6 years on...

Been a while hasn't it!  Quick update, 'my' yurt turned into 'our' yurt after falling in love again with my childhood sweetheart.  It easily accommodated the double bed and the plethora of soft toys that come with a feminisation of a manspace.  The crown cover suffered some UV damage and the clear windows split, luckily no water got in and I was able to effect a temporary fix with glue, a tarp and some motorcycle tyres.  It's holding out well enough and the tarp is keeping most of the light out which is actually quite nice seeing as we don't always want to wake up at sunrise.  The outside is greeeeen!  Not falling apart but is rapidly reaching the stage of needing replacing for aesthetic reasons or at the very least, needing some whitewash in summer to squeeze another year out of it.

I (we) still greatly enjoy our time in the yurt, in the fresh air and with the creatures who exists just the other side of the canvas.

Emerging

Well, here we are at the other end of winter and the jury has returned the verdict on the need for a woodburner.....it isn't!  The oil filled rad has managed to keep things toasty and was never over 3/4 of full capacity.  I have to say that if you're a part timer, you'll either need to fathom out how a mains timer works, or have splendid friends who will turn the heater on for you before arriving because it does take a few hours to get from ambient temperature (let's say 5c) to something approaching comfortable.
That's not to say that the yurt will be fire free, just that a smaller, less obtrusive fire might be more suitable.

This summer's insect of choice is.....drumroll.....the whitefly.  Where they are coming from is beyond me but the little buggers are annoying and if you get one in your ear it sounds like a Messerschmidt.

General report, the canvas is holding up well despite green stuff on the south side where it doesn't get any sun.  The new waterproofing layer of DPM is still proving to be of value and not causing any damp or condensation, it also means water drains off faster and doesn't gather at the skirt bottom and fester, the crown is still waterproof but the windows are suffering a little UV damage and going very slightly milky, hardly surprising really.

Electric heater update.

So far so good, the last two nights have hovered around zero degrees C and the heater has done the job admirably, but I suspect that it may struggle at minus numbers.  Time will tell.

Condensation and damp has failed to make an appearance, even with the plastic walls, so I'm proclaiming this a win.

The garden has been very quiet this year, not so much hooting, squawking or general shuffling around, well apart from the squirrel who decided to soak up some rays while sitting on the windows of the crown cover, made my day that did.

Brrrr! v2.0

I think we got lucky with the warm (and wet) weather persisting so long into November, normal service has been resumed, it's 1:30am and outside it's 1c while inside it's 0c.  Not quite sure how that works.  Good news is that the DPM wall upgrade seems to be working very well indeed, right now the external humidity is 87% and inside it's 64%, with the canvas walls that would have been much higher when left for a week.

Finally got round to jetwashing about half of the outside last week before the washer packed up.  IT was surprisingly effective but it probably would have been wiser to make jetwashing a regular maintenance fixture rather than waiting for green mould to take hold.  Reason being that the green mould seems to come in three layers, the green bit which blasts off really easily, a cream undercoat which takes a little more determination to remove, and a nasty black stain that will only lighten with the use of bleach.  If you're planning on having a yurt, read and follow the location instructions, keep them away from trees and try to put it in a place that gets good all round sunlight if you don't fancy a 3 monthly jetwash session.

Meanwhile, the paraffin heater is languishing at the end of the bed, it was a wee bit smelly, probably good in a larger room but in the confinement of a yurt, it became a little pervasive.  The low odour paraffin totally eliminates the smell but it's VERY expensive and the paraffin overlords seem to have an agreement on price because it's pretty much the same everywhere.

Electric Heating Checkpoint.

This is just to track the effectiveness and cost of heating the yurt with a DeLonghi Dragon 3 oil filled radiator (Chinese made, bit shonky).

Looking good so far, I would have spent £9 on coal over a similar weekend and is far less controllable.


Average external temp 11c.
Average internal Temp 20c.
Entire weekend heating cost @ 10p per kwh, £3.
External humidity 96%
Internal humidity 52%

Things may well change as the temperature drops below zero.  Time will tell.

Impermeable Wall Update

Well, it looks like my concerns about the new plastic membrane walls creating condensation were unfounded, on average the internal humidity has been 30% lower than the external humidity and there have been no instances of water running down the crown cover or any feeling of damp or ickyness at all.

The average temps this weekend were between 5c and 10c outside and a pretty stable 17c inside, only using a fan heater, I will be upgrading to a 3kw oil filled rad at the weekend.  I wonder if I could get through winter with just electrical heating?  I will be measuring the electrical consumption and gauging it against what it would cost to heat the yurt using wood or coal.  It would be great to leave the fire alone until it gets really cold, it's not the cleanest or greenest way (assuming coal usage) to keep warm.

Survival Blanket Insulation.

