I figured to document the building of our new outhouse so everyone could see how long this process took and how the work progressed. The existing outhouse is dated 4 August 1983. We had planned on doing this the summer of 2023. In fact, it was the 4 January 2023 meeting when we first discussed plans for a new outhouse. May of 2023 we decided we’d wait till 2024 but in August of 2024 we pushed it to May of 2025. It was at this meeting that Don Woods let the club know he and his wife Judy were going to donate $5,000.00 to help the club pay for the new outhouse. Throughout the fall of ’24 and spring of ’25 Dan Woods worked with Fagenstrom Co. to determine the cost and timeline for delivery. So here we are today, 19 Jun 2025 and we just finished dropping in the new vault.
Fagenstrom gave us a $500 discount and free delivery! Big thanks to them for the discount – that put the vault at ~$2100. The plastic seat risers were ~$550, the lumber, roofing and building materials were ~$1500. We had several incidental costs for digging the hole, vibrator-compactor, miniskid, 5 yards of gravel for leveling, etc. You get the drift – lots of planning, logistics, doughnuts, money and work parties got us here.
8 June Dan Woods digging the hole. It took us a couple hours as the gumbo stuck in the bucket and made things tricky.
The hole is approximately 8 foot wide by 12 foot long.
We got out to the field around 10am to start leveling the hole with gravel and then using the vibrator-compactor to tamp it all down.
Here we have Dan Woods compacting the gravel. Darrel Anderson labors along while John Sandy poses for the photo 🙂
Around 12:20 pm the Fagenstrom truck was coming down the driveway!
The truck backed up to the hole and used the beam and cabling to carefully lower the vault into the hole.
Don Woods is testing out the seating arrangement but commented he'd like a little more privacy!
Around 3pm we finished up with the initial dirt work and setting in the 1200 pound entry slabs.
The compactor and miniskid were run around the edge of the vault to help settle the dirt. That's it for today!
On 21 Jun we see Dan Woods framing up the west facing wall. The winds were steady at 25mph.
Look at that wind sock. We were using Dan's trailer as a wind break.
The days results. The size and shape of our new outhouse was dictated by the vault below.
Dan and Don Woods snuck out early Sunday morning, 22 June, and did some more framing until the rain chased them out. Dan was also curious to see if the new outhouse was still standing after a night of nasty winds...it was!
It's 23 June and the guys are starting to close up the framing with OSB. We then started cutting out all the roof trusses. Here we have some new help - Chuck Woods stopped out to lend a hand.
My guess is Dan got tired of waiting for these old guys to get their move on...always sitting down on the job 🙂
Now it's time to start laying out the roof - this was proving to be the most complicated part - Dan and Chuck probably spent 30 minutes deciding on whether it should be 16 inch or 24 inch centers. They finally decided on the 19 inch diamonds - I haven't figured that one out yet.
As they finished up setting the trusses I snuck in and got a photo of a family affair, Don, Dan and Chuck woods sharing a moment in the new potty together!
End of Day 23 Jun - Really starting to take shape!
Dan is finishing up the framing while Don Woods toe nails in roofing rafters. John lends and helping hand with the ladder.
Dave Grosse lent a helping hand today. Dan works on the metal roof - driving us till sundown!
24 June end of day - we have a roof and the outer wrapping is complete.
