doug, who helped me secure the building and prevent it from falling into the hole. We finally have a fully functioning facility. I hope you'll make this your excuse to invite yourself up next summer.
Here’s an interesting side note to end this post: Ken, the backhoe owner, turns out to be Tim’s brother in law. And his cottage along the Picanoc River is where Tim and I launched our canoe on my very first trip to the Lake nine years earlier.
No comments:
Post a Comment