- Proof of pioneer weatherproofing.

In an earlier post I revealed instructions from the 1800's for making a waterproof cement.

That 1881 recipe used plaster, sand, resin and linseed oil.

Ten years ago I used a similar recipe from the mid-1850's to seal the roof of a replica V-Hut.

V-Huts were the first homes built by the early New Zealand settlers in the Christchurch area in the 1850's.

The V-Huts were intended as transition homes and were meant to be temporary until the settler family had built a proper house.


They were shipped pre-cut with the settler families from the UK since Christchurch didn't yet have a reliable source of lumber for building.

To seal the roof we used a mixture of boiled linseed oil, ash and sand from a recipe we got from the original settlers' handbook written for the first Christchurch settlers.

After we finished building the hut at the Ferrymead Historical Park in Christchurch, I never laid eyes on it again.  I wasn't even sure if it had survived Christchurch's recent earthquakes.

But just a couple days before Christmas 2011 I visited Ferrymead and was delighted to discover the hut is still standing.

When I re-introduced myself to the staff the first thing they said was "That stuff you put on the roof!  It's still working!  It has lasted ten years with no leaks!".

The exact recipe was simple:

"Equal parts of ash and sand mixed with boiled linseed oil till it forms a thick paste."

It dries like concrete, but I never thought it would weather well. We thatched over a lot of the roof for that reason.

But there was plenty of roof still exposed, and as this macro photo shows, the weatherproofing mixture has stood up to Christchurch's hot summers and winter snows just fine.

Time and the tide of life has washed away most of the evidence of how they lived in the days of the pioneers and settlers - and how they got things done.

So these opportunities to put historic knowledge to the test are rare and valuable reminders that they knew a lot more than we give them credit for, back in the day...

Even if you never expect to use a technique like this, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.