Bush Crib

[Chet]

Submitted on the old forum by Puka

A couple of years ago me and a buddy brought some land down country as a hunting block and place we can go to get away from it all. Since hunting was becoming a dirty word in public circles and access was drying up, we wanted our own so brought 220 odd acres of bush. The place is crawling with wild goats and pigs, with the odd wabbit and smattering of possums. There was a pre made crib on site when we brought the place but I decided that when I was down there at the same time as my buddy then I needed my own place. The maximum sized building that you can build here and not need a building consent is 10 sqm. So I have designed two 10 sqm buildings to make up my bush crib. One building for the bedroom and one for the kitchen and dining. The dunny will be a composting toilet in an outside court yard where i will have the shower and a cast iron bath tub set up over an open fire. The building is setup right beside a creek, which unfortunately only flows in the winter time. Drys up completely in the stinking hot summer. But I'll be building a deck right up to the edge of it anyway. The enclosure around the shower and the bath tub will have some big doors that will open and allow views up the valley. The build so far is only foundations.              I've progressed a wee bit passed this stage but as of yet haven't down loaded the pictures out of the surveillance cameras I have setup over looking the site. I've had to brace all the wood due to the fact that if I didn't the sun would twist all the wood into pretzels before I could get it braced in the build.

   

  

 

Some extra photos of the block and a photo of the aerial picture. 
2nd pic across is where I'm building the crib, which is the first valley on the last pic, the 3rd pic across is looking down the 2nd valley on the last pic [or second down from the top], white dot on the left looking to the white dot on the right. 
The first pic above is looking across the second valley from about mid way along the ridge between the 2nd and 3rd valleys.
Square area of the block is approximately 222 acres.

ROADS . . . HIGHWAYS . . .what are these things you speak of?!?

Actually the Local Highway for the area is about 20k behind where the photo was taken. But if you were to look at it you'd probably just see a scungy local road in terms of the American highway system. The third photo has a road on it that will take you state highway 3 such that it is.

 

Another pic looking across from one ridge to another.

 

 

SELFIE. . .I remember when only loosers did selfies . . .which is why I feel like such a trend setter because back then it was the only way to get me and where I was in the same picture. Wasn't anyone else around the hold the damn camera.

 

 

This is me looking back up the back valley. Like I'm way way way up the back valley, as you can see the bottom of valley gets really V shaped ad is only about a bout a metre wide in places. There is also a creek running down it.

 

I'm back down on the land next week for the week so will take a bunch more work in progress pics. Hopefully by the end of the week it will be at a lock up stage. With a roof and stuff.

 

Well my report for last week is that the first two days were stupid hot so I stayed home and sweated my ring out there instead of going there and doing the same thing. I went down late Monday afternoon and got things sorted to start early Tuesday. 

 

Tuesday dawned overcast and it drizzled all day which suited me fine since it wasn't hot. I managed to get up the four wall frames for the crib. 

 

Wednesday it Pissed down so i went for a walk around the property to change out batteries and down load footage off my game cameras. After a comfort stop I tripped and ended up falling bare arsed into a Tree Nettle bush so that curtailed that. After a couple of hours I started to feel the effect of the Nettle Toxin so I drove to the nearest Hospital Emergency Room to get myself checked out [Basically that was a waste of time, petrol and money]. While I did suffer 30 seconds of the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in the areas that came in contact with the Nettle and 2 days of mild pins and needles in the skin nerves of my entire body, not just my bum, and groin area. Not to mention huge welts for each nettle pin prick, the welts only lasted about an hour. 

 

I came to the conclusion that for it to be really bad for me I'd need to do a lot of rolling around in said Nettle Tree before the symptoms became life threatening. Check this link if your interested.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtica_ferox

 

Anyway that kinda screwed things up for awhile as I didn't get a lot of sleep thereafter. 

 

Thursday was fine but windy so had trouble building anything that required balancing to hold in place since the wind would blow it around, then the generator stopped working so the drop saw was cut from the equation. Bugger using the hand saw to cut everything.