I bought six of these from the £1 shop, they are the same metallic silver cellophane sheets that they wrap round marathon runners or people who are losing heat.  Apparently they reflect infra red radiation and are good retainers of heat, so on that principle they should do well as a new ceiling liner for the yurt.  Took about half an hour, but I now have what looks like a radio telescope for a ceiling.  The crinkling sound will take a little getting used to, but it's no worse than being kept awake by something akin to an ostrich stomping around on the roof.

So far, the combination of additional insulation and the reflective sheet is pretty impressive, right now it's 14c outside and 18.8c inside with the only heat coming from me and the 12v fridge.  I'm hoping to be able to get away with less coal and wood burning this year and lean more towards more controllable forms of heating like an oil filled radiator or fan heater.

Also, the yurt has a new veranda, I fell through the old one and nearly broke my leg.  This time it's been done with decent wood from a pallet place in Wisbech run by a lovely chap from Holland who also sells timber.  It's been treated with epoxy varnish so should last better than the bare wood that was used previously.  To be fair, the old steps didn't do too badly, they've been there from the beginning of the build.

Ditching the Canvas, Adding a Cosy Jacket for Winter.

Looks like a good weekend so I've pulled my finger out and got stuck in to the thing I have been putting off for some time now.  Initially today's project was to get under the felt, put some additional insulation in the form of carpet underlay, and put it all back together again.  It all went a bit wrong when the outer cover was removed and I found this...

Presumably this is as a result of the wettest year in the UK since the Stone Age, followed by very few opportunities to dry out between showers.  The canvas wall that is intended to keep the yurt waterproof had rotted at the bottom where it has been perpetually wet, and there are some fungal stains on the felt.

Fortunately there are still a few layers between the mould and the inside of the yurt so I don't think any harm has been done.  The picture above also shows the first of three sheets of underlay to be placed on the roof, the following picture is of the additional wall insulation (held on initially with gaffa tape, this features heavily in the upgrade).

Once that was out the way, it was time to think about replacing the rotted canvas wall.  I decided on damp proof membrane from B&Q, a single 15x4m roll was more than enough, cost about £40.  I sliced off a strip 150cm wide and worked my way round with a roll of gaffa tape and ended up here.

I know what you're thinking, "what about condensation?", I look at it this way, I reckon the weather creates more incoming moisture than I create outgoing moisture.  I'm planning on a mushroom vent for the crown cover soon, so it won't be a problem wither way.  There's a solar powered fan at the door pumping air in all day.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I'll be jetwashing the whole thing.

Rain rain rain......

The persistent rain is have a bit of a negative effect on the canvas walls, I've noticed that right at the bottom of the canvas, it's pretty much saturated and is resulting in some black mould, nothing terminal or damaging, but it's not ideal.  It's not bad enough to smell or have any other undesirable consequences, but it will need some thought, and the thought is this...

Plasti Dip

You might want to turn the sound off for this video, also, if you can work out where the bloke's face is for most of the video, you can put a Post It note there and still see the video without having to look at the gurning idiot.
I've used it years ago to rubber coat tool handles and anything else that remained stil for long enough to get rubberised.  The idea is to wait for a good hot spell, get some air to the walls, wait till they are totally dry, then with a spray gun and thinned out Plasti Dip, rubberise the canvas to make it totally waterproof.  Not sure how much 5 litres will cover, but the bottom will get treated first and then we'll see what's left.

Last weekend was a hum dinger for some pretty lairy blustery wind, with 50mph gusts, it was a bit noisy outside, so noisy I had to use earplugs to get to sleep.  It's at times like this that I truly appreciate the importance of considerate and well thought out siting of the yurt, why? because the next morning I was shown by Lou (one of the lovely house people) that the previous night's wind had torn a significant chunk of 8" leylandii bough down, depositing it perfectly next to the chickens.  Although the yurt is close to trees, none of them are large enough to pose any real danger, nor are they of the randomly falling over flavour of tree (Chestnut is the closest).

While we're here I'd like to nominate the Bissell cordless sweeper as most awesome yurt tool of 2011, using compressed logs for fuel is a messy business, touch one and there's sawdust all over the floor, on top of that, I like toast and other crumbly foodstuffs that the Bissell munches down like there's no tomorrow.  It gets used multiple times a day and I'd be lost without it.

So, this drought...

I just wanted to share with you what rain sounds like from inside my lovely canvas pie.

The Spring Scrub down.

After contemplating buying a new cover to replace the rather manky existing one, I decided to risk it and use neat bleach in a trigger bottle, a dish brush and some water. I think it worked rather well. Still a long way to go but it's far from being hard work.

