Outdoor Tortoise Enclosure and House

My daughters tortoise George is 6 years old and fast outgrowing his current house in our dining room. In order to give him the best possible environment and reclaim our dining space I decided to build him an outdoor enclosure. I have been away from instructables for a few years now so this was the motivation I needed to get back on and make this project.

The project took far longer than expected due to the poor weather in the UK over the last few millennia, but I got there in the end.

Materials for the Tortoise House:

• 40m of 50mmx50mm treated carcassing
• 40m of 19mm x 125mm shiplap cladding
• 10m of 125mm x 25mm treated wood
• 4m of 50mm edging
• 2 x sheets of 9mm marine plywood
• 3 x sheets of 50mm insulation
• 50mm, 75mm and 100mm long screws.
• 1 x roll of roofing felt
• 1 box of 25mm nails
• 1 box of roofing tacks
• 1 2m x 2m waterproof sheet

Materials for the enclosure:

• 1 ton of limestone chips
• 500kg of top soil
• 3 x 2.4m x 100mm x 200mm railway sleepers
• 250mm railway sleeper screws

Tools used:

• Drill
• Hammer
• Long blade for cutting insulation
• hand saw
• chop saw
• jigsaw
• tape measure
• spade
• rake
• paintbrush

First thing to do is to clear the area where the enclosure is going to go. For me this meant removing a large bush, digging out the roots and clearing lots of weeds that I hadn't kept on top of before starting this project.

Once the area is cleared I then removed the top level of soil to enable me to put in a compacted layer of stone. It doesn't look like much was removed on the photo's but somewhere in the region of 500kgs of soil was removed from the area. I bagged and stored this topsoil to reuse later in the project in the outdoor part of the enclosure.

This was the easiest step of the whole project, the weather was glorious, you will see as this goes on that the British summer quickly put an end to this.

To help with drainage in the area and prevent tortoises from digging out of the enclose I decided to add a 50mm layer of compacted stone. The stone used was general MOT and within the bag it ranged from pieces 1mm in size up to 50mm.

Once the layer was placed in the required area I used the end of a rake to compact the stone down. This was quite a difficult process, using a tamper or industrial compacter would have made this a lot easier, but I didn't have access to one for this project.

The one plus of the poor weather during the project was that at this stage it gave me a good opportunity to check the drainage.

Measure the size of the enclosure and cut the railway sleepers to the required length. Due to the size of my chop saw I needed to cut one side, flip the sleeper and then cut the other side, if you have a larger chop saw you should be able to cut through in one cut.

I didn't fix the sleepers together at this stage to ensure that should the house need moving then the sleepers could easily be adjusted.

Once I had the base prepared it was time to turn to the fun bit, making the actual tortoise house. I wanted this to be big enough so that George could live outside most of the year, being in England this meant that there had to be a big enough inside area where he could shelter from the rain and cold. As a result I decided to make the footprint of the house 1.2m x 1.15m, plenty of room given that George is around 15cm wide :-)

I made one side of the house 900mm high and the other 800mm high (plus the height of the roof). Again whilst George is only 10cm tall the height was needed to allow me to install heating and lighting at a safe height above the enclosure to ensure it was warm enough, but that it wouldn't burn George.

Once the plans were drawn up I used these to cut the individual pieces of wood. Placing them in order of biggest to smallest to make it easier when I assembled the frame.

Once everything was cut I hit the first stumbling block, the 50mm x 50mm carcassing wasn't actually 50mm square, it was 46mm x 46mm. I should have stopped at this point and changed the plans, but the sun was shining and I didn't want to waste time planning so instead like an idiot I cracked on and began to assemble.

I first assembled the base and side supports, once done I then cut a plywood sheet and placed this over the base. Once this was in I added the first sheet of insulation. To ensure as much warmth as possible remained within the house I opted for 50mm foam boards.

It was when I came to install the side insulation panels that I realised my problem, the gap they were going into wasn't 50mm deep, it was 46mm deep. This meant that when I screwed in the plywood edging around the bottom (that would prevent George from eating the insulation) the insulation was 4mm too thick. I therefore had to remove the panels, remove the insulation and shave 4mm off the back of each panel, this created a huge amount of mess and was very difficult to do, so make sure your insulation isn't thicker than your wood.

After putting the insulation back in I started to cut and attach the shiplap cladding, nailing each plank on and working my way round all four sides, on the front panel I made a small cut out big enough for George to get in and out of the house.

Once the base and sides were assembled I moved onto the roof. I first made a wooden square the same size as the outside of the house, again placing insulation sheets in the voids before screwing a 9mm plywood board over it. Once the board was secured I then added a layer of roofing felt, tacking this in around the edges.

Be careful with the roofing felt, it is far easier to rip than I expected, this resulted in the first layer having to be removed due to a large rip up the middle.

After attaching the roofing felt I attached wooden planks around the outside of the lid to protect the edging and make it look a bit more professional. This also makes it easier to lift the lid up. The lid is attached to the base of the house with 4 x 30cm piano hinges.

I forgot to take photos of this stage, mainly due to being covered in paint myself. It is not one of my strong points!

I painted the outside of the house with a good quality garden fence paint. Again to make the project look a bit nicer I also added some 50mm edging strips to the corners and painted these and the edging of the lid white. They both however need a second coating.

As the photo shows I also moved the house into place at this point, its a lot heavier than it looks and I needed a rest after that!

George is a Hermanns tortoise and needs a good thick base of soil to dig down into, I therefore placed a 200mm bed of topsoil back into the enclosure, I used the soil I had earlier dug out of the bed for this, sieving each bag to remove stones and weeds before adding it back to the enclosure, this took far too much time and thanks to the weather was extremely messy.

In the future I will be adding some tortoise friendly plants into the enclosure to make it a bit more interesting and provide George with some shade when the sun finally arrives.

As I will be adding a layer of soil to the inside of the house I didn't want moist soil to be in direct contact with the wood and potentially lead to rotting, to prevent this I used a layer of pond liner and stapled this around the outside of the panels, this will allow me to add a thick layer of soil without damaging the house.

Once everything is ready install the lights, different breeds will have different lighting and heating needs but for George I have installed a long UVB T5 bulb to give him the UVB he needs to grow a healthy shell and a heat bulb to give the required heat levels. I also have a dimming thermometer on order that will ensure that it doesn't get too hot inside the enclosure.

The only thing I need to do now is add another layer of soil to the bottom of the house and it is complete.

Once everything was put together and we had a pleasant break in the rain it was time to let George loose in his new house, as you can see from the photos there is plenty of room for him to run around. Following a quick bit to eat he then returned to his old house whilst I await the dimming thermometer to arrive.

There are still a few jobs that I have to do on this before it is a permanent outdoor house for George, so far the plans for future jobs are:

1. Add in some tortoise friendly plants, ideally some that are tall enough to provide shade and prevent George from munching them to the ground.
2. Build a mesh lid for the outdoor part of the enclosure, this will allow the sun in, prevent overheating and ensure that no other animals can get in (Unfortunately next doors cats think I have built them a giant toilet)
3. Build a sliding door for the colder months, this will enable me to close the enclosure at night and allow George to remain warm even in the colder months.
4. Build a perspex lid, again for when the weather gets colder by building a perspex lid for the external area it would allow George to spend time out in the external area but keep a bit of heat inside.
5. Install a window into the house, this was on my initial plans but fell away due to lack of time and a concern that it would reduce the amount of warmth the house was able to keep.

Thanks for taking the time to read, if you have any questions please do ask in the comments.