 

Friday I measured out, then dug and concreted in the 3 footings for the rear deck and roof support. Weather was over cast so not too hot. Also started my new plan to try and eradicate the Tree Nettle from the property. So went out and about with clippers and cut every one I could find at ground level so yeah! I managed to get the odd sting on hands and arms. Which wasn't quite as bad as getting my entire crotch covered in the stuff. But it was enough to kick start the pins and needles again so I figured that the Toxin from the previous event hadn't entirely been flushed from my system so I gave that up until me next visit.

 

Saturday. . .not a cloud in the sky and stupid hot again. Silly me I went for a walk up the middle ridge, behind the main hut to collect a couple of cameras and their backup solar panel. Basically a 200m climb up a steep narrow ridge goat trail to the top of the main ridge. Got to the top and discovered I'd left my water back at the hut. I was not having a good time so I decided then and there that I was going to pack up and leave. 

 

So I did. . .arrived home about 6 hours later. Sometime between when I left Taranaki and when I got home in the Waikato the pins and needles feeling finally vanished. YAYEEEEE!

 

 

 

The pic on the left shows the walls I did get erected, also shows the temporary deck at the front I got down so I could more easily walk around that side of the crib. I had to put joists down on the bearers that I'd bolted up last year.

 

The pic on the right shows the three posts that I concreted in for the rear deck and what the roof support posts will sit on. 

 

Luckily I'd taken the time last year to nail support strips to all the tall posts out the front. Only the posts at each end had suffered any twisting and only a we bit. The ones between were still straight up and down with no rotational twisting. 

 

I put my phone against the eye piece on my spotting scope. I spied these guys across the valley on the neighbors place just below the top of the ridge about 900m away. This is 60 x magnification. I have a phone attachment somewhere to do this properly, but not with me at the time. Objective lens on the spotting scope is 100mm [that is the big lens at the opposite end you look through]. 

 

Just add water. . . say about 6 and a half inches. 

 

Early Saturday morning NZ time we had a bit of a storm starting at around 6am, a bucket load of water fell in a vary short amount of time. Really big buckets. 

 

All that crap in the left picture came from the right photo. Luckily I wasn't parked further up the left end of the track. I had planned on coming out here Friday night but was delayed drilling holes in my steel brackets so came over Saturday after the storm. That little truck is my buddy's, it was he who discovered this little bit of slush, since when I arrived I got stuck into building my crib. I didn't come around to this valley till it was almost dark.

 

 

 

    

Didn't actually get a lot done on the crib, rained on and off Saturday afternoon. I put another post in the ground with quick crete. Bolted the rear deck bearers to each each set of posts plus the new one and now ready for joists. Need to buy the deck wood before I install the joists. Finished framing out the door way. Finished framing the end wall diagonals. The sloping bits at the end that fill the gap under the rafters. 

Discovered that my posts at the rear were 200mm too short so i was unable to lap joint and then bolt them to the piles. Which intern meant i was unable to do the rafters and purloins. Because to leave the roof hanging out 2 meters over the back wall in a high wind area without the pinning support underneath would have meant that the next time I showed up i would have found the roof somewhere up the valley. NOT ATTACHED TO THE CRIB ANYMORE.

While the rain was good in the fact that it filled all our empty tanks. It was crap in that it screwed up my weekend of building and weed spraying. 

It did clean out the creek that my crib was built beside so i can't complain too much about that. So many of pros and cons.

yip One road in, but my crib is not this far in. Its the valley before this one. The existing hut thats here is opposite these photos, which is where I stay while I build my place. Its where my buddy stays when hes down with his family. He's been doing all the work on the place so I have given it to him.

 

[That Kiwi Bloke]

[That Kiwi Bloke]

After the quarantine was lifted I went down for a 1/2 week and put the roof on. I met up with a mate down there who was going to help me but in the end he spent more time hunting than helping. Hence I did it all myself. I did hold the ladder so I could get off the roof when I was finished. The big white hunter shot a small deer and a pig for the freezer.

I went down a week later for three days with another mate and we did the walls and installed the door. I still need to finish the walls around the top of the ply and cut out and install the windows. But with the roof on and walls so far the inside should now be dry. 

[That Kiwi Bloke]

On a side note here. The NZ government POST COVID-19 decided that in the interests of speeding up the Building Consent (BC) process (Because its really bogged down with a stupid amount of small jobs). They would up the size of the minimum building that needs a BC. Buildings would still need to be designed to specification and would need inspections by a qualified practitioner etc...but anyone with half a brain should be able to design and build something small that is to code.

