BUILDING SMALL HOUSES. 



17 



runs all across, in which latter case it may perhaps 

 comprise all the run which can be afforded. The 

 shed should be boarded up a foot from the 

 ground and netted above, that the few birds may- 

 be confined in specially wet weather ; and the 

 roof over all should project a little in front and 

 have a gutter. A house four feet square would 

 really answer, but this would hardly give enough 

 shelter-depth to the shed, which will be far 

 better six feet to the back ; hence a small house 

 may part off four feet wide from such a shed. 

 Six feet is also best because most ordinary 

 planks and timbers are twelve feet long, which 

 will cut up without waste. 



Building such a small affair is very easy. If 

 there is a back wall the matter is simplified. 



Quartering (2x3 timber) should be 

 Building used for frame and uprights, and not 



Small Houses, less than |-incb for the boards. The 



back uprights should be clinched to 

 the wall by staynails or holdfasts, and a horizon- 

 tal piece of same section similarly fastened to the 

 wall to support the back of the roof The bottoms 

 of other uprights can be tarred and sunk in the 

 ground ; but it is better to lay horizontal sills 

 of quartering either on the ground or, still 

 better, upon a " footing " made by a row or two 

 rows of bricks laid side by side. Then halve or 

 mortise all the uprights into the sills. There 

 must be an upright at the corner of the house, 

 and for a door-post, and at the gate in the shed, 

 and its corner, and wherever else needed for 

 strength. A horizontal timber will run all along 

 the top of the front, and on to this and the back 

 piece on the wall the rafters will be spiked down. 

 The boards may be either tongued, or caulked 

 by driving string into the chinks, or laths tacked 

 over the latter. Tongued boards are best, and 

 look neatest. The door must fit well, or rather, 

 should be made so as to lap over the timbers all 

 round. 



For the walls, single-tongued boards are 

 sufficient in ordinary climates. When more 

 warmth and shelter are necessary, roofing felt 

 may be tacked on outside and tarred, or what is 

 probably best of all, an inner skin of thinner 

 tongued boards may be nailed on to the inside 

 of the frame-work timbers, leaving an air-space 

 between. This is a very snug and warm and neat 

 plan. There is a similar variety in regard to 

 roofing. Loose tiles will give absolutely free 

 ventilation, but will be, in many places, too cold 

 for profit, though they will suffice for at least 

 southern England. Galvanised iron is quite as 

 cold, and does not ventilate, having, therefore, 

 no merit at all beyond durability. Either of 

 these, however, ceiled with thin match-boarding 

 nailed under the rafters, is a warm and good 



roofing. Wood alone also makes a good roof. 

 Feather-edge boards may be overlapped hori- 

 zontally, and tarred periodically, or thicker 

 boards, tongued or plain, may be laid edge to 

 edge from the highest point to the eaves. This 

 should be coated with hot gas tar in which a 

 pound of pitch to the gallon is dissolved. Or 

 the wood may be tarred, then covered with thick 

 brown paper tacked down, and again tarred ; or 

 calico will be still better. Or the wood may be 

 covered with roofing felt, or roofing paper, tarred 

 annually. It cannot be too widely known, if 

 durability be desired, that wood alone is use- 

 less for the roofs of poultry-houses in this 

 country, since the best material will in time, 

 owing to the effects of rain and sun, commence 

 to warp, with the result that the wet, per- 

 colating the boards and dripping on to the 

 litter on the floor, will soon make it unfit as 

 bedding for fowls. Roofing-felt of some kind 

 is essential, and, moreover, is cheap. 



We come next to the floor of house and 

 shed. Fowls will stand activity over wet runs, 



on which they only walk at their 

 Flooring of choice ; but cannot be kept success- 

 Shsd. fully in confinement for long, if the 



floor and walls of the house, and 

 floor of the shed on which they depend for 

 shelter, be not dry. However damp the ground, 

 this can almost always be effected by digging 

 and taking away till hard earth be reached, then 

 putting on a layer of broken bricks, or stones, 

 or clinkers, from one to two feet deep, in any 

 case enough to raise the level six inches above 

 the ground, and on this a layer of concrete 

 made of hot fresh-slaked brown lime, and 

 gravel or pounded clinkers. Sometimes it is 

 better to use a dry mi.xture of quicklime 

 pounded, gravel, and tar, the smell of which 

 repels rats and mice. If there is definite cause 

 to dread rats, however, it is worth while to lay 

 small-mesh wire netting over the beaten-down 

 surface of the drainage material, and below the 

 concrete, and to carry it a foot up all the walls. 

 A shed thus floored, and with the roof well pro- 

 jecting, and boarded up a foot or more, will be 

 nice and dry. On the hard floor can be placed 

 cither dry earth, peat moss, road-sweepings, 

 chaff-dust, oat husks or straw, to be periodic- 

 ally removed when contaminated. 



On good, dry soil all this is not necessary. 

 Mere trodden earth will, in that case, do for the 

 house, and also for the floor of the shed ; but in 

 the shed some inches of earth should first be 

 removed, to be returned in a loose state, after 

 the subsoil has been levelled, and smoothed, and 

 rammed down to a hard, permanent floor. This 

 is the proper way to keep a shed — and especially 



