Helping You to Get a Yurt

Searching for the least expensive, most direct, simple, sustainable yurt solutions, to bridge you from longing to living, in the yurt of your dreams

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Ultra Simple Yurt-Homes

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The process of writing a book on building an ultra simple yurt-home has been interesting. It forced me to deeply reflect about what I had done. I think that it was just pure luck that I tripped over the design that was the simplest and most direct one. The ultra simple yurt has straight rafters and straight wall rods and hour glass shaped walls. The design is one that originated in Mongolia and my sense is that it was the original Mongolian design. What's especially great about the design is that it requires only the simplest of wood working skills to make.
The original yurts were Turkic and had steam bent rafters and steam bent wall rods. Steam bending does not strike me as a very simple wood working technique. Nor is the alternative water soaking method strike me as very easy to do. Turkic yurts are domed in roof and flat in wall as a result.
The Mongolian yurt derived from the Turkic design and simplified it. Mongolian people had a long way to go, far from the treeless steppes where they lived, to get Larch wood for their dwellings. In simplifying the Turkic design, the Mongolian design creates the simplest, most direct shelter of magical and complex beauty on Earth. What is truly amazing that such shelters can be created with such simple skills at such low costs.

Monday, September 21, 2009

For Love of Yurts: The Book nears completion!



For Love of Yurts is nearing completion, as an ebook and as a paperback published by Shire's Press, Manchester Center, Vermont and will soon be offered on a website under development by Floating World in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Sailing and Yurts



Sail boats and yurts depend on fabric arts to function. Sails are designed to catch the wind. Yurt coverings are designed to shed the wind. The three bands of rope that hold the wall covering to the frame and the crossed ropes on the roof that are lashed to the wall ropes are there to prevent your covering from becoming a sail.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

New Yurt Cover




A new yurt cover was made for a material cost of $10 using fabric from RESTORE in Barre VT and a gift of sewing from Maggie Neale. WOW!