Any. . .who I have decided that my second building will be bigger [luckily I haven. Instead of 2.8m wide and 3.6m long its now going to be 2.8m wide and 6m long. Which will at the end of the day save me a whole lot of wastage from trimmed off foundation would. 6m is a standard length as well so less cutting.

Minimum building size is now 30 sqm and you can also build a green house up to 40 sqm. These buildings cover garages and carports, sleep outs, garden sheds etc. . .So long as they aren't plumbed. If plumbing is added then a BC will be needed for sure.

So technically I should be doing that for mine buts its off grid and out in the wops, so as far as the authorities are concerned they can stick their BC where the sun don't shine.

 

 

 

[Coop]

Bloke, are cribs a place to stay when you are on your property? 

[That Kiwi Bloke]

That sounds just so wrong when you say Bloke. The word is a description of something not a name of a thing [or something like that].  In this instance its describing me as a male. I could have said. THAT KIWI MALE or THAT KIWI MAN. Now if I were in your shoes for this instance I would have gone with the word before Bloke and asked the question like this. "Kiwi, are cribs a place to put your feet up at the end of a hard day doing not a lot of anything?" 

I would then reply yes mate a crib is another word for a Batch or Cabin or something along those lines. I think you Yankies call them a Cabin in the Woods. Or something weird like that.

Or is Yanky just a name for some one from New York?

Anywho. . . probably doesn't make a lot of difference to you but for instance if you were to treat the word THAT and BLOKE as the same sort of thing and the redo the question using THAT instead of Bloke. Would that read as weird to you as it does for me. ie THAT, are cribs....etc... Because to me that's how it would me and when you started that question with Bloke. OOOOORRRR you could have just dropped the "THAT" and gone with "KIWI BLOKE" ie "Kiwi bloke, are cribs . . .

Just don't do BLOKE on its own otherwise I might have to start calling you Co Op.

If I'd been running when I first read it, I would have LIKE tripped over and landed on my donkey. It was kinda LIKE smelling wet road kill. . . LIKE how it sort of catches in your throat and is hard to breath.

If that makes sense. . . on the other hand if you haven't smelt fresh wet road kill then your lucky or you just haven't gotten out there enough [What I mean is a freshly minced possum that's been flattened by a couple trucks and then its rained, the meat hasn't started to decompose yet but with the rawness and the wet combined it has created a very unique bouquet ].

[Coop]

Now I have a dozen or so issues to address in a thousand words or less. 

1) Your name on here is That Kiwi Bloke. To shorten it, I just used Bloke, not knowing the protocol. We have some limited amount of folks in the states that it’s alright if they call themselves certain words but others shouldn’t. 

2) Yankee definition;  a) Informal - Derogatory, a person who lives in or is from, the US.    b) Informal - US, an inhabitant of New England or one of the northern states. 

3) Crib - A containment surrounded by slats where a baby lives and cries and wants for mamma’s ninny! 

4) Batch or Cabin - in Texas, we call them ranch houses and in most cases they usually larger and nicer than our initial homes. 

I am betting ( the act of gambling money on the outcome of a race, game, or other unpredictable event), that your reply was meant to be lighthearted and if so, consider mine as well. 

[Kev]

That's the problems with slang from different countries.  

 

[That Kiwi Bloke]

So I have been busy doing other stuff and haven't been on here in like a million years. So yeah to what Kevin said. Back in the day when [KBA]_TIODS and I a.k.a [KBA]_KIWI were playing that GAME. I was talking to this other bloke (from another clan) while we were murdering red dots. Well talking is probably not the precise word since back in those days it wasn't Discord or even Team Speak. But I think we chatted via in game text. But anyway. . . I was at the time playing with this other chap who lived in a city in some place called TEXAS. No idea what we ere talking about but I called him a PUNK. He immediately stopped talking to me, dropped me from the group and flew away. Landed his space ship in the nearest station and dropped out of game. SAY LIKE WHAT THE F?!?!

Took him about a week to cool down enough to talk to me again. To me a punk is an English guy (UK) dressed in leathers, studs, and other facial jewellery, big pink Mohawk and a few assorted tats. A perfect example is Vivian off the English TV series "THE YOUNG ONES".

