Building a hunting cabin that doubles as an emergency compound.

[Ferrari308]

I'm sure there are some hunters here who have small cabins in the woods when they go on vacation to hunt and fish.

Has anyone considered converting a hunting cabin into an emergency building where you could go if some disaster happened? What extra items would be needed to make a small cabin into a place you could live for a month or more?

I was thinking solar powered energy would be a cheap first step to make a cabin in a remote area more livable. I was looking, and a simple 40 watt solar panel and battery would cost less than $500. That should provide enough electricity to run a lightbulb, a radio and maybe some other small device. A 100 watt solar power pack would cost $1000, but could run bigger devices like a college sized refrigerator and television or maybe even a small 5,000 BTU air conditioner.

The next step would be to do something about human waste. I guess you could dig a hole and make an outhouse, but that is not a great solution. How hard would it be to make a modern style bathroom without any modern sewer lines? I guess you could dig a hole that goes away from the cabin, putting smaller crushed rocks at the bottom, and grade it so everything flows away. For a shower, it wouldn't be hard to put a 5 or 10 gallon drum on a 8 foot pole, and let gravity pull the water down through a small hole.

What could be done to a cabin in the middle of nowhere to make it as comfortable as possible?

 

[gazpacho]

Solar power AIN'T cheap. I've been looking at a solar setup for months now. for a survival setup, first of all you must forget about AC. Everything electric you use must be DC, because your panels will only produce DC and converting wastes energy. If you can, power nothing that has an electric motor or heating element.

For an example, lets look at the Sanyo SR-2570 2.5 cubic foot refridgerator. According to its energy guide it uses 303 KWH (kilowatt hours) per year. That's 830 watts per day. For our solar panel, lets use the Sanyo HIT200 200watt module ($1219). According to the spec sheet this module will produce 54.8 Volts and 3.47 Amps under good conditions. Without going into a lot of math (it gives me lots of headaches when I was figuring out systems) you are going to need at least 3 panels to get more than 120 volts to power your refridgerator. I don't even know how many panels you will need to get the correct amperage. Plus you will need a voltage regulator and DC to AC transformer, a good one unless you want tu burn out your fridge before the warranty expires.

The short answer is that solar AIN'T cheap. For a survival system, I would recommend a solar powered battery charger and lots of NiMH batteries in the sizes you need.

 

[ilbob]

I think you need to look at the Numbers on solar panels a little closer.

First off, you also need an inverter/charge control besides the battery(s) and solar panels themselves.

You also need unimpeded exposure to the sun for the panels to work. Most hunting cabins i have seen have a lot of shade and your results would be poor.

A 5000 BTU A/C runs at about 12 amps full load. You would need probably a 2000VA inverter (at least) to power it.

Depending on where you are, a solar panel gets only about 4-6 hours a day of effective sunlight (don't forget there are rainy days, and clouds, etc). Thus a 100 W solar panel on average will only produce about 600 watt-hours per day.

The A/C will use over 1000 watt-hours of stored electricity just to run one hour.

 

[Ferrari308]

These people claim a $1000 solar power unit can work a small refrigerator. They claim to be AC too, an all-in-one unit.

http://www.solar4power.com/solar-power-devices-2.html

They also have a smaller unit.

http://www.solar4power.com/solar-power-devices.html

I was thinking about buying something like that. I love to camp, and the smaller hand held unit might not be bad for tossing in the back of a jeep when going on a 4 or 5 day camping trip.

 

[cyanide]

I have what is called a bug out cabin/ hunting cabin

entrance

Diveway motion sensor

700 feet from the road

cell phone amp and antenna

It has a well
6250 watt generator
security cameras
220 gal. water tank tower type of deal


I looked hard and long at solar - it just don't work out -- period, unless you have a bunch of money to spend and I mean a bunch of money.

