Greetings, good sir. On Tue, 2010-04-27 at 08:40 -0700, Mike Lindsay wrote: > I live in Nova Scotia and am looking at a liveable hexayurt, all > weather. Anyone have any experince with things like heating, > insulation, construction etc. New to this.
Hrm ... to begin with, most of the all-weather, livable yurt/ger structures I've built are actually more traditional ger, rather than the hexayurt format. I've built sheds that stand up to the winter snow of the hexayurt format, but not for living in. First of all, for the amount of snow we get in the Northeast US (which is a bit south of you, I know, but not much) I actually had to move to the pentayurt style, rather than hexayurt style. It doesn't tile anywhere near as well, but the slope-ratio of the roof is important. You might be able to get away with a hexayurt design, and tile it nicely, as long as you cleaned the snow off of it regularly (via heating and pulling the run-off, or sweeping, or shoveling as it falls) but not a risk I really would recommend taking, if you are going to be living in it. For the shed I built, It's got a footing (sunk below the frost-line, of course) with a course of cinderblock going upward for about 3 feet. Then there is the 4' standard sides, with the roof sitting on top of it. The door-space is cut in one of the sides, up to about a foot of the top of it giving me about a 6' door-space, and still a good chunk of the board for lateral support. Since I made it out of wood, instead of insulation board, I used a nylon-web ratcheting strap to be the equivalent of the tape connection between the roof and the top of the wall, it does nicely in holding things in place. The 72 degree edges of the roof are piano-hinged together (which, in retrospect was a bad choice, too much movement when putting it up, I've got to machine some sort of replacements one of these days) and the straight seems are backed by 2x6 as attachment-points. The edges of the side-walls are shored up by 4x4 posts, sheered at 72 degrees. All exterior seams are sealed with flashing, and the wood is covered in exterior paint. The center-point of the roof has a removable cap that allows me to vent my forge (what I use the shed for) which would probably also work for your stove, or the like. I don't know how air-flow would work. (Whenever I'm in the shed, I've got the door open, mostly because the forge takes quite a bit of air-flow, and I don't have other holes, like windows, to let other air in. The light from the door is, often, even, too much.) It's not very large, for living in, especially when you are snowed in. Which is why tiling them might be a good idea (each one becomes a "room" in your "house"). Were you to have fairly consistent outdoor area, and not have to worry about cooking inside ... it would be more than sufficient. The traditional ger that I've used in all weather, is (several) 16' in diameter, covered, on the outside by a layer of polymer material (duralast, I believe it is called?), backed by tyvek, I believe, with a layer of felt (to hold pockets of air) and a layer of canvas. It works quite well for insulation, especially with a wood-stove in there for cooking and heat. I hope that helps. Look through the mailing list archives, I believe I and other people have put up longer, more in-depth pieces. Percy -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hexayurt" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt?hl=en.
