Primitive Technology: Barrel Tiled Shed

“I built a tiled roof shed to provide a fire and rain proof shelter for working on projects during wet weather and for storing firewood. The shed houses the very kiln used to fire its own tiles.

I cut timber using the stone hatchet and took it to the building site. 6 Upright posts were stuck into the ground about half a meter. Mortises were cut into the horizontal beams using a stone chisel to start with, then had there mortices enlarged using hot coals and a blow pipe to burn them out more. These beams were put in place and rafters were lashed on with lawyer cane. The wood that the tiles sit on are about 50 cm apart. The finished frame was 2 x 2 m in floor plan, 2 m tall at the ridge line and 1.5 m tall at the sides. This roof angle is about 22.5 degrees, half the pitch of the huts I usually make. This took about a week but I did it about 4 months ago and left the wood at the site because I was busy on other videos”

YouTube
A reader the other day asked me about low cost roofing options. Here you go. The guy in the video did everything by hand with crude tools. It would be easy to greatly speed up the process by buying a truckload of clay (good quality clay requires no mixing), using better tools, etc. Fired clay roofing tiles can last many decades as you can see all across Europe, etc. Of course you could invest in micro concrete roofing (MCR) tile machines. They have lots of advantages such as uniformity and lightweight. But as you can see the old fashioned way still works if you have lots of time.