Pallet house

[mark_chenail]

Anyone familiar with the Homesteading mentality knows that used wooden pallets are the basis of all sorts of simple projects and though most of them serve the purpose, most dont qualify as improvements to the landscape.   However heres a link to a lady who built a chicken coop out of pallets that is positively palatial from a chickens view point and would certainly be acceptable shelter for a human being.  Her framing methods are a bit unorthodox but you have to give her points for making do with the materials at hand.

http://backyardchickens.com/coops/pallet-coop.html

[Sassy]

What a great story!  Very resourceful...  8-)

[FrankInWI]

Talk about can do attitude!  What a lady!  We didn't know it, but we were pretty poor growing up.  My dad did incredible things with cast off items.  He was a carpenter for a hardware store chain and our Christmas was from the returned/broken toys to the store warehouse, which he repaired.
Our house was over a 100 years old when he bought it in the 50s.  He decided to go modern later in the 50s and put a cement floor over the dirt floor in the basement.  His poor sons (my borhter and I) passed many a buckets of cement through the basement windows to him!
When it was time to build a garage..... new material was out of the question.  He like this lady, built it out of pallets. It turned out to be a great garage.  When I was 13 he died suddenly.  I was a pretty hot punk then.  Well, I got a 66 Caddy Convertible was way too long for that garage.  One of the first times I probably ever picked up a circular saw was to cut a large section of the front walll out of the garage out so the nose of the red Cadillac could stick out.   He would have bopped me and should have!!

[mark_chenail]

I think a lot of times people are a bit stifled by the idea of "conventional building methods."   Sure 16" centers for framing makes sense if you are using 4x8 sheet goods, but it obviously wont work if you only have 6 foot boards that you dont want to have to cut or dont have a saw.  And lord knows we have all come across some scabbed together framing in old houses that have certainly stood the test of time.  What amazed me is that she took 200 pallets apart before she even started building and that the only lumber she bought was the ridge beam and the fascia boards.  I wonder if she saved all the nails from the pallets and reused them.  Common practice in the 18th c when nails were made by hand.
yeah you got to give the lady her dues.

[jraabe]

What a great little website. Back Yard Chickens - there's a niche!

Looks like they have an active forum community too!

PS - Just signed up and posted a link back here on their website. Maybe we'll learn something about chickens!   The BYC website does have a gallery of chicken coops- some of them fancier than my house.

[jraabe]

One of the concerns that you have using pallets (Judy mentions it in her follow-up), is that there is not a great deal of rigidity as all the joints (boards and studs) fall on the same line making them more like stacked boxes than a framed and sheathed structural wall.

That might be plenty good enough for a chicken coop but something more substantial could be built by reinforcing the pallet walls with diagonal braces from corner to corner. What to use? Well, on the outside you could use a couple of rolls of metal "strapping tape" or heavy nylon strapping tape. Nail this into every stud you can find running from one diagonal corner to the other. On the inside you could run boards diagonally across the pallet frames and this will substantially strengthen the walls.

[Robert_Flowers]

Mark_Chenail

I wonder if she saved all the nails from the pallets and reused them

When i was out of school on wednesday my dad and i would go to Robins Air Force Base to the base dump and get shipping crates and lumber they charged $5.00 for a truck load he would have it piled up high over the cab when we got home it was my job to drive the nails back and pull them out he had a short railroad iron i would strighten them and put them in coffee cans.
When he passed away there must have been 50 coffee cans full rusty nails.

When i was younger i hated doing that but now when i bend a nail i pull it out and look at it if its not too bad i strighten and drive it back in. I never though about doing that before i guess i do it because my dad did it that way.

Thanks Mark for showing me that there is a little more of me dad in me than i knew.

Robert

[glenn-k]

Very impressive recycling project.  

[Freeholdfarm]

Notice this lady's age, too!  She's no spring chicken!  Yet she did it, with only a little help from her husband (I suspect he was ashamed of himself after seeing all the work she was putting into it, and that she was doing a nice job, too!)!  That's an inspiring story to post!

Kathleen

[Judy]

This is the ole gal herself (Judy), and I appreciate all the comments about my coop.  I just can't keep still about a couple things, tho.  ( you know us women and our mouths!)    Someone noted about that nailing the short boards together  would be sort of like stacking them, which I myself said wouldn't be as strong as using longer boards on the walls.  And they noted that one could use the roll metal to stabilize, going top corner to bottom corner opposite.  I might note that in my writing, I said I HAD stabilized it this way.  And what I used is this very type roll metal.  I used it on the inside, then put the plyboard "paneling" over it, which should stabilize it more.    Then, wanted to mention the roofing boards, and floor boards.  I staggered them, so that every other board ended on different floor joists or rafters, so this should strengthen the floor and roof more.  H opefully it will all hold together.   :-/

[Sassy]

Welcome, Judy!  I think we are ALL impressed with the chicken coop & the use of the free resources you had access to.  I read your blog - very interesting - haven't gone to the other site about the chickens.  Well, one of these days I'll have to go ahead & start building some stuff myself instead of waiting for my DH to do it.  

