If you are going to camp for a long time or want to build a permanent base camp, making continues improvements is both useful and fun. As you develop the campsite your day to day activities such as cleaning and making food will be easier, you will sleep better and the risk of accidents will reduce.
When you arrive at the campsite on the first day, start by building the campsite for the night. For details what you need for the first night click here.
When you spend a long time in one place it is important to have a good living area, with shelter from moist, wind and rain but also have a stable temperature. It should protect you from bugs and small animals as well as provide you with the ability to do what you need to do in a day without problems. This will tremendously improve your experience of living outdoors.
When spending extended time outdoors it is important to know that you will be impossible to finish building everything you need in one go. Instead you will be moving from project to project as weather, raw materials and time allow you. A campsite when being improved need to target to full fill everything you usually got covered at home and close by.
Priority list for improvements of a campsite, within brackets is the related or similar function in your home or neighbourhood.
- Sleeping place (bed)
- Latrine (toilet)
- Personal hygiene (wash room)
- Water and food storage (pantry)
- Cooking place (kitchen)
- Smoke site (freezer)
- Waste site (garbage bin)
- Laundry site (laundry room)
- Butchering site (store)
The Shelter
The first thing you must start to improve is your sleeping place. Sleep is needed to have the energy to do everything else you need to do, including get more food and water. A lack of sleep makes us more prone to have accidents, get sick or just not have energy enough to do what is needed to be done.
Tent
If you are planing to use a tent as your sleeping place there is several improvements you can do to increase the comfort in the tent.
- Dig a sleeping hole below the tent. Even if your tent got a solid tarp it is still a good idea to dig a hole underneath the tarp where your sleeping place is. Then use the tent tarp to cover the hole and put the top layers inside the tent.
- Make a ditch around the tent to prevent rainwater to flow into the tent. Make sure you provide the ditch with an outlet which is oriented away from the rest of your campsite to avoid creating more mud than needed.
- Put a layer of dirt on the bottom edge of the tent canvas to make it more air tight and less prone to create drafts inside the tent.
- Put up a tarp above your tent, making sure it do not risk touching the tent canvas anywhere. This provides extra protection against rain, sun and morning dew/frost. It also helps to regulate the temperature inside the tent to be more even over the day.
- You can also in time build a wind shelter from branches and twigs around your tent to better manage bad weather.
Wind shelter
In principle a wind shelter is a sloping roof with walls on the sides and the opening facing the fireplace. Always try to place the opening on a wind shelter in the direction that wind usually not blow from. Also do not make the wind shelter to high as it will be harder to heat up and remain warm, smoke will also easier enter and remain in the shelter if it is to high.
The fireplace should be located in front of the wind shelter in such a fashion that it is no risk that the flames will reach the shelter, while also not making it to difficult to enter or leave. Over time a reflector could be built on the opposite side of the wind shelter and the fireplace, helping to protect against the wind and reflecting the heat from the fireplace into the wind shelter.
If there is several people in the camp you could build two wind shelters facing each other or shaped like an L to save on the building materials.
The size of the wind shelter, the distance between the fireplace, shelter and the reflector are all depending on if the fireplace should be used for cooking food on or not. If only for heat and light the shelters and fireplace can be close together but if you plan to cook food over the fire then the distance need to be larger. When cooking food over an fire you need more space around it to move around on and place things without tripping on them and others.
Hut
When you are staying for a long time in the same place it might be a good idea to build your wind shelter into a hut. The simplest way to do this is to extend the walls on the side of the wind shelter and then connect them together, leaving a space for a door. Then put a roof on the walled in space with enough space so you can stand straight in it. Also remember to make a hole to let out the smoke from the campfire. Preferably close to the highest point of the roof but not straight above the fireplace. If a straight roof been made put the smoke hole close to one of the side walls, preferably the one you plan to walk the least around at.
Latrine
If you are several people in the campsite it is usually preferred to have a secluded and insight protected spot as latrine. To be able to be in peace and handle your needs as well as not having to see other do theirs is always preferred.
Something to sit on and that is able to keep bugs and small animals away from the results at the bottom is good to put together. Walls with the opening turned away from the campsite and a roof to protect from rain and wind is preferred.
