Elevating a monkey hut

[Zumaria]

Herro fellow eplayans! I'm here today for you to assault my idea into finding loop holes! Do what you do best, and tear it apart!

I'm thinking about making a monkey hut for my tent. However, the tent is a bit taller than I've calculated the monkey hut would be at it's tallest point. The tent is about 8 ft tall so I need to add about a foot to the top of the monkey hut.

I was originally tackling this by trying to change the shape of the roof to better fit the tent, yada yada....but an even simpler solution would be to simply elevate the design - stilts, essentially.

Let's say a link / connector attached to a PVC piece that's about a foot long attached to the standard 10 ft PVC pipes. I believe it will do it's job of elevating the tent, but think there are any concerns regarding stability?

Thank you! Have at it!

[VultureChow]

Standard hut height is just a little over 6 feet. Galaxy hut gets it a little taller. http://galaxybeing.com/galaxyhut/

People have done leg extenders before. You'll want a piece of pvc with a slightly larger diameter as a sleeve to join.

Maybe just add a third piece of 10' pvc to the ribs, join with sleeve. That should give you a roughly 18' wide, 9' tall hut.

[ygmir]

why not just use longer PVC ribs? it comes in 20' sticks......cut wherever you want.
or am I missing something?

[mudpuppy000]

Yeah, just use longer ribs and either size the tarp to the new length or leave a gap at the bottom where you new "legs" are.

[sadie]

If you already have the 20' span of ribs, and you want another foot or so, slide 6" pieces over the rebar first.
This will add the height you want and you won't have to start over with the design. It just raises what you already have.
Sort of like those blocks you put under your bed posts to create more space underneath.

[Lonesomebri]

You aren't planning to put a monkey hut over a carport, are you? An 8 foot tall tent?

[Zumaria]

You aren't planning to put a monkey hut over a carport, are you? An 8 foot tall tent?

No literal carport Bry, but yes, a very tall tent! It's not so much the roof is that tall, but rather that the metal pieces holding the tent are that tall.



Thanks everyone for the feedback! Glad to hear that it's been done before and I'm loving the Galaxy hut....

[trilobyte]

I'd either go with a different tent, or with a different shade structure design.

[Just_Joe]

You aren't planning to put a monkey hut over a carport, are you? An 8 foot tall tent?

Out- Turduckin
In- Monkportent

[Ratty]

As the owner of a gazillion tents I have to agree with Trillo. The taller the tent the more problems you'll have with the wind.

[mudpuppy000]

It should be ok if there's a good wind break (the monkey hut) Hopefully the wind doesn't blow along the axis of the monkey hut though.

[burn_shady]

What you're attempting is perfectly doable. My hut from last year was around the height of what you're requesting. To do this robustly, I'd advise you to use additional construction techniques that aren't needed for standard Monkey Hut dimensions. My starting point is what I posted here earlier as a "Threaded MonkeyHut", though below are some techniques that aren't in it that I've been refining since I first wrote it up. You can download the original pdf from this page: https://burningshady.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/17/

I'll assume you know how to put up a standard monkey hut. To make the final explanation easier, here are some of the additional details not found in the standard monkey hut design:
- All pipes are no more than 5' in length
- Use both 1.25" and 1" pipes for arch construction
- To join 1.25" and 1" pipes, use a piece of paracord with two overhand knots tied in it just over 3" apart (in bad ascii art this is what the knotted paracord would look like ---@------------@--- ). To use this to join 1.25" and 1" pipes, insert the first knot into the 1.25" end, then insert the 1" pipe pushing the first knot further into the 1.25" pipe so that the middle part of the paracord is sandwiched between the two pipes, finally, keep pushing the 1" in until the second knot is drawn up to where the two pipes meet. It's incredibly simple to do and see, just hard to describe succinctly. Note that if you sandwich more than 3" of paracord, the pipes may not come back apart any time soon without heroic efforts. In the event that you want the 1" pipe to go in further than 3", decide how far you want it to go (6" is a good depth), and 3" short of that, drill a hole just large enough for the paracord to fit through. Run a piece of paracord through the hole and tie knot each end of it with no more than 3" of length between the knots.
- To join 1" pipes, use a 6" length of 1.25" as a sleeve with a length of paracord looped through it to hold them in place (by "looped" I just mean that you run the paracord all the way through the sleeve and then tie the two ends together on the outside of the sleeve). This isn't used in my description below, but you might find it useful if you veer from my suggestions or might be useful in some other context.
- Rebar stakes - I assume that you're using rebar as the stakes like the original monkey hut described. Don't use the smallest diameter rebar that's usually available, it's far too weak. Use the rebar one size up from the smallest. I think mine is the 1/2" diameter. Use rebar that is at least 3' or 4' long and drive half of that length into the ground. Do this for at least the first and last arch. Inner arches might be able to get away with 2' rebar lengths, but I normally stick to the longer lengths for all arches. This year I'm considering moving to lag screws, but I've not tried them out yet.

Essentially, I'm going to describe how to scale up the arches (ribs) for a standard MonkeyHut and reinforce it to be much more robust. How you make the spine can be the same or however else you'd like to do. I don't advise putting the arches much more than 5' apart unless you're doing something special and know what you're doing. Otherwise, I'll skip any spine discussion here since it's really not any different from a standard MH.

To make a larger arch, each arch uses a total of 5 pipes. Use two 1.25" pipes as the left and right bottom arch segments, use two 1" pipes as the right and left upper arch segments and use a 4' length of 1.25" pipe as the top/center segment (the size of this can be tinkered with to better accommodate your needs). The 1.25 bases give a bit more height and usable space on the sides. Also, allow for the 1" pipes to insert more deeply into the top/center segment than 3" (6 is what I would go with).

Lastly, here is the key to making all of this work without requiring extra guy lines going off in all directions presenting all sorts of headaches and hazzards: using something stronger and less stretchy than paracord (or if there is nothing other than paracord, you must at least double it up), run a line THROUGH all of the arch and secure it tightly creating a good amount of tension in the line.

Tying to rebar:
If you plan things ahead, its best to secure each end of the line through the arch to to top of the rebar used to hold up the arch (look up 'icicle hitch' for a strong, flat knot suitable for this purpose). You'll have to have made an access hole in one of the arch pipes ahead of time to access the line so that you can pull it out and get some good tension into it. Not so much tension that you're starting to pull the stakes out, but enough tension that you can no longer easily pull either end of the arch up off the ground once everything is tensioned.

Making one big loop:
A workable alternative is to run the line out the very bottom of one side of the arch and across the ground to the other end of the arch and use something like a trucker's hitch to tie the ends together and keep tension in the line. You'll then have to cover or otherwise secure these lines to keep people from tripping on them. We just put carpets down over them, makes everything nicer.

Make the spine however you would have for a normal MonkeyHut. I tend to put 5' pipe lengths between the arches and then run a line along the spine from arch to arch that ensure the arches won't pull apart to any significant amount.

Note that as a result of this approach, the tarp is no longer a key structural component being used as a significant downward force to keep the pvc anchored. Also, you won't need any external stakes or guy lines running outside of the shade structure. If you're extra clever, you can run the line through the arch segments ahead of time and create arch bundles. Doing this keeps ensures you don't lose pieces, makes handling easier and can even aid in arch construction.

Set this up at least once ahead of when you need it and make sure you have a sufficient tarp (and tarp folding skills) for the new dimensions.

That's it. Ok, that was a lot of words, but I'm just trying to be very detailed and not skip something important.