 

[ilbob]

For an example, lets look at the Sanyo SR-2570 2.5 cubic foot refridgerator. According to its energy guide it uses 303 KWH (kilowatt hours) per year. That's 830 watts per day. For our solar panel, lets use the Sanyo HIT200 200watt module ($1219). According to the spec sheet this module will produce 54.8 Volts and 3.47 Amps under good conditions. Without going into a lot of math (it gives me lots of headaches when I was figuring out systems) you are going to need at least 3 panels to get more than 120 volts to power your refrigerator. I don't even know how many panels you will need to get the correct amperage. Plus you will need a voltage regulator and DC to AC transformer, a good one unless you want tu burn out your fridge before the warranty expires.

A few things.

303 KWH per year is is 830 watt-hours per day. Energy is watt-hours (or KWH), power is watts or KW. A pet peeve of mine (I am an engineer).

There is no such thing as a dc to ac transformer. What you need is called an inverter. You do not put solar panels in series to make the required voltage. The inverter takes whatever voltage your panels puts out and converts the stored energy to 115VAC. Additional panels to get more power can be added in parallel. The charge controller keeps the battery from overcharging. usually on these type of systems you have a combined charge controller/inverter.

The inverter will put out as much amperage as needed (up to its ratings) as long as the battery system can keep up. I am guessing that this particular panel is designed for a 48VDC system, or three car batteries in series (although they are not actually car batteries - but close enough for this post).

However once you run out of stored energy, you are SOL until the next sunlight.

Any solar system gets to be very pricey. A LP fridge is much cheaper to operate and are fairly easy to come by. They are a bit tempermental, but are not dependent on the sun and expensive solar modules and electronics.

 

[Brass Fetcher]

Part of a good solar system is selecting the right sight to place the panelS (no shading, mount the panel at the optimum angle with respect to the ground). This optimum angle varies by your panels location on earth and the seasons. Tracking units are available that use a solenoid to rotate the panel such that it follows the sun during the day.

The attitude that alternative energy cannot replace the more traditional energy sources is ironic in that it might cause us to be entirely dependant upon alt. energy in these 'SHTF' scenarios, some day in the future.

FWIW, there are a number of alternative energy sources that usually work better than PV - direct solar conversion (IE the pool water heaters can also be used with a concentrator and a turbine to generate some unbelievable heat and pressure) or even wind turbines.

If anyone is interested, please PM me. I spent a year working with alternative energy sources and the possibilities are much greater than just PV panels. They want you to focus on PVs shortcomings and not the promise of the other technologies.

 

[ilbob]

PowerPac II AC/DC Power Unit (14.8"H x 15.6"W x 12.3"D) 60 lbs.
Handle extends to 38" and is removable - 8" wheels for easy pull-along and the base unit is also easy to pick up. Has dual 120VAC receptacles and a 12v lighter socket for 12 volt devices. Inverter: 1500w for 10 min./1350w *continuous and 3000w max. surge. 60Ah sealed battery. AC wall charger and 12v charger cord. (*Continuous based on battery capacity. The smaller the load the longer the run time.) Good Deal! $379
PowerPac II with 50 watt solar panel kit (Nominal 26" x 34" - 16 lbs.) with quality controller, simple wire connection kit and easy instructions. Better Deal! $899
PowerPac II with 100 watt solar panel kit (Nominal 58" x 26" - 26 lbs.) with quality controller, simple wire connection kit and easy instructions.

A 60 AH battery will store a grand total of about 720 watt-hours of electricity.

You can certainly run a small fridge off this type of setup, but not for long.

Even the 100W solar panel is unlikely to be able to keep this smallish battery pack charged up if you are running anything that uses any sgnificant amount of juice. If you got 6-8 hours of sun, you would only get 600-800 watt-hours per day of power out of a 100watt solar panel.

 

[Ferrari308]

cyanide, what kind of generator do you use? What will happen if there is no gasoline to power it? Do you have a back-up system in place?

My other thought was to use propane as an energy source. The ultimate goal would be to have two different energy sources, just in case one fails.

For example, could a solar panel be hooked up to a battery, and have a wind generator hooked up to charge the same battery? My thinking is, if it's windy and cloudy, the wind will give power. If it is a calm sunny day, the solar will give power?

