Now having to move in to my 16′ yurt (yurtlet) over Christmas holiday, and be out of my house before the New Year, I called upon some friends for an old-fashioned yurt raising. These are true friends too, it was cold and the shortest day of the year. We ended up working under lights because naturally, it took longer than expected.
I had my friend pickup the yurt with his large trailer from a shipping company that brought it from Oregon. I put the drip edge up that morning and cut the slots for the doors.
Some specs on the yurt:
16 foot
Tall walls
One standard door
One french door (opposite standard door)
3 windows on each side (making it pretty much all windows)
Snow & wind kit
Tinted dome
As we all discovered, the snow & wind kit requires a LOT of extra time as you have to drill/screw all the braces to the studs (top & bottom) and cut them to length. That absorbed much more time than we expected. I believe they tell you that you can setup a yurt in 4 hours on their website - that might be true, if you don’t have the snow & wind kit. Not to mention several chiefs and few indians to direct (if you know what I mean).
What I didn’t realize until we were unfurling the side canvas in the dark was that they sent me the wrong canvas - built for a 16 footer, but only one window and one door. Luckily, they did send one of the sides as well, so the bad side we just cut to length and it worked fine. It turns out this was a gift in disquise because the windows are the weakest point for wind. And the window flaps are utterly useless. They block nothing except maybe your privacy and flap incessantly in the wind, no matter how much you try to tighten them down.
And, as I did years later, if you have big clamps, use these to secure the canvas to the door frame to make it really tight. No matter how many people we had struggling to hold it tight, the clamps worked much better.
After selling my house, it was time to to find a place to live. I decided to build a platform for a small 16′ yurt which I could live in while I decided to and/or officially built the large yurt. Unfortunately, that meant building the platform in days where temps got to a high of 5 degrees (F).
I pretty much followed the platform plans provided by Pacific Yurts. I was fortunate to have a small barn to work out of that had electricity. I know people have built platforms without electricity, but it sure is easier with power tools! I did it by myself in 5 days - if you have help, I’m sure it’s faster. I’m not the best carpenter/builder either, but I manage to get it done eventually. Working in subzero windchills doesn’t help much either!
Day 1 & 2:
Setting the pre-cast concrete piers and attaching the posts. After clearing a foot of fresh snow!
Day 3:
Setting the beams and the outside bracing.
Day 4:
Cross-bracing and insulation. I used the Reflectix underneath because I was worried about critters - I would stick with a standard insulation because the Reflectix sure didn’t seem to do much and I ended up surrounding the platform with straw bales a month or two after I moved in.
Day 5:
Attaching the plywood floor and cutting it to the radius.
My yurt idea came about when I was still living in my 2500 sq ft home that I didn’t like to clean in a subdivision that I didn’t like. I had heard about yurts years before but never really knew much about them. After doing some research online, I was really sold. I’ve always liked the unusual homes you see on the diy network but it was hard to find people who actually lived year-round in their yurts, especially in a climate like that in Colorado.
I found 10 acres of property for sale in a great spot next to the national forest. It was a beautiful piece of property with well and electric already on it and a few months later, I bought it. Now with two mortgages on my hands, I really needed to sell my house before I could do anything on the vacant land.
My beautiful 10 acres
I finally found a couple who was living in their yurt outside of Fairplay, CO. I drove out to see their yurt to see if it would really work for me. Their yurt was pretty crowded but still very appealing to me. Another weekend I drove all the way out to Montrose, CO to check the yurts of the Colorado Yurt Company.
When my house was finally under contract, it was mid November. I had less than two months to figure out where to live. My property had water and electric, but it was further back on the property where a mobile home had been, not where I would be building. Still unsure about the yurt decision, I decided to buy a 16′ yurt and live in that for however long it took to decide if living in a yurt was really something I wanted to do. I thought if I can live in a 16′ yurt, I can certainly live in a 30′ yurt.
I had the electric run up to the barn and I started building a platform for the hence-named yurtlet. It would be without plumbing, and I’d have to go down the drive about 40 yards to fetch fresh water. This would certainly simplify my living style by drastic measures. I packed up a few things, and stuffed what I could in a POD storage container and gave away the rest.
