Getting Your Yurt Ready for Winter

As cold weather approaches us (or is already here) many yurt dwellers worry about staying warm. Here are a few things you can do to help retain the heat. Most of these are things you can do after you have erected your yurt and after winter has already come.
Yurts are full of gaps where warm air can escape out into the cold. While, you will probably never be able to completely seal up your yurt, you can reduce the amount of drafting. Most holes occur at the top and bottom of the wall and around windows. By using ratcheting buckles and long straps, you can cinch up the gaps around the walls. Here is a picture of a ratcheting buckle with a 100 foot length of 1 inch wide strap.

Buckles can be bought at most hardware stores and the strap had to be special ordered from a sporting goods store. Most buckles come with a pre-attached strap that will have to be removed or tied into.
The straps are simply put around the perimeter of the yurt at the base of the wall and the bottom of the roof. You can see those straps in place above and below the door of our yurt.

Tightening the buckles sandwiches the wall fabric between the yurt frame and the strap. This closes off any gaps between the yurt frame and the wall fabric.
Another ratcheting buckle can be used on the rope that is attached to the bottom of the roof fabric that the wall is hung off of. This rope can often sag over time or be stretched during high winds or as the yurt expands in the sun. Sagging can create gaps between the wall and the roof. By adding a ratcheting buckle to this rope you can easily take up any slack that might occur. You can see the buckle in the upper left of this photo.


On the inside of the yurt adding more insulation and weather stripping can decrease the amount of heat loss you experience. Weather stripping around the door frame and door is a great idea.
A more ambitious project is to add foamboard insulation to the ceiling. Pie shaped wedges can be cut from foamboard and wedged into the space between the rafters. Here is a picture of one of the wedges half way removed from it's place in the ceiling.

I used in inch R-tech foamboard. R-tech has a reflective side that I painted over with latex primer to keep the inside of the yurt from looking like a solar oven. While this paint works it ended up being very fragile and flakes off easily if it is bumped into. I cut the pieces with a hacksaw blade with out the hack saw. I taped the cut edges with white duct tape to keep the foam pieces from crumbling and getting every where while installing it. If you have a yurt whose rafters are not anchored to vertical supports, you can get away with cutting all the wedges uniformly and push the rafters into place around the foam. If, however, you have those vertical supports to increase your snow load, like we do, you will need to measure each space between the rafters and cut the foam to match. If done correctly the foam wedges will stay up with friction. It is hard to quantify how much the foamboard helps, but as I was putting the foamboard up snow fell on the yurt. The snow on the roof above the foamboard took a lot longer to melt than the parts of the roof with no foamboard. If you have another questions about this process, just let me know.
And, finally another use for the ratcheting buckle. We have fairly high winds during the winter, and that wind can cause the wall fabric to flap quite a bit. The flapping can cause sagging in the wall fabric and a lot of noise on the inside of the yurt. This buckle and strap is simply put around the perimeter of the yurt at the center of the wall. Here is a video we posted earlier in the year of that strap at work.

Make sure you talk to your yurt manufacturer about all of their insulation ideas and acessories. We have a full wind and snow load kit from Pacific Yurts. We also have their insulated window inserts for all our windows and use them all winter long.

Good luck this winter if you own a yurt and if you are a prospective yurter, winters in a yurt can be cozy and warm with the right preparation.

Family, Berries, and a New Yurter

We just wrapped up a great visit from my mom and her friend Jeanette. One of the highlights was our awesome fall hike and blueberry picking trip. Here is a picture of our visitors and intrepid travelers still smiling despite the fact that I just made them climb 2000 ft.

On our way down we found a great blueberry patch and picked to our heart's content. Here is a picture of the view and the fall colors we enjoyed while picking.

Here is Ranger guarding our spoils.

Mom and Leo excited about berries!

And, it looks like Leo is going to have to share those berries next fall. Nicki is about 4 months along, due in early February, and it is going to be a girl!

Now we need to figure out where in the yurt we are going to put her. Time to change the floor plan!