PS cyanide, I love the third picture. It looks like you have a very scenic place. It is exatcly the kind of trails I love to hike in national forrests.

 

[cyanide]

cyanide, what kind of generator do you use? What will happen if there is no gasoline to power it? Do you have a back-up system in place?

My other thought was to use propane as an energy source. The ultimate goal would be to have two different energy sources, just in case one fails.

For example, could a solar panel be hooked up to a battery, and have a wind generator hooked up to charge the same battery? My thinking is, if it's windy and cloudy, the wind will give power. If it is a calm sunny day, the solar will give power?

PS cyanide, I love the third picture. It looks like you have a very scenic place. It is exactly the kind of trails I love to hike in national forrests.

Gas lanterns
kerosene lanterns
wood stove
I cook with wood on a wood grill outside most all the time


solar panels are expensive when you get to the sizes that work

then they get covered with bird poop , dust, dirt, leaves , snow -- and need cleaned almost every day.

Then you need a bank of batteries and I mean like a whole building of them

then you need special equipment to run off of direct current or convert it into AC current

man it is expensive and a pipe dream for most / it just isn't really feasable unless your out to prove a point and the heck with the cost.

 

[vynx]

Ferrarri308

I think the propane tank is a better idea once you get it filled it could last months depending on its size.

For the toilet - look around they sell small septic tank systems that you could bury yourself - I knew an old retired plumber that made his own out of plastic 55 gal. drums cut in half - probably not up to code.

What about a bicycle powered generator for lights and radio? Sort of like the hand crank flashlights and radios they sell but hooked to a stationary bike?

 

[cyanide]

http://www.sun-mar.com/

toliet I use

 

[badgerw]

Mister F -

I built such a structure in the Texas Hill Country a few years back. Here's a few things I had and/or learned along the way.

1. Water. Having your own well is almost a must. Having a reliable means to get water out of the well is right there with it. I had a 500 ft deep well that required a submersible pump and a fair amount of electricity to run the pump. I also had a 1500 gallon cistern to store the water from the well. If I had it to do over again, I would:

a. Use a solar jack pump.​

b. Mount the cistern on a tower so that I could gravity-feed water to the cabin. If the well goes off-line for a bit, no problems with water until you get it working again.​

2. Sewage disposal. I bought the property with a 500 gallon above-ground septic tank and a totally not-to-code leach field. I added a compoisting toilet. That worked well. Waste disposal is critical and solutions depend upon climate and terrain. YMMV one hell of a lot.

3. Power. The property had a 1000 gallon propane tank when I bought it. A propane generator sure helped during construction, as did a portable gasoline generator.

a. Solar and wind can help. I had both. Neither lends itself well to being absent from the property for long periods.​

b. If I had kept the place, I would have opted for a low-speed diesel generator and a big tank of fuel.​

I hope this helps.

Bill

 

[TeachMe]

+1 on the propane. I think you would have to put in a good amount of money and effort to have a stand-alone solar set-up.

 

[ilbob]

For example, could a solar panel be hooked up to a battery, and have a wind generator hooked up to charge the same battery? My thinking is, if it's windy and cloudy, the wind will give power. If it is a calm sunny day, the solar will give power?

A wind generator works pretty well and you can get 24/7 power in many cases. There are several big problems with them though.

There are still times of no wind. So you need batteries and they get expensive. I have heard believable estimates that it can cost as much as 50 cents a kW-hr to store electricity in a typical lead acid battery. And if you cycle the batteries closer to empty than full, you use a lot more of their useful life. And you still need a charge controller and inverter.

You have to find a place where the wind is not blocked by trees or other tall features.

They are moving parts that require some maintenance. I am told it is not too bad but you need a tower that folds down so you can work on it.

They can be VERY noisy. The ones I have heard would have chased away any game for ten miles in any direction. Not ideal for a hunting cabin, or a low profile site. I have heard the newer ones are much quieter.

An LP fired generator is probably the best choice. You can buy kits to convert gas generators to LP. The engine will last longer and LP is somewhat cheaper than gasoline and no road taxes. A 20# cylinder is about equivalent to 5 gallons of gasoline. You also avoid the smell of gasoline exhaust, and gasoline is more dangerous in some respects.