Humming Yurt

Windy today, windy enough for me to realise that using flat webbing as ties for the crown cover is a really bad idea. Flat straps hum and drum against the roof, so I've had to go all the way round and throw lumps of wood on the roof to keep the straps from humming interesting chords.

Also, I am trialling the idea of putting ex-storage heater bricks on top of the woodburner and inside the oven as a base. The idea being that they will release the heat once the fire has gone out and keep things warmer for a little bit longer though the night. A nice hot one makes a brilliant foot warmer.

New year 2012.

Been a while since the last entry so I'll try and lump it all together here.

Electricity:

Trying to get though the winter months with a 60w solar panel is a fail. I've run a massive extension lead from the house to the yurt and I'm a little ashamed to say that it has transformed things inside the yurt. Apart from the obvious like being able to make toast, it has opened up new winter possibilities, the main one being how to deal with very low temperatures on a Friday night when I roll up after a week at work.

The week before last hit a personal yurt record low of -11c, it took 2 hours to get the inside warm using compressed logs (more on that later), that's 2 hours wasted, so I have invested in an electric duvet, so I can at least hit the sack while the yurt warms up instead of sitting there listening to the shipping forecast and watching my breath drift away. At £99 that aren't cheap, but a decent goose down duvet is £60 and doesn't have flashing lights and dials. No brainer for a bloke.

Fridge:

Milk and cheese goes behind the sofa, it seems to be a natural cold spot, so no fridge needed yet. Of course people survived without them for thousands of years anyway.

Heating:

The previously mentioned paraffin heater is still working well but really dries up the air, meaning that I wake up in the AM with a dry throat. As an alternative I've been using Wildfire coal nuggets, they will keep going till morning and the coldest it's been so far at 8am is 10c, that's acceptable. The tonne of compressed wood waste briquettes have been slightly disappointing in that they were part of a batch that were not sufficiently compressed, therefore they burn too fast and are quite messy. The seller has kindly offered me a discount on the next batch so the jury is still out on briquettes. We shall see.

General state of things:

The outer cover is looking rather green now, it's not nice, but the inside is still lovely. I'm considering using a jet wash to blast the green off but will need to be careful not to blast it all under the crown cover and into the yurt. The door is holding out well, no swelling, splits or cracks.

Stove:

The Prithy FG15 has given sterling service through winter, stews, baguettes, pizza, jacket spuds all in abundance. Money well spent.

That's it for now, come spring (hopefully the earwigs will stay away this year) I'll pull the covers off and have a look to see how things are doing there. I suspect there will be the entire ladybird population of the world just waiting to rock.

The General State of Things.

The general state of the yurt after a year and more outside is as follows.

Inside: Absolutely tip top, no wood splits, no peeling paint (other than that which has blistered due to heat), averything holding out well. The horsehair string that holds the poles to the lattice walls also makes excellent bedding for fieldmice, as I found out after I caught two of them nesting in a drawer. Ingenious little beggars they are, they stole a variety of materials from around the yurt including a final layer of aluminium foil as a reflective surface. Quite how mice go to know about the thermal reflective properties of foil is beyond me.

Outside: The side of the yurt facing the trees and with least airflow has begun to go green and it looking grubby, the other side that catches the sun and wind is in excellent order. The time is coming for a major airing of all the layers and maybe a blast with a jetwash to get the green off.

The outriggers we made to make up for the incorrect measurement of the base are holding up well, but I fear they will not last as long as the rest of the base due to their being quite thin and closer to the elements than other parts of the structure.

All in all, I still love time spent in the fresh air, with good people and close to nature, all of which come with yurt life.

Robin Attack!!!

Ok, so there I am round the back of the yurt fiddling with the leisure battery when I hear "donk, donk donk donk....donk donk....donk....." coming from inside. I knew full well that no one was in there so I tentatively went round the front to have a look though the open door and was rather taken aback by a robin coming at me, full pelt! Luckily the cheeky little chap swerved at the last minute and escaped.
He had left, how shall we say, a few messages to indicate his presence. Curious as to why he was in there in the first place, I sat quietly and waited. Within a couple of minutes there was a flutter at the door, followed by the "donk donk donk...." I heard earlier. This time I saw exactly what the robin was up to, he was attacking my toaster! He must have flown past the open door, seen his reflection in the chrome toaster and got all alpha male over the idea of another robin on his patch. The little bugger was furious, flapping and jumping around, showing his bum to the toaster and generally being a thug. I'll try and lure him back next week and get some footage.

Brrrr!!!!!

After the crazy high temperatures of the last two weeks, we have finally settled into more seasonal weather, i.e. it's FREEZING by comparison. A good opportunity to try the paraffin heater in earnest and I must say it's superb. From about 6c, the heater brought the yurt up to t shirt temperature in about 10 minutes with no mad temperature spikes with the wood burner.