[glenn-k]

Welcome , ol' gal Judy.  That was a great project and I don't have any worries about it falling apart.  I was really surprised at how well it came out for what you had to work with.  My chickens should be so lucky.  Of course their pen is buried half underground - on the back anyway.  

A bear broke into our pen 2 times - guess I didn't build it strong enough.  The third night the bear came back it's luck sort of ran out. :-/

[John Raabe]

Welcome Judy:

Thanks for the update. I hadn't realized you had already done the corner to corner bracing I was imagining. Great minds travel in the same direction, I guess!  

And adding the paneling adds even more racking resistance.

You have built a very inventive structure there and adjusted to your materials as it evolved. I notice that the BYC gallery has some pretty fancy coops. I think your approach is a better use of materials and the limited time we all have to work with.

Keep up your fine work, we and the chickens applaud you.  

John

[glenn kangiser]

Be sure to reinforce your chicken house against these newly discovered hazards.

Where did my chickens go??? :-?

[Judy]

Thanks, John.    Glenn, I plan to keep my chickens away from the cattle barn.  LOL  That was some story.  By the way, why is your coop half buried in the ground??  

[glenn kangiser]

I am a troglodyte.  See here for an explanation.

http://www.countryplans.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1107141843

I am on a hillside and ridge so it is easier to get a flat spot if I dig a hole in the hillside.

I had a covered pen outside but bears, coons and coyotes kept breaking in so I locked the two remaining chickens in after I shot the bear and the coyote last.  Still lots more of each around here but coyotes and coons are worst.

[Amanda_931]

It looked so neat and clean.  And you had thought structure out very carefully.

We used to be able to get--not the pallets (which were reused) but the support boards on top of them--from tractor trailer fiberglass roofs coming to the truck assembly plant.  But that was pine rough cut at 3/4 of an inch.  We all did make things out of them, but if there was a knot, you could break even a short board across your knee.

I don't think we've got bears, but coons and occasional possums, not to mention the coyotes do a fair amount of damage.  Although a friend swears that even a miniature donkey will scare the coyotes away from the chicken coops.

Cows just get out of their pastures and graze by the side of the road.

I swear I saw a red wolf here once.

[BassLakeBucki]

My parents and grandparents were from eastern Europe and we all lived together in one house. As a kid, when my parents were at work, my grandfather would "entertain" me with building projects. These were always built with scavenged materials. He had retired from a furniture factory where he had accumulated jars and jars of bent discarded nails. When we needed nails, we would dig through the jars, pull what we needed and then straighten them. He would never think of buying materials if he could make something work from what we had. He worked only with hand tools, it was a big day when he and I went out and bought an electric drill!

I learned a lot from him and inherited his love of tinkering and fixing things (no wonder there is no more room in my garage). The patience and creativity that generation had! Necessity, I guess. I still have his tools as well as my dads, my most prized possesions. Hopefully my kids will appreciate the three generations of tools they will inherit!

[desdawg]

Sounds like a man after my own heart. We live in a throw away world so the scavanger/salvager has lots of good stuff to draw from.

[Judy]

I Have to confess to not using the nails I got out of the pallets.  They are put together with  ?? Screws nails ?? or spiral shaped nails, and believe me, they are real bearcats to get out.  They are usually in pretty bad shape by the time I get them out.    Have to really pound with a big hammer to get the pallets apart.  
Since making the chicken house, I have made, with help from hubby, 3 chicken coops, each about 3 1/2 feet deep and 7 1/2 ft. long, sitting on legs about 2 ft off the ground, so the chickens can get under them for shade, if they want. Each is in it's own pen, also, so I can have some different breeds.  We also have made 2 double adrondiac (sp?) rocking yard chairs, and several dog houses for friends who needed them.  

[glenn-k]

Looks like we'll have to forgive you for the nails, Judy.

[MountainDon]

?? Screws nails ?? or spiral shaped nails, and believe me, they are real bearcats to get out.  They are usually in pretty bad shape by the time I get them out.    

That's why they are so good to build with!   They are definitly not easy to re-use.

[glenn-k]

They are my favorite nail gun nails - them or ring shanks - about 10 times the hold power.  If I wanted them to come out I would use standard nails.