SACair Forum

Alright guys, I need your help. Im planning on building a shoot house at my parental’s house. Ive got about ½ acre to play with, so im thinking a 3 or 4 room house will suffice. Im thinking about 500-700sq ft as total size of the building. Ive got some ideas floating around in my head and wanted to get some opinions and suggestions. Im thinking a modular approach in the form of subsections so it can be moved and rearranged as needed. As for building materials, im thinking 1 of 2 ways, cheap or expensive. Cheap way being PVC frames and PVC tarps or canvas for walls. The drawback to this is the BBs will most likely penetrate the material. Upside is you can connect the frames together to create the walls and rooms. Second idea is the expensive way, this involves building actual wood frames and using plywood for the walls. This option will end up being prohibitively expensive due to cost of materials. Also, the wood frames will need some kind of locking mechanism to lock the panels together to form the rooms. This option will look cleaner and function better, but will be heavy and cumbersome. If anyone has a better idea or can give me some feedback, it would be greatly appreciated.

I think your best bet would be the PVC + layered canvas. If the canvas is layered I doubt even the strongest gun would penetrate. Conversely you could use the covering over the ramp they have at AZ. You could try calling and asking what it's made out of.

with the wood frames I have found nails always work pretty good

[quote="tommyknocker2121"]I think your best bet would be the PVC + layered canvas. If the canvas is layered I doubt even the strongest gun would penetrate. Conversely you could use the covering over the ramp they have at AZ. You could try calling and asking what it's made out of.[/quote]

ya ive been thinking about do the same thing, pvc is you best bet, it is flimsy but u can make it stronger if u use 1/2 inch alum pipe as a base, and then use ply wood connected with u brackets to hold it all together.

I had a friend do this. He used 2x4's, with guitar case style buckles, instead of nails, and canvas. Still pretty expensive, but very easy to take down and re-arrange. The buckles will save you from using nails. Oh, and he also put dowling in the 2x4s, for strength. They would snap into eachother, and fastened tight with the buckles.

thanks for the good feedback so far. Negative, plywood sheets come in 4x8 ft sections, roughly 25-45 bucks depending on quality. 2x4s are about 3.50 a pop. Thanks for reminding me about triangulation. That will definitely increase structural rigidity if I go with PVC. If I use metal piping, im thinking I will have to limit the section dimensions to about 4 ft wide and 7-8ft tall. Even at this size the panels will be heavy with the pipe. Any suggestions for increasing strength of PVC pipe. I know there are different grades, but I dont know the tensile strength is in relationship to the kind of PCV material. Any ideas?

Now i dont know the difference too much between the two, but what about using abs plastic tubing? These are the black tubes as opposed to the white pvc found in plumbing sections. You might want to research the differences of these two plastics

yeah, i was thinking about those black ABS tubings. i believe they are a lot more durable than pvc.

got some more info about PVC. My dad used to work in construction supply. PVC comes in 2 grades, schedule 40 and 80. 40 is the thicker of the two and very cheap. something like .99 a foot. Any ideas to implement NegativeCamber's idea of triangulation. I dont think they make a PVC connector with a 45 degree angle. How about notching the end of the cross-member and securing with epoxy?

Psyko, you have access to a welder? You could make your own joints (and very strong at that) by welding some rebar into the nodes you need... since we aren't building a flying machine or a racecar, the welds wouldn't even have to be that pretty, just strong enough to withstand a good jostle from some dude eating shat into the PVC. The inherent flexibility of the pVC would probably do much to soak up much of that force...

good call with the welds, I can work with wood, but metal is a different story. To answer your question, I dont have a welder. I can find someone who does. The addition of the rebar inside the PVC pipes actually compromises the flexibility, which may be worse if someone trips and crashes into it. Instead of crashing into it and allowing the structure to absorb the shock, he runs head first into a reinforced pipe. Not to say its a bad idea, im just trying to play devils advocate. As for the top and sides, my uncle makes woodworking aprons, and they use PVC laced canvas that is crazy strong and durable. Hes got a whole bunch of extra stock I can buy for dirt cheap. Joe, I think im going to stick with natural ground to begin with. Maybe I will upgrade to laminated flooring later on. I just want to get a prototype up to play around with while im in college.

TIm im cetain they have pvc in 45 degree angles, my law ahs some fairly odd angles all pvcd for spriklers

all the home improvement stores in Elk Grove have a limited selection. Thats probably my problem. Ill probably have to order them in bulk from a sprinkler supply place. Do you think they have one that has a 90 and a 45 deg in the same fitting? somthing like this:

Hope you got a couple thousand dollars laying around cause that is what its gonna cost you to do it the right way, you can get away with some shotty build for cheap but it wont withstand the weather and the people playing in it. Also 700sqft is so tiny you will only be able to gun GBB's. Aeg's would be almost out of the question....My house is over 3x the sqft you want to build and I would have a hard time playing with AEG's in it. I cant even imagine 700sqft...

I agree with the wood idea. Ive helped build houses, so thats not a problem. The issue is space and cost. A truly good shoothouse would be set upon either a concrete slab, or a wood foundation. The walls would be wood, with roof joists. Im just looking for something to play in, and with the PVC, I can make a bunch of panels that just stake in the ground with cheap materials. I will probably need more room for AEGs, but you gotta start somewhere. Thanks for the feedback.

we should use snipers only lol that'd make for a day of pain ;)

Given the space/cost constrains, I think making a kill house that would represent challenging, interesting play would be difficult at best. Multi-story layouts are what add the most interest, and that would be completely out of the question...

Take and make a wood overhang, 4x4 posts on each corner tied together by a plywood shingled roof. Since there doesnt need to be any real load on the roof you could go as far as 24inch between framed rafters. Shingle the roof because you only want to deal with it once every 5-7 years. Dont go cheap on the framing. This basically gives you a big covered open walled room to work with(think of those big covered canvas tents you see at fairs, bbqs, etc; but made of wood and sturdy).

or you could make it out of cards. because those are pretty inexpenisve.....or toothpicks

All right, I spent a day of my vacation building 2 panels from PVC tubing. Each is 4ft x 7ft tall. Ive got a hookup for some cordura, which is vinyl backed canvas, waterproof, fade proof, and extremely durable. Ive used standard tarp grommets to allow for attachment of the cordura to the PVC skeleton. After making 2 and zip tieing them together, I found the rigidity of the two panels together was fairly strong. To make a house sized enclosure it will take approximately 32 panels. I believe with that many panels attached together, It will bring strength to the entire building. My question is, if I get one put together, would anyone be willing to play in it?

There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 uses for duct tape.

good suggestion, 1000 mph tape is sick. Just to let you know, cordura is some strong stuff. I shot it with my new TM hi capa at about 10 feet with greegas, bounced right back at me. Although thousands of rounds may compromise the durability. My fallback plan is duct tape and pool vinyl.

As soon as I get done with a few more panels ill post up pics for review.