Time will tell whether it's up to the job when it gets really cold. Watch this space.

Winter Heating Rethink

I'm switching to paraffin heating for this winter, the fire was nice but the cost of buying logs and finding suitable kindling was ridiculous. Obviously having a fire in the yurt transforms it totally, but the unpredictable nature of the temperature rises and falls with a large fire mean that it's a constant battle trying to keep a stable temperature going. In addition to that, I spend long periods of time in the workshop, tinkering, and in that time the fire normally fizzles.
Anyhoo, the Prity will probably be leaving the yurt this weekend and the space it took up will be utilised as a kitchen area for preparing and cooking nosh. It's an ideal spot, right under the lightest area of the yurt and near what will soon be a ventilation hole (where the chimney went).
Here's the heater (2.5kw technically), will run for about 17 hours on a 3.8l fill.



Obviously it's possible that it won't be up to the job, but the advantages of running something as stable and compact as this heater, outweigh the advantages of a fire, which are mostly aesthetic.

Been a while...

Well, here we are, August already and I've spent pretty much every spare day I can in the yurt. It's been lovely not to have to faff around with the fire every day and be able to get up in the mornings without the desparate sprint to the fire to re-kindle it. The downside is that the kind of food I can eat has changed a little because of the lack of outside refrigeration services one finds in winter. Mainly it's been new potatoes from the garden, and tomatoes, pasta, stuff like that.

A new addition to the tech side of the yurt is a solar powered fan. I re-adapted the yurtcon to suck fresh air in from outside whenever there is enough light to power the fan. Solar panel is a £20 job from Maplins, tucked under one of the crown cover straps. This way there is a constant flow of fresh air coming into the yurt even when I'm away. Eventually it will become an extractor and mounted in a clear section of the crown, this will be to overcome the problem of condensation when cooking, or on hot days when there is something wet inside, like a towel.

I've gone back to the Squadron leisure batteries, doubled up and linked to the solar panel. The Elecsol batteries don't last that well and trying to get any empathy from the person who imports them is like getting blood from a stone. They are ok, but nothing more than that.

Wind turbine is next on the list, right after I have become Moped Overlord, keeper of all Velosolexes (that might take a while)

Z.

Ah! Almost forgot. Insect de jour is the earwig, omnipresent, indestructable, infinitely creepy, you can't even pick the blasted things up and throw them out, they have some sort of anti-human forcefield around them. I am in consultation with the ladybirds, I've told them the earwigs dissed the ladybirds big time. Hopefully this will result in some sort of turf war in which earwig numbers are decimated as a result of scuttle by shootings by gangs of ladybird yoofs. One can but hope.

Wonderful Annoyances

It has to be said, one of the biggest differences between sleeping in a yurt and sleeping in a house is the connection you feel with what it on the other side of the wall. It's hard to beat the feeling of falling asleep to the sometimes comical hooting of owls, or waking to the dawn chorus of what sounds like several thousand songbirds tweeting their little heads off. The have also been a few mystery sounds, yips, barks, yelps, probably foxes or possibly Black Shuck!!! WooOOOOOOoooooOOOooo!!!

The next few weeks will see a slight interior re-design, things that have not been used in the last 6 months will be going, that includes a couple of the leather sofa chairs, and a very nice Bene office cabinet will be pepping up the storage situation.

Storing the duvet in the dragon box has proved to be a winner, it comes out on a Friday night dry as a bone and much easier to get warmed up.

The yurt structure is holding well, the paint on the uprights has bubbled due to the heat (and the heat has been a bit extreme sometimes, so no fault there) and the front door has swollen a little and sill need a bit skimming off the bottom soon. I am so looking forward to spring and summer, not so much looking forward to finding out which particular insect will be joining me though the warmer months.

Spring.

Spring is almost here and I'm sure it will bring a few challenges such as sticky tree buds and ladybirds. The most obvious potential problem will be cooking bread and tatties when the temperature outside is warm. Lighting a fire will be out of the question, maybe it's time to start looking at caravan ovens.
On the subject of cooking, the camping stove that the Welshman threw in with a campervan I bought, has performed beautifully. It's hard to imagine how a full size hob could improve things, so it's staying put for now.
Spring will also bring a furniture review, sumptuous leather chairs for 4 aren't really needed, so three will probably go and be replaced by a beanbag and some more storage. Storage hasn't been a massive problem, maybe it's just a case of living to your means but I dare say it would zoom up the scale of importance if this mini adventure went full time.
One handy tip for anyone thinking of spending time in a yurt, keep your duvet in a wooden box while you are away, despite the yurt being totally waterproof, duvets and bedding certainly "felt" a bit damp after being on the bed for a week. It might have just been the cold, but keeping the duvet in the dragon box means that it's out of the atmosphere and stays fresh and dry.