It’s easy to be impatient at the pace of progress of in our yurt living adventure. We still need indoor plumbing, shelving, walls on the porch to enclose a shower and composting toilet, a satellite dish…the list goes on and on. But rather than dwell on what’s missing, I’d like to consider how far we’ve come over the last three summers.
For those interested in yurts, this is also a visual overview of how we did it.
A few details:
Our twenty foot yurt came as a kit from Pacific Yurts. We added some options: extra windows and a snow and wind kit (reflective wall insulation and lots of extra reinforcements). Building the platform and floor was the most time consuming part of the process. Pacific yurts provides ideas and specifications for platforms and floors, but not the materials. Because of our cold winters here, we included a layer of insulation underneath the floor. So far, it’s all working beautifully.
More photos of the inside will be coming soon. We need to organize and neaten things a bit more.
We recently had a visiting American dinner guest who lives in a yurt. She loves it. She has three yurts, and she’s named them all: Gurt, Burt, and Yurt.
I like the names. We haven’t named ours yet, but find it quite comfortable. It may feel a bit crowded for two when we’re snowbound, but it keeps us warm and dry.
Hey there great job on the yurt. So for the curious…any down sides so far to living in the yurt? (leaking, mold, etc) As for the crowding, ever consider putting up “satellite” yurts for additional rooms?
Thanks. So far, the structure is sound; we’ve had no leaks. Our yurt is in a relatively dry climate, and I doubt we’ll have problems with mold, but it’s a good problem to watch out for. Keeping packrats out is a challenge, but that’s true of any structure. Satellite yurts could be fun, but would be hard to heat during the cold winters. One house with multiple rooms will be more efficient.
Hi, I like your slide show regarding your Yurt that you built. Actually, I found your site while looking for basic yurt plans, lol. I noticed in a few of your pictures of the building process that you had solar panels leaning against the rail. I’m curious how much power you are able to generate with just those two panels? I’ll admit, I’m biased and curious because I have a few websites regarding them (www.solarpanelsfacts.org is an example) and I also use them to reduce my electrical bill around my home.
Thanks for visiting, Joshua. Good question. We started out with two small solar panels from Harbor Freight and have moved up to bigger ones. I’ll have to get back to you in a few days on specific numbers. My engineering partner tracks those.
Hi Joshua.
The latest picture shows two 130 Watt panels from sunelec.com. So 260 Watts peak, maybe an average of 50 Watts per hour into the battery over 24 hours. We use them with a Trojan 120 AH 12v golf cart battery, a Steca PRS1515 charge controller, and a Wagan 1500 Watt inverter. Enough for a fridge, a laptop, lights, and occasional skill saw use, though you might want a backup generator for bad weather.
We had previously been using a 45 watt (total, peak) set of three from Harbor freight. Amazingly, that was enough (just barely) to run our 8 cuft SunDanzer fridge. Like most off grid refrigerators, it uses the very efficient Danfoss 12/24v compressor. When cloudy for a day or two the battery would go low and the compressor shut down, but the well insulated fridge stayed cold anyway.
The primary way we save on power is by using less, 50 Watts is almost insignificant if you have a grid connection.
Thanks for the reply Jerry and Elizabeth! I had forgotten that I had asked you about your panels on your blog…sorry. =) I appreciate the detailed information as this will help me with my experiments regarding using panels. I’m not surprised yo needed to upgrade to stronger panels to power more devices.
You guys are doing a great job!
You’re welcome, Joshua. It’ll be interesting to see what you come up with.