Building a leaf house

This was a project that I did when I was bored on Saturday be warned it take a lot of your day. If you were in a wilderness situation this would work perfectly.

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Step 1: Ingredients

1.LOTS of leaves
2,sticks
3,cardboard
4, a tarp
Card board works better but if you dont have enough a tarp will work but not as well.

ihaveguitarskills! says: May 10, 2013. 8:41 PM

We don't have wild cardboard growing where I live :(

cdncycler says: Dec 15, 2012. 10:22 PM

Waxed cardboard would be a extra bonus. Doing this project in late fall when the snow first comes down and stays...the combo of leaves and snow makes great insulation. The more snow the better....also put a flap door on the front....

maboy says: Nov 21, 2012. 2:58 PM

I made something like this between a clump of trees in my backyard. I put a bunch of equal length vertical sticks together to form the walls between the trees, and stuffed the spaces in between with leaves.

valkgurl says: Nov 15, 2012. 8:00 PM

Some local group built a bunch of these here in a park--surrisingly simple and surprisingly clever to disguise also. They seemed to last for a while even tho they were not maintained. I don;t know how long they took to build total but there was no cardboard and the leaves seemed to cling together like velcro. Lots of oak and long needle pine and sugar maple piled on sticks and twigs. Build your frame of larger pole branches and weave or layer in smaller brushy branches or pine boughs and then add leaves and needles. You can also make lean to types with just pine boughs leaned at a slant to shed water --place a pole between two other poles; trees; boulders etc and make layers of pine boughs. You can also use sheets of birchbark. And you can make beds of pine boughs too.

tim_n says: Oct 31, 2012. 5:54 AM

Usually when I've made these properly, you need to find a branch which is your length + 1 foot, then prop it up with two sticks at one end (the entrance) and lay sticks down its length. Build up the leaves over the sticks until they're 1-2 ft deep all round leaving the entrance clear.

Take an ember from a fire and drop it into wet grass and leaves, roll it up so it smoulders and smokes.

Put into your shelter, this will drive out the beasties.

It takes a good 4-5 hours of suprisingly hard graft, but the result will be waterproof and warm. You also don't need cardboard.