We built the regular 8ft yurt. Almost all the work was done by myself - female, 5'3" 116lbs & female 5'6" 140lbs.
The yurt was seriously so easy to build. We picked up the panels at home depot - just needed 12 and 6 were cut in half on the diagonal. The worst part was taping all the panel edges so they would be sealed and not leak insulation moop on the playa. That was a couple of hours of work one weekend. Another weekend we did a couple more hours work which was making the door and windows and the small amount of pretaping before the playa. We taped the long center seams of the roof panels together and than made the walls into 2 sections of 3 walls taped together so they just unfolded and have 2 seams to tape on playa. We could have done the same with the roof but I didn't think of that at the time. We arrived Sunday early entry at about 7:30pm. It was dusty and windy and we knew there was no way we were getting setup, so we just emptied enough stuff out of the back of the car to kind of sleep there. Not much sleeping occurred since I was getting up all night to shoo people out of our theme camp space during the great land grab of 2009. At dawn everything was calm, dust and wind free, so we got up and started building so camp mates could find us and we could cut down on the need for land defending. On playa we taped the 6 roof panels together. Since the seams are so long for the roof panel I created a device to make this easier, called squeegbroom, which is a broom with a bathroom squeegee taped to the top. This really helped get the tape well stuck to the panels. Once the roof cone was built we unfolded the walls and taped the 2 final seams. Then we got 2 guys from the seed to help us put the roof on top the walls, and 1 guy from the seed and Tk held it in place while I used small pieces of tape to hold it in place. Much thanks goes to our neighbors the seed for helping us out. All that was left after that was a ring of tape connecting the roof to the walls and another ring of tape connecting the walls to the floor tarp. After that Tk worked on unloading the car while I pounded rebar, then she worked on tying the yurt down while I finished pounding rebar. I think that all took us about 3 hours max. We only needed help for about 10 minutes, and just because lifting the roof was awkward with only 2 people. It wanted to collapse in on itself. I used all 12 suggested tie down points and the yurt only "breathed" a little during the worst storms this year. I'll probably pound less rebar next year. The windows in the yurt helped with airflow, but a fan would be a nice addition for next year.We didn't have any problems with tape peeling off, but that may have been the work of squuegbroom. The only dust that got in the yurt was tracked in on clothes and shoes or blown in through the door. There was very little dust, although I did very slowly and gently sweep once at the end of the week. Slow gentle sweeping is key to not create dust clouds. We had people stop by to tour all week long, and we loved showing off our work. We talked about how awesome the yurt is all week long. Some pics in my picasa web albums. http://picasaweb.google.com/slvrnmph/BurningMan2009# On Sep 8, 9:28 am, Craig Clayton <[email protected]> wrote: > For those that went to Burning Man, how did everyone's yurt hold up? Any > suggestions about what went really well or not so well? > > For my part I built a 6' stretch hexayurt with no windows or vents (didn't > get around to creating them) but with a swamp cooler and I must say it was > quite cool in there with that swamp cooler on, although I suspect a fan > might have been just as good. With a queen size air mattress it was a bit > crowded with our boxes so if we use it next year we'll have to figure out a > better organizational system...maybe vertical shelves/drawers. > > We put 12 tape anchors on it and it barely moved at all during the week but > I think we could have gotten away with just 8 - putting tape anchors 2' > apart on the short walls seems overkill. We used long pointed stakes > instead of rebar and it was much easier to put in a take out of the playa. > After a week the tape was starting to detach but wasn't a problem. We > bought 3 rolls of tape and still had .75 of a roll left after taping the > seams and putting together. > > All in all a great experience! Lots of people asked about it - good > conversation piece. > > --Craig --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
