Читать книгу How to Send Smoke Signals, Pluck a Chicken & Build an Igloo - Michael Powell - Страница 17

An igloo is a shelter built out of snow, which is traditionally associated with the Inuit, but it was predominantly used by people of Canada’s Central Arctic and Greenland’s Thule area.

Snow is a good insulator, so even if the temperature outside is -49°F (-45°C) the inside temperature can reach 61°F (16°C) from body heat alone.

1. Use a snow saw or large knife to cut your building blocks from an area of compacted snow. Each block should be approximately 16 in (40 cm) high, 8 in (20 cm) wide, and 4 in (10 cm) thick (so the thickness of the igloo walls is 4 in [10 cm]).

2. If you can’t find compacted snow, fill a large loaf pan with snow to make your bricks. Bash the pan on the ground to compact the snow and press it down firmly with your hands, then place the pan upside down on the ground and tap the snow brick out as if you were building a sandcastle. The sloping sides of the pan also provide a ready-made tapered brick edge to allow the bricks to slope inward to form a dome as you build upward.

3. Lay a circle of bricks to form your base, leaving a gap at the downwind side wide enough to crawl through. This will be your entrance. Lay a short corridor of bricks three bricks long leading from the entrance.

4. Fill the gap between bricks with snow, and pat the snow where the bricks meet the ground to form a secure base.

5. Use a knife to angle the top of the first layer of bricks so the outside is slightly higher than the inside. Then add your second layer of bricks, overlapping the first layer so that the end of one brick starts in the middle of a first-layer brick (like building a brick wall). The second layer should slope inward slightly so you can begin to see a dome forming.

6. Repeat Step 5 until you have built several layers and are left with a small, round hole at the top. Also use bricks to put a roof on your entrance corridor.

7. Cut a large tapering circular brick (like a giant bath plug) slightly larger than the top hole to plug the final gap, then fill in all the cracks between the bricks, inside and outside, with snow. Cover the igloo floor with compacted snow to reduce heat loss into the ground.

8. Make several ventilation holes in the roof using a stick. This prevents a potentially fatal buildup of carbon dioxide inside the igloo without losing too much heat.