Diesel is another option but diesel does not store well (but better than gasoline).

 

[badgerw]

A few more thoughts...

If you have propane, you can heat water. Runoff from showers and such (gray water) can be handled a lot easier than water from toilets (black water). A pretty simple (inexpensive) septic system should do the trick.

I used to have a wood-fired hot water heater. I think it was made in Mexico. Kinda like this one.

If you go for solar / wind and storage batteries, I recommend you look at 12 volt DC fluorescents. You can buy them thru RV stores. If you go the 120 volt AC route, you face a lot of power losses in the inverter system.

Best of luck to you,

Bill

 

[joab]

I'm building one in my backyard, just for fun

Septic
55 gal drum septic tank that drains off to a single open chamber leach field.
$5 for the drum $35 for the chamber at Lowes. Only used for the toilet, shower and laundry drains to the vegetable garden.

Hot water system
old school roof mounted 3" PFC pipe system painted black

Heating (not totally necessary for me)
Surplus military multi fuel pot bellied stove $140

Power (haven't thought this out completely)
Deep cycle marine battery hooked up to vehicle sized power inverter
kept charged with small solar trickle charger, can be rapid recharged with vehicle. One set up for each electrical run

 

[hso]

Not too terribly long ago many Americans lived without electricity and the things it powers. The first thing most rural families put in was a refrigerator to help preserve food. The next was lighting to extend their work hours. Then water pumping capabilities.

Why was water the last thing to be electrified? Because if they didn't already have water they couldn't survive anyway and they already either had wells or clean sources of surface water.

This is your first priority. Without water you won't survive long. Shollow depth clean aquifers are what you should be looking for (even better a year round spring). A good stream with 100 ft. of head on your property would be great also. A 30 to 50 ft well can be "easily" hand pumped. 100 ft of head on a stream will allow a low head turbine to be run generating electricity. If the stream runs year round you have power year round. Mass storage in the form of battery banks allows demands to be balanced.

Those pictures look like the road into my father in law's place. He heats with wood, has a creek and spring, septic system and a power line that runs in to his place. We've discussed the idea that he could set up a DC system parallel to his primary AC system and feed it from alternate sources. He'd need a DC refrigerator and 12 volt lighting and he'd barely miss a beat.

 

[DWARREN123]

Give up on electricity, go primitive. A generator may help but what about fuel?
Outhouses have worked for a long time just use common sense in where you place it. Feces can be burned.
Smoke or dry meats, use things that can be stored without cooling too much. Think about a root or storage cellar.
Big thing is, will you be able to get to your hideout and can you protect it.

 

[foob]

If it is for when SHTF, which is rare, I think just do the basics. Not hard if you want to survive a month, unlike a nuclear fallout shelter.

- Can food, last for years. Eat cold or build a fire.
- Drinking water either stored in huge tank prior or live near well/river and have those survival tablets to purify, or just use fire.

That's it. If you need to **** just take a walk. You don't care about privacy/smell/pollution when SHTF.

 

[Ferrari308]

Give up on electricity, go primitive. A generator may help but what about fuel?
Outhouses have worked for a long time just use common sense in where you place it. Feces can be burned.
Smoke or dry meats, use things that can be stored without cooling too much. Think about a root or storage cellar.
Big thing is, will you be able to get to your hideout and can you protect it.

I dunno why I find these threads so much fun. I even had the itch back when I was in second grade and first read a book called "Box Car Children".

But you bring up a good point, now that we have a perfect hunting cabin which can double as an emergency hideout, how do we defend it? Do we fill up sandbags and place them around the outside of the cabin? Or would that be a dead give-away? Would it be better to dig the cabin 3 feet in the ground, or would that be a flood problem? Maybe the best and most inconspicuous solution is to add quarter inch steel inside the framing of the cabin. Or is a quarter inch of steel not enough to stop a rifle? We better make that a half inch of steel which goes up from the ground to three feet high. Just enough to provide cover. Maybe a good second feature would be a ladder from the inside of the cabin which leads to an escape hole in the roof. From there, we can tie a sturdy rope to a high tree with a good view. I hope you can all climb. Maybe we'll make it a rope ladder, so everyone can climb easier.

