A Wandering Discussion Of Shelter Ideas

Shelter like so many other things is SERIOUSLY affected by where you are and where you want to settle down at. All I know is what I will need and most of it isn't very applicable anywhere else. In South East Texas winter is mostly a couple of months of cold nights with fairly warm days. Cold means around or a little below 40F/5C and the days are usually above 50F/10C with days in the low 90sF/32C possible during any month or day in the year. Summers are about 4 months of temps in the high 90sF32C and low 100sF/37C. The other 6 months are usually very nice if a little wet.

Mostly what you need is a roof over your head and something that will keep the mosquitoes from eating you alive at night when you try to sleep. A mosquito net is a must! Basically in the old days a home was a couple of rooms to sleep in with a fireplace or stove that had a BIG porch that you slept on in the summer months. Later even when electricity was available most homes had at least one screened in sleeping porch.

In general when you build your permanent shelter or even if you are bugging in there are things that you need to do the old way. Your kitchen should not be in your home. It needs to be detached and well separated from your sleeping and storage places. Wood cooking means fires and they can and do get away from you. A house made of wood with either wooden shingles or a thatched roof will burn FAST and easily.

Another thing that people are going to have to relearn is outhouse toilets and how to make them clean and safe. That in itself is the one most major reason that bugging in in a city is so hazardous. When the water stops the sewer stops working. You will no believe until you see it what a mess a million people will make out of a city when the sewers stop. The diseases will wipe out people faster than anything we've seen in centuries. When the Europeans came to North America they were coming out of some of the filthiest places that humans have ever lived in. The weak just didn't live and when they met the Native Americans it just about wiped them out. Even things that Europeans didn't think about were DEADLY to a population with no immunity. Chicken Pox KILLED them by the thousands. To the white man it was an annoying child's illness to them it was about the same as small pox! Keep your area CLEAN and keep yourself aware that even little cuts can go UGLY.

People will need to learn that they don't need near as much as they think. There is a lot to be said for sitting on the ground and sleeping there as well. Furniture is mostly a Western affectation. We are used to our chairs and couches/sofas, tables and beds but for most of the world they just don't matter. Before arthritis got to me I used to sit on the ground quite happily and seldom used furniture of any kind when I went camping. Even at home I likes a lap desk for doing crafts and working while I sat in the yard on a quilt or blanket.

When it is cold smaller is better!! A small tightly made and insulated hut will shelter you from the cold at night or the few days that are just too bad to go out with very little fuel. During the day you will want and need to get out and about. Once again the concept of porches or arbors are worth more than you imagine.

The current Tiny House movement has a lot of potential for ideas for a bug out building. Loft bed areas have always been popular because heat rises and it makes for warmer sleeping for the kids. Kids slept 3 or 4 in a bed during the winter here. Great for warmth. The kids are going to have the hardest time at first but then as kids always do they will adapt if they are made to do so. The problem to me is that what I think of as kids are mostly just under 40. People under 40 were raised in a world totally unlike anything that anyone else lived in before that time. Their world has been safe and easy with them getting pretty much whatever they wanted. The cost is there but they never knew anything else.

I look around my home and sometimes am astounded at how many things that I have. For me it is just a little mind boggling. I wasn't raised this way and didn't live like this until about the last 15 or 20 years. Truthfully at times I regret the simpler life. I raised my kids just about like I had been raised and as they had been raised. For me moving back into simpler life style will be a bit like going home but for kids it will be a bit like pure hell.

Days are awful long when you have nothing external to entertain you and the nights are even longer. In the olden days say 150 years ago and back, people generally slept in two pieces with a, to us, strange night day in the middle of the night. Winter nights are long and light is expensive. Most people retired early and slept for a while them woke got up and did night things for a while then returned for a 3 hour or so nap until the sun came up. Your peppermint abode will need to reflect the lifestyle you will live and not the one that you have lived in the past.

Very few homes built in the last 50 years will be very habitable without electricity and gas. They will be hot in the summer and to big to heat in the winter. I am bugging in but have big plans to move out into my various out buildings if the power goes off. Pole barns and big metal dirt floored sheds will be better for most of the year. You can build a fire in your living room that will keep the bugs at bay.

I will close the sides with screen and hang hammocks or put up cots for sleeping. The old “Dogtrot” house was good for country living for centuries. Two rooms facing two rooms with an open dog trot between them all under one roof. I have lived in houses that were like this and they work well/ the middle gave you a place to store your leather tack, sleep during the summer, and work out of the sun and rain but in an open area.

Another old school house was the “Shotgun Shanty”. It was three or four small rooms all in a row with a porch on front. Then your parlor, kitchen/dining room, bedroom and back porch or bathroom. Every room had at least two doors and tow or more windows.

Where ever you are, look into your past THERE and see what people did 150 years ago. You can bet that they were all about efficient and comfortable year around.

 

90% of the brits or germans i know keep their home at 18 degrees celsius maximum during the winter.i keep mine at maximum 15 and i never get a cold

 

I'm with you on that. I liked the cold for most of my life and what I lose in high costs on air conditioning during the summer here in Texas I make up in the winter. I like it even lower than the 15 degrees in my house and like you the winter season is my healthiest time of year. The spring and summers are pollen infested hay fever seasons here in East Texas. Saddly our "winter" is a very short period here and some years by your standards we just skip it totally. There is no day in the year that 33 degrees Celsius is totally off the table! This last winter we didn't have a single real freeze.

I'm not very fond of central air conditioning or heating. I want where I am to be comfortable and don't care at all about the temperature in the rooms I'm not spending time in. I also like to have a "fire" to back up to when I come in from the cold and central heat just doesn't have that.

What is funniest is that I am a licensed HVAC technician and made a living working on them along with about anything in the way of appliances you might have in a home, restaurant, laundry or motel.