So apparently a Texan Punk is whole different kettle of fish to the original English Punk Rocker or Punk for short, you probably have a better idea than I do. But he said I'd called him a Prison bum Monkey or something like that. It was then a rather interesting conversation on slang. Kind of like what we could have now now. It stuck in my mind like, back then until now. It was about then that I discovered that this particular chap was incredibly easy to offend. Like when I said he wasn't a real Southerner because he lived north of the equator and I was more of a Southerner than he because I lived on a Subtropical Island in the SOUTHERN Pacific Ocean way down SOUTH of the equator. Even further SOUHTER than Australia. I think that time he took the letter box as well as the fence. . .when he went away all grumpy puss.

 

But anyway....all comments are in jest. Nothing is to be taken seriously unless you want to take it serious. If you do wish to then you can take it up with my press release representative. . .

 

I think I read in some dictionary that Yankee was a New Yorker or something. Don't you guys have a footy team called the Yankees?

 

Anyway Why don't we just play this one by ear.

 

 

 

[That Kiwi Bloke]

So I got another window in and put the final cladding on the e nd outside wall. Should stop the prevailing storm wind blowing moisture through the cracks in the plywood. I also moved some fire wood from down at the road end up to the main hut.

[Coop]

I think you and I could be buds, once we understood each other? No offense taken and no offense meant! 

So what the hell is a crib used for? Something a bit smaller here would be considered a deer stand (for shooting) and something a bit larger would be a camp house to snooze. 

[That Kiwi Bloke]

I'm seriously serious here. And I feel I have taken the fence , the gate AND the letter box. When the planetary quarantine has lifted I'm coming to America and I'm gonna hunt you down and buy you a beer. 

?

and the Tui Beer add would say.....Yeah Right!

As stated earlier in my piece. The maximum size [at the time of that writing] for a building of any sort that didn't need a Building Consent was 10 square metres. I decided that to get what I wanted I could easily build myself a couple of 10sqm buildings to do the job of one building. Incidentally after this COVID thing...the NZ government decided that to speed up BC's they were going to increase the minimum size to 30sqm. Which means making a bush hut/shack/batch/crib/cabin so much better. I'm however committed to my two 10sqm mansions. The above mentioned size increase comes with a lot of fish hooks. Namely that the work still has to comply with the building code, has to be inspected by and signed off by a competent registered building practitioner type person etc...the building can't have plumbing, like a kitchen or shower or any other sort of stuff.

So basically I'm going to break all the rules and do it my way. But I am going to build it to the NZ building code because I want the building to last and not fall over. Costs way to much to be stupid about it. I want it to be warm in the shitty cold windy wet winter and cool in the stupid hot and dry summer.

Cribs can be about any size to be honest and frank. I'll see if i can get some more pictures of some typical kiwi examples.

 

You know...I thought Ranch was something you sprinkled on your wabbit food.

"So what the hell is a crib used for?"  Its a Tiny house. . .for babies man.

NO...its a tiny house for me. Small is beautiful. Imagine not having to walk a marathon to go from the kitchen to the dining room to the lounge to the bedroom. Modern house are so stupidly big these days, designed to have heaps of empty room that make you go out and buy crap you don't need to fill up all that space. Just look at my house, most of the rooms are full of junk i haven't used in years, that I don't want to get rid of in case I decide that I might use it.

Don't need a big place down at the bush block. Just need a bench to cook my food at and place to sit down and eat it. Small spaces are more easily warmed up and easier to maintain. The Bedroom will be the same size, so just big enough for the bed and place to store some clothes and so forth.

The bathroom will be outside in an enclosed area out of the wind. Composting toilet. Basic Gas water heater shower. Going to go shopping in RV / Marine shops for the smaller compact appliances.

Going to have an old cast iron bath set up over a fire for those really shitty nights were getting boiled alive is preferable than turning to a block of ice when outside. Not that it gets that cold there. Not even sure if it has ever snowed in the area. Might be a bit too far north for that. Mount Taranaki which is a Volcanoe south of my place by a 100 k or so is covered in snow year round.

And being out in the middle of no where I can easily spend my days there in my birthday suit letting it all hang out and not worry about scaring anyone with my ugly fat white body.

?

. . . .