I wonder if there is any way to train the natural wildlife to be act as security detectors. Maybe if I feed and train some of the wild birds, they will chirp when a stranger comes along. I could spend many weeks working with the birds, all alone out in the wildreness.

LOL, I'm just kidding with most of this. I live very close to a large city which is always changing the alert status of what might happen. My thinking is to buy an acre or two of land somewhere 100 miles away, far enough away that I'll be safer.

What happenes when there is an accident or terrorism, and everyone is forced to flee. Think of Katrina, where most of those people ended up. If I lived in New Orleans, I would have been saved by having a camping site 100 miles north with primitive toilets and food stored up. It's better than being homeless when disasters strike.

Anyways, I'm enjoying this thread to no end. I love the imagination of how people can make a wildreness cabin more comfortable like a normal home. Maybe we don't need electricity, but it's nice to have some modern features.

 

[Ferrari308]

Oh, that is another idea... how about getting an old railroad cars, one of those big ones, and burrying that in the ground. How is that for a bunker? I wonder what Amtrack does with old railroad cars they no longer use. Some of them are two stories tall, with bathrooms built in. Running piping out to a septic tank should not be too difficult.

 

[gezzer]

I have beside modern convince the same as my Grandparents had. Hand Pump water, wood stove, composting toilet. We have the option also of gravity feed spring water that is enclosed and running at this time.

Trust me I like Hot water, lights etc., but as my childhood has shown me it is not needed. I have 50 gallons of K1 stored and protected. That will give light in my 100 year old lamps for a long time.

No refrigerator or freezer will hurt but canning will save most of our meat and veggies.

No TV and computer may actually be nice.

 

[Lucky]

My grandparents were really out of the way, and my mother too of course. My grandfather got Popular Mechanics or such (self-taught, btw) and installed a windmill and a lot ofl of salt-water batteries (not sure how they work, still) in the basement. They were the first people in the area to have electricity. Same with telephones.

As well as a root cellar, they had an ice house. Put a big block of ice in the house, and cover it with sawdust. It'll stay ice all summer, if you are careful about it (be quick with the doors and such). Of course northern Alberta summers aren't quite as hot or long as some, and the whole idea requires there to be winter.

 

[lawson]

a spring house is another way of keeping things cool if you want to go primitive. a small insulated outbuilding which is built over a spring of creek, or over a channel diverted from a creek. the cold water running through the room kept the interior temperature down, and more sensitive items like bottles of milk, jars of butter, and baskets of eggs can be kept in the water itself. a similar principle to tying your six-pack to a string and placing it in the river while fishing.

also, since the topic of defense was mentioned, if your cabin walls were built of actual solid logs, how thick would they need to be to stop powerful rifle rounds? i may have to take some logs out to the range and test penetration.

my grandpa had a very primitive cabin when i was younger. no electricity, heated with wood (fireplace in the living room, wood stove in the kitchen, army style oil drum fireplace/heaters in the bedrooms). he had an outhouse, and water was pumped from a nearby creek by HAND into a small raised tank for storage. lines gravity fed to the kitchen sink (an old plastic shop sink), which drained out to a barrel near his vegetable garden, which was down a gentle slope from the house. water was heated on the wood stove, and it was lit by lamps and candles. he even had an old crank powered radio that he rarely ever used.

nothing was fancy, and nothing ever failed. i spent many summers there when i was a kid, and after a while i didn't really miss electricity or modern conveniences. grandpa only had to drive his old International into town once or twice a month for supplies he couldn't produce himself. he produced his own corn, potatoes, apples, grapes, wine, moonshine (he was a good man, but not a saint ), eggs, and a garden of various vegetables which were canned. he kept beer, milk, and butter in the creek, in a metal crate set in a bed of rocks.

someday i hope to have a place like this to retire to.