During 2022, Ian built another Hog Hotel from scratch to his own design. It features a viewing window on the front, two entrances and a low-cost surveillance camera.
We constructed the hedgehog house above in 3 pieces: the floor, the body, and the roof. We made the floor from some lengths of thick decking, went for decking as it tanalised timber, so should last longer than ‘normal’ timber when it is in contact with the damp ground. The thicker timber will also provide some thermal benefits.
Ian constructed the floor length by length, gluing and clamping it together whilst the glue set. They placed a length of timber on either side of the body of the hog house and screwed it down into the decking, so we fixed it using 2 methods.
We screwed and glued the timber cladding onto the internal frame. Please note all the screws used are stainless steel, so no rusting to worry about.
We constructed the roof from a single sheet of plywood that then had a wooden lip attached so that it would sit on top of the body of the hog house, unable to slide. The plywood has some strengthening lengths of wood, as the plywood sheet was only 6mm. The timber lip below the plywood provides somewhere for the roofing felt to be attached without breaching the roof.
We purchased the viewing window from Amazon.co.uk. Here is a link “A4 Size Clear Acrylic Perspex Sheet 3mm thick” ← paid link
The timber has a few coats of a water based animal safe fence / shed painted on it. The manufacturer’s claim it should last 5 years. Below is the material we used to waterproof the hog house roof. We glued and screwed 3 overlapping lengths.
The ridge tiles in front of the entrances weren’t enough to stop the cat from next door coming in, so the hog hotel has a baffle at every entryway that the cat can’t get through.
In addition to the Hog Hotel, Ian replaced the roofing on Sandra’s double Hog House. This was because the plastic sheet had separated from the wooden roof due to the weather, such as high winds. We have applied a layer of roofing felt to the roof. They sealed the wooden joints after they separated over time from repeatedly getting wet and drying out.
Details of the low cost CCTV cameras we used here