The Forgotten Chapters Of Better Dwellings
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
As promised last week, we are upgrading the plans of your humble lean-to to a more upscale structure:
THE HOVEL
For the sake of expediency, we are also including building plans for a shack at the same time. The only difference is the shack has a wooden floor while the hovel sits on either dirt or mud, depending on the weather conditions at the time.
As you may well surmise, considerably more planning is necessary to build a hovel/shack since most have four walls and a roof. One particularly luxurious model in our area has a skylight. The occupant/designer had the unbelievable good fortune to be downsized from an automotive glass manufacturer. In the confusion caused when he protested his termination, the police swat team neglected to ask for his key. By the time the oversight was noticed, he had managed to purloin the rear window of a Lincoln Town Car and 60 feet of quality rubber insulation. His hovel is the envy of the hobo community and was featured in both the September issues of Better Homes and Gardens and Hot Rod Monthly.
A hovel is roughly square-shaped with a door and a roof. Depending on the size of your dwelling, several boards, pieces of plywood or sheets of drywall will be required to act as walls. Ancient Coke or Pepsi signs are also ideal for this purpose, adding both strength and colour to your hovel/shack. Unfortunately the aforementioned signs have now become collector’s items for the wealthy. Believe it or not, some dirty bastard might steal it from you. It is a sad commentary on society when one crook will steal from another. This moral breakdown of our society started when school boards sanctioned time-outs or a good talking-to by your mommy to replace the strap and bullwhip.
Hovel/shacks, having four walls, require a framework on which to nail, weld, or wire the walls. Since we can assume that any idiot can design and build a frame, we will skip that part and go on to the roof.
Because we fully expect our guidebook will be published in most civilized countries, it will be difficult therefore to make a hard and fast rule to cover every situation and building code. Generally speaking, roofs must be designed according to the weather conditions that prevail in the particular area the hovel/shack is being constructed.
Assuming you have calculated the correct angle for your roof based on the average snowfall in your area, (the weight of a cubic foot of snow is somewhere between 6 ounces and 62.416 pounds at 32 degrees Fahrenheit depending on water content) one must choose the proper roofing material. The ideal surface for your roof is of course, asphalt shingles. However shingles can be pricey, especially if you insist on a uniform colour. We suggest you visit one of the more affluent neighbourhoods in your city and make note of which homeowners are seniors. The moment the first leaf falls in October, they will pack up and leave for the ski resorts along the coasts of Florida or Mexico. As they are pulling out of the driveway, you will be climbing up their patio roof armed with a claw hammer and a pry bar.
If you do choose to hack a huge section of asphalt shingles from someone’s home, it would not be advisable to build your hovel/shack in the vacant lot immediately across the street or next door. It would not require too many brains to notice that the missing section of his/her house looks remarkably similar in shape and size to the fine shingled roof your hovel/shack is now sporting. Of course, proving it is another story.
The very best roofing of course, is steel shakes. They are guaranteed to last for the lifetime of the home, which in your case could be several days or even a week depending on weather and the number of by-law officers in your community. Should you have the misfortune to be inside your hovel/shack during a violent thunder and/or driving hail storm, your eardrums will disintegrate in the first 30 seconds and the first bolt of lightning will weld your sorry butt to any metal object within a quarter of a mile. The weight of the steel shakes could also be a problem should the roof break through the spindly hovel/shack frame and crush you flatter than pee on a plate.
Somewhere around December, or Labour Day in the Prairie Provinces, you will wake up some morning and notice that the temperature, both outside and in, dropped some 75 degrees overnight and your wash bucket is covered in a thick coating of dirty gray ice. This might be a good time to consider some sort of heating system and the possibility of nailing up a batt or two of insulation.
Great care must be taken to select a building supply dealer who is up on the latest theories pertaining to R-factors. Ask him to recommend the correct thickness of insulation for your building. Write down his suggestions carefully and steal the insulation from another dealer down the street.
There have been many long and boring debates over the past ten or so years as to which heating system is more environmentally acceptable now the world is facing global warming. Since you will most likely be spending the majority of your remaining years lying outside in the sleet and snow, choose the worst possible polluter with hope the greenhouse effect will get here in time to save your bony bum from freezing. An electric space heater would be an ideal choice; assuming your neighbour has an outside plug and a fifty-foot extension cord he’s not using. Heating systems with open flames are seldom recommended for hovel/shacks unless the occupant has access to a fire hose and asbestos pajamas.
Did I mention a door? Just a moment while I read back through our manuscript… walls, shingles, press plates, heat… nope, no door.
There are basically two types to consider — no three. We forgot a piece of tarp or an old horse blanket draped over the doorway. In most cases a blanket or a tarp is sufficient. However, if in the highly unlikely situation you actually are able to persuade a member of the opposite sex to visit your home, and the even more unlikely situation you will talk him or her into a romantic dalliance, a sturdy door might be more advisable. There is nothing that will curb a man’s passion faster than a dog’s cold nose checking out his accoutrements, or someone saying “Good morning, I am Elder Bob and this is Elder Isaiah. Could we have a few moments to talk about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon?”
The main types of door are your swinging and your propping. Swinging doors require hinges, hinges require screw nails, screw nails require a door frame, door frames require more wood. Let’s be honest, you aren’t going to get lucky anyway, so prop the damn door over the opening and forget about it.
Next week: A garden
(Image Supplied)
