Let There be an Outhouse!

Hi there! Where will you go when the nature calls and call it will? Restroom? What if you are in the middle of the woods? Probably it is a lesser problem if you are alone and you don't intend to stay in the same place for a long time. But what if you need a safe, reliably, and a sanitary place to go in an area where you may spend several days with family and friends? Outhouse then becomes the answer and in this post, we will talk about how to build one. Let me first share a picture of the end product before we get lost in the details:

I must start by giving credit to some incredible people out there who gave me inspiration. As with most projects, I first educate myself on the topic by reading books, articles, blogs, and of course watching videos. The one that inspired and educated me most was this video by bushradical. But again, in most projects it is impractical to follow them to the t, as each situation is different from each other. Your soil type may be different, you may not have access to the same building materials, your needs could be a little different, etc. So while I got the idea from this and some other resources, I had to improvise it along the way.

Without further ado, let's get on with the build. First the dimensions. The external end to end dimensions of the outhouse was 1.5 m to 1 m (approximately 60" by 40"). The height is approximately 2.10 meters (82") at the front and slopes down to 1.90 m (75") at the back. Basically, we will build a frame using two by fours that follow these dimensions, sheet the exterior, and put a roof on it. But every project must start with a site preparation. And for a outhouse the most important preparation is leveling the ground and digging a hole. Here is a picture of this early work:

How deep should the hole be? The deeper the better of course. But digging a deep hole in rocky and root infested ground is no easy work. You can see from the picture above that the site was full of rocks and trees. So I think my hole reached about a depth of 80-90 cm -- no more than 3 feet. Not bad but if I had the energy and patience, I could have gone deeper. Not a big problem if the outhouse will not accommodate a heavy traffic.

Now that the hole is there, let's put two 2x4's to serve as the foundation.

Seems primitive at this point, but hey every project starts with something simple. You can see that I used some stones to level the base. Later I supported it with more stones and soil to make it more robust. Because, I didn't want to build everything on site to save time, I built the backwall of the outhouse in our garage at our house, which is about 1-hour away from the site. Attaching the backwall to the foundation was not too difficult with two diagonal braces and some strong nails:

By the way, I definitely suggest that you drill pilot holes if you are using long and thick nails, which you need for this project. I had several bent nails before starting to use pilot holes. Now, you can see that there is a horizontal beam on the backwall, which is about 40 cm (16") from the base. This will support the toilet seat. I came up with this height by measuring the toilet at our house -- which I assume to be roughly standart around the world.

At this point in the project, I had to call it a day as leveling the ground, digging the hole, and installing the back took better part of the day. I simply hoped that the structure wouldn't get blown down by winds as it was quite fragile at this point. Luckily, it didn't and I continued to the project from where I left off a couple of days later. What is a natural next step? To install the rest of the skeleton of course. Here is a picture of the front beams attached to the structure:

By the way, let me share a picture of the front of the property to show the view from the outhouse. 

Isn't it beautiful -- I may choose to drive 1 hour from home to get a restroom experience with this view in the future. Just kidding (but may be not). In the following picture, you can see that the rest of the skeleton is installed in place:

Pay attention to the diagonal beams for support and horizontal beams that are at the same height as the beam on the backwall for supporting the toilet seat. Now it is time to put a roof on this architectural masterpiece. I chose transparent onduline roofing to allow light into the outhouse. This way, there is no need to open a window:

I used nails with somewhat large flat heads to securely attach the roof. Also note that added cross-beam to prevent bending of the onduline roof. This concludes the framing and roof of our little outhouse. Now we need to do the flooring and the exterior. I am pretty sure I called this a day at this point and continued the rest of the project some other day.

The picture above shows the flooring done and part of the right wall finished. The flooring makes a 90 degree turn when it reaches the toilet area and then goes up. While hidden in this picture, there are two vertical supports in each side of the wall to support the weight of a person sitting and also to provide a nailing surface for the vertical part of the flooring. I hope I could explain it with this somewhat cryptic description. The following picture shows the right wall finished:

You see that in this project, I used the cheapest lumber possible. I am not sure what it is called -- perhaps rough cut lumber. It is certainly good enough for an outhouse in the middle of the woods and kind of gives it a nice rustic appearance. When using this kind of lumber, just make sure that all the pieces that are clear face toward inside and all the irregular one face outside. This will make it look better. I think this was the end of another day -- flooring and one wall complete. From inside, this kind of looks like a sauna:

What we are missing at this point is a toilet seat. I bought the cheapest one out there (around 8 dollars), and installed it on a base which I improved at home. Here is how it looks:

You can see that there two supporting beams at the edges. But what is occluded are two more supporting beams just to the sides of the toilet seat. These extra supports ensure that no one will wall in the hole while sitting on it. At least that is the idea. After building this elegant structure at home, I installed in its its place a couple of days later:

Now, we got ahead of ourselves. Let's take a few steps back and show you a very critical part of an outhouse. It is called the pee shield! Without it, urine will be absorbed by the raw wood and it will ensure that you have a smelly outhouse -- not something we would like I assume. So I actually installed a pee shield by cutting a plastic barrel and screwing it to the underside of the toilet as you can see in this picture:

This picture also nicely shows the supports underside of the toilet that I mentioned before. I guess the pee shield is self-explanatory so I am saving myself from further explaining how it works.

So at this point, more challenges are left in this project. All we have to do is cover up the other walls and install a door. Here is the finished product before it is painted:

I've used the same cheap rough cut lumber for all walls and the doors. As this lumber is somewhat heavy, I've used three hinges to support the door. I've also made a custom door stop as you see to the right of the door. By the way, remember that we need two door stops for an outhouse: one outside and one inside to lock it when you are inside. Anyways, these are kind of self-evident but I just wanted to mention in any case. As much as I like, the color of the raw lumber, it needs to be painted to preserve it against the elements. Here is the picture of the finished product after I painted it to a nice dark brown color:

Doesn't look too bad, I guess. I think this project took me about 5 or so visits to the site. So that's all folks -- an outhouse in the woods. We plan to use wood chips after we use the outhouse to absorb the smell and help the natural process of decomposing. I hope you enjoyed reading this post. All the best until the next one!