The latrine itself should be a hole about 50 cm deep if possible. Make sure that all the dug up earth is piled up next to the hole so you can easily take parts of it and cover any results from your visit. If you stay long at a campsite also bring over ash from the campfire and put in a separate pile next to the dirt. Then mix the two when you cover up the results of your latest visit.
Personal hygiene
On the way from the latrine but before you enter the campsite is a good place to build a hygiene site. Here you wash yourself clean and perhaps build a field shower or even a bath hole.
You will need a basin, waste pit and a cover to hide behind when you wash your body. A layer of spruce twigs on the ground will protect your feet from any water you spill on the ground and the mud it will result in.
Food, water and wood storage
To be filled*
Cooking place
If you are alone you could manage with just using the fireplace outside your sleeping place. But if you are going to stay in the same place for a long time or there is several of you camping together a dedicated cooking place is needed.
The space around the campfire is usually to small to not be crowded if you need to both make food and stay warm. There is a very large risk to spill food which will attract animals and bugs. So it is better to build a separate cooking place that you adjust to be comfortable and safe to use.
One thing to be aware of is that a dedicated cooking place require quite a lot of things, a separate fire, wood, stone, rope and other resources. If you are not going to stay for an extended time at the site, resources are limited or any other complicating factor it might still be better to use the campfire. Just make sure to keep the campfire clean from any food waste, it is not that fun to share your sleeping bag with a hungry rat looking for food.
Tripod
The first thing you need to create a dedicated cooking place is a tripod where you can hang pots over fire to easier regulate the temperature.
Camp stove
A correctly built camp stove that you can stand and work at simplifies the work a lot when cooking food. It is basically four or more large wooden poles that been driven into the ground from where you tie several long, thin shrub trees together into a bench. On the bench you then add a layer of sand, gravel, clay and similar materials that do not burn. On top of this you build a fireplace with rocks and possibly a grid to create your stove.
Start low when creating the bench, the stow quickly grow in height and the pots and utensils maximum height should be waist height of the shortest person that will cook in the camp. The grid must be very stable to avoid having accidents such as a pot full of boiling water falling over you.
Regularly check that the bench below is not affected by the heat from the stove. If it looks to be affected or you are unsure, remove the fireplace and the protective layer. Drench the wood in water and then add a thicker layer of non-burning material and rebuild the campfire on top.
To the camp stove there should also be space for other things than just the fire. Make sure there is space for pots, cutting boards and food storage. Also make sure there is a easy way to move waste from the cooking place and keep the area clean if not in use.
Smoker
If you want to be able to stock and store food over time, a smoker is a good idea to build. For more information on how to smoke food click here.
Temporary smoker
The easiest smoker to build outdoors is a simple hot smoker. Then you just put thin slices of what you wish to smoke on a grid, put the material you wish to use to create smoke with on ember from the fireplace and then put the grid on top. You then let the hot smoke pass through the food you want to smoke until they are done.
A slight more advance version of the above is to put a pot upside down over the food or cover it with grill foil so that the smoke stays longer around the food.
If you wish to smoke larger amount of food or if you wish to improve how long the food will stay edible it is better to make a smoke rack.
The simplest smoke rack is a tripod you put above the fireplace and hang whatever you wish to smoke from it. You then cover the top of the tripod at least to the point where the food is no longer visible from the side. For this use a thick tarp, animal hides or thick textile. Be careful so that the cover do not catch fire or melt. Then put the material you wish to create the smoke with in the fire.
Good examples of materials to smoke can be found here.
Permanent smoker
A permanent smoker is usually better located in a yard but if you have a permanent campsite you return often, then a permanent smoker is certainly worth the time to build. How to build a permanent smoker will be covered in a later update though.
Waste site
If you plan to stay long at the same place then you must find a place away from your camp where you can burn and bury whatever wastes you have. Remember that waste attracts vermin and other small animals that will go there to look for food, so make sure it is far enough from your campsite.
Washing site
Butchering site
If you plan to hunt, trap or fish yourself when camping, make sure that you do not bring the catch into the campsite. Instead prepare a site outside the campsite a good distance away where you can take out and butcher the catch. Have a layer of spruce twigs on the ground that you can easily remove and burn when you are done. It help to keep the ground clean and keep vermin and animals away. A small bench, table and rack is also useful for you to lay or hang your catch on. You will also need to have access to water and fire at the butchering site. To be able to to be able to keep from contaminating the raw meat as well as clean up and sterilize your equipment.