Lakes, the Fair, Musk Ox, and Banana Mobiles

I used one of my days off to go and hike up to Eagle and Symphony Lakes. These lakes are really cool because they are right next to each other but Eagle Lake is glacier fed and Symphony is not. So Eagle has this bright, opaque, blue color and Symphony is clear.

We also went to the fair. Here we are on the big slide.

Here is my blue ribbon puzzle.

Here is the blue ribbon cabbage. Almost 126 pounds.

My mom and her friend Jeanette are up visiting and waited for a long time to get on this Ferris wheel.

Leo after too much fun.

We also got to visit the musk ox farm in Palmer. Here is the beautiful 800 pound ox named "little man."

Always looking for new projects, Leo made a banana mobile.

Yurt Floor Plans and Loft Plans

I have had a number of people asking for the floor plans of our yurt. So here we go:

• We have a 30 foot Pacific Yurt with the tall wall option.
• Our yurt sits on top of a 30 foot square garage with a roof over hang of 2 feet on 3 sides of the garage to form a deck around the perimeter of the yurt.
• Our washer, dryer, shower, water heater, and furnace are located in the garage.
  
• We have a stairwell that leads from the inside of the garage to the inside of the yurt.
• The yurt has internal walls with a lid that forms our loft.
• Most of out furniture is from IKEA.
• Drawings are to scale as close as I could get them.
• Lines for the walls are not drawn to thickness but to the center line of the wall.
• Click on the floor plans to make them bigger and easier to read.
  

Here is the main floor of the yurt with the loft taken off.

Here is the loft. Part of the loft over hangs the kitchen and another part of it does not entirely cover the kids bedroom.

If you need a visual on all of this to compare to, visit our yurt walking tour on youtube. Some of the furniture has been rearranged since the video was made but the major appliances and walls, of course, are all in the same spot.
I hope you find this helpful. Let me know if you have questions.

Fall is Coming and a Glacier is Near By

The salmon are in, trails closed due to high bear activity, the heat is being turned on at night in the yurt, and leaves are already starting to change color. Fall is just beginning here in Eagle River.
Another sign of this change in season is the fog. As it gets colder the water stays condensed longer and just hangs right above the river. Here is a picture of the yurt above the fog.

Rose bushes are one of the early color changers.

We recently had a gathering of friends at the yurt. Here is a picture of Leo showing off the Wiggles (an Australian kids' show) to his "big" friends.

Here is Leo wondering why his father has no concern for his safety.

I had yet another success in gaining a new perspective of the yurt. Here is a picture of the Eagle River Over Look from the yurt. It is the tallest point.

An here is a panorama from on top of the over look. The yurt is on the far left, Y, and Eagle Glacier is on the right, G. You might have to click on the picture to see the Y.

Eagle Glacier is about a 13 mile hike from the Nature center and about 14 miles from the yurt.
Finally, a nicer, though misty, picture of the glacier.

HEY! Where did the G go?

Saturday Market

Eagle River Puzzles will be down at the Anchorage Market this Saturday the 22nd. Here are two new designs I've come up with.



As always we will have our yurt photos and the yurt book "Living in the Round" out for any one wanting to talk about yurts. If you are living in the Anchorage area and want some yurt questions answered, come down and visit.

Big Sun, Ice Wedding, and a New Mountain

Bethel gave us a parting gift before we left, a glorious sunset visible from our front door.

The weekend after returning, we got to go out to the Matanuska Glacier where our friends were getting married. Here is Leo by the glacier.

But, they weren't just getting married beside the glacier, they were getting married ON it. it was about a half hour walk to where the ceremony took place. You can see the procession following the bride in this photo.

One of the bride's maids donned bunny boots for the trek out there.

Here is the family near where the wedding cerimony took place.

The dogs and I hiked up a new mountain. Mount Magnificent gave us yet another perspective on the valley. A little hazy still from forest fires but still incredible.

The dogs, Georgie and Ranger, had a great time too.

On the way back I spent about 3 hours collecting a gallon of blueberries. For those 3 hours Georgie spent the entire time eating berries herself. We were in constant competition for the best berry paches. I never knew a dog who could down so much fruit. I suppose I'll need to believe her when she is whining to be let outside tonight.