Tepee Shelter

The next form of shelter is that of a tepee-shelter which is a far more permanent kind and one which is a good deal more efficient than the other forms of shelter featured on this blog. This, of course, took a good deal more time to erect but it has stood the test of time, being left alone and without being discovered for 3 years now - in a woodland used by the public. This is because it was camouflaged heavily to look like a pile of old branches thrown together. 

These green fir branches hide the tepee-shelter from view -

 

 

 

There were several stages to the building of this shelter -

 

 

The upright staves were made of dead wood and bound together with cordage at the top. They were each cut to the right size before binding together.

 

 

Here you can see the eight upright staves, which are mostly slightly rounded which aids the shape of the shelter. The bottom ends are pushed into the ground for strength.

The top of the staves are bound together with cord.

Two thinner pieces of hazel-wood are then twisted around the whole of the base, apart from leaving a piece at the front for the doorway. These are then bound to each upright stave. This ensures a firm base and also allows for later tying of the tarp-cover.

Next, two more sections of flexible hazel are bound around the staves, one at the centre and another above this - as in the above photo. Again, this aids the strength of the shelter and allows for later tying of the covering.

One small point here is that we pegged the outer rims into the ground before tying so as to hold them in. These pegs were cut shorter and left in place to keep the strength of the shelter during bad weather.

The cover was then placed over the structure; here we should note that this was an old tarp found in the same area of the woodland, cut into two and placed over the frame. Ensure that the bottom part is put over first, and the top part then goes over the top of it. This ensures that the water is kept out. Once the cover is placed over the frame five extra upright staves were placed over the cover to hold it in place, and also to help give even more strength to the whole thing. A section was left out at the front for the doorway.

The door was made up of another piece of the same tarp, cut to size and bound to the cross-section, with a 2 inch diameter piece of wood tied to the bottom to hold it down when closing the door. 

The whole thing was then covered with green fir-branches and twigs which help to conceal it from view. 

This is how the final shelter looked when concealed fully from view; so effective was this that when we held a camp at the site no-one noticed that this was nothing but a pile of branches thrown together. The shelter has stood there for 3 years now and it has never been disturbed.

The advantage of this is that it is ready for use at any given time, and it also acts as a place to store our stuff when it is not in use. It can be used for camps and it has been used in the past - summer and winter. Another strong point about this one is that it has been totally waterproof for all that time. 

When the branches lose their greenery it is necessary to cover some sections of the shelter again, since the green of the tarp shows through. The needles do die off but eventually most of the shelter is covered even though this is dead covering. 

This particular shelter would sleep two people with ease, but the size could be adapted to sleeping more people, or cut down in size to sleep one person. This is the most efficient shape for a permanent shelter and stands up to all weathers - cold, wind, rain and snow. Throughout the time it has been up it has never leaked. It is well worth looking around an area to find some form of covering such as an old tarp, polythene sheeting or the like, rather than relying on green branches and twigs which rarely give a totally waterproof covering. 

The only thing that we did take with us to erect this shelter was the cord, but this could have been found had we looked further afield in these woodlands - as we found later. The one thing about this society is that people throw things away and leave all sorts of stuff lying around. It is quite easy to find materials to make shelters.