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.