Affordable (yet sturdy) Flat Alternatives?

[Mephisto the Great]

With gas prices and other items going up, I've noted the increase in lumber prices lately. Though much of our sets are outdoors and require treated lumber to avoid warping and mold...any suggstions for materials to make flats that are lighter, cheaper and still pretty strong?

IN our new location we have three outdoor kitchens with roofs on them that would allow flats to stay dry; we could use particle board but maybe there's a better way. Any suggestions on indoor flat materials that aren't plywood...yet still hold up to the rigors of a haunt?

Mephisto
Dark Hollow Haunted Forest
www.DarkHollowHaunt.com

[Jim Warfield]

If you have a haunt with more lights on and put small groups through you can get away with using thinner wall materials, unless you startle them into a weak wall.
Build thick, strong walls where you are scaring them.
I have had wall material as thin as 1/8th of an inch last for many years, lights up, groups small, controllable.
I would often write funny things on the wall, maybe people were too busy reading the wall to destroy it? Or too busy trying to figure out what I meant?

[Greg Chrise]

Pig fence
Jute netting in timber
landscape cloth
Drums and barrels all screwed together
Real trees
Used crating from China
Old cars or hearses and trucks or buses with no gas tanks
Tarps painted like circus signage
Used metal buildings salvaged
chain link fence

Depends on what is industrial waste material in your area?
PVC sheets, sheet metal, fiberglass panels, tar paper shacks, log cabins, bottles all cemented together? Dryer lint and acrylic resin? Old walk in coolers? Piles of dirt or real rocks.

Each situation is different. In these days it might infact be cheaper to buy new from Home Depot than spend $50 a day in gas getting crap from somewhere. Sometimes free costs more than new but it has the look you want.