My current housing obsession: Yurts
By Ari | Jul 10, 09 08:51 AM
Live in a Well Rounded Dwelling and Build a Yurt Outside: "While we are on the topic of decreasing our energy footprints in small homes, I’d like to share the simple and small round yurt design, that has been around for ages. The yurt is a type of 'Green Weefab Mini-Home' and can be customized into another kind of hand-built 'Earth Sheltered House' for those on a budget."
How Yurts Work: "Even when faced with the toughest elements, the yurt is durable. Some of the pine frames used to build Turkish yurts last 50-70 years. One manufacturer guarantees the canvas for 15 years, longer than the average shingled roof."
Coloradans warm up to yurt living: "Traditionally, yurts were portable structures, with fabric walls. Their unique architectural feature is a central ring on a cone-shaped roof, which makes internal support systems unnecessary. Modern yurt manufacturers and owners have adapted them into year-round residences, adding fireproof roofs, glass windows, plumbing, space-age insulation and other items that might bring them into compliance with particular building codes... A 30-foot-diameter yurt with all the French-door, extra-insulation and skylight bells and whistles sells for less than $20,000. Yurts are greener than most other structures: Their wooden bases can be moved without leaving much trace of human habitation on land."
Yurt magic... building an enchanting instant house: "You can set up a yurt for under $10,000... Once you know what you’re doing, you and two or three friends can erect a 30-foot yurt in two days, and a smaller yurt in a single day. It took me and one helper about 12 hours, with neither of us having any prior experience."
Yurt Living, Negatives and Positives: "We didn’t pay the extra money for wall insulation. We regret this decision... Two LED rope lights light up the entire yurt... The moon peeks right in the domed skylight."
yurt living: "In the summer this thing cooks... And in the winter, we have a hard time keeping it above 60 degrees F when it gets dark. Also when we pulled away some of the wall/insulation stuff that wraps this thing like a burrito, we noticed mold spots, yuck!"
Yurt Living - Climate Comfort: "An air-tight yurt can have interior mold and mildew issues in any climate."
... these last two links, and other reports, are making me lean toward a wooden yurt, since our region is so wet.
A Visual Chronology of the Building of the Yurts at Tug Hollow: awesome photos of wooden yurts built in a cluster.
Yurt FAQ's: "Being round, yurts make better use of space than their rectilinear counterparts, are more efficient to heat, and provide less wind resistance. The roof structure, with its compression ring and tension band, is an amazing architectural design providing a great deal of strength and requiring no internal support system, thereby leaving the yurt open and spacious inside... Yurts were designed for use in some of the coldest climates on the planet. Their circular nature makes them more efficient to heat (with 12% less surface exposed to the elements than their rectilinear equivalents)... The frame panel yurts don't normally have code issues, being basically stick frame construction which has few code restrictions."
The wooden yurt kit suppliers recommended by yurtinfo.org are:
- Oregon Yurtworks ($100-$130 per square foot)
- Mandala Custom Homes ($55-$100 per square foot)
- Smiling Woods ($85-$100 per square foot)
Anyone have a yurt experience to share? Know a good website or article we should know about? Please leave a comment...
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