Yurt-Building in Vermont

Last Friday, I flew to Vermont to learn how to build a yurt. I've been dying to know how for years now and though it's a simple enough structure, I figured it would be better to take a class than to go through the trial and error of teaching myself from books and pictures. It is a house, so to speak, with walls and a roof that have to stay standing, and I am notorious for not being able to make woodworking projects square.

So I made the trek to Yestermorrow Design Build School in Warren, Vermont, about an hour outside of Burlington. It was cool and wet in the mountains there, most unlike what we're experiencing here in Upstate South Carolina, and it was a slightly disorienting feeling to step backwards from the onset of summer to the middle of spring. Disorienting, but quite enjoyable.

In a little less than two days, our class built a 12' diameter yurt from scratch. We didn't worry about building a platform for this yurt because its permanent home would be at a meditation center in New York--we focused only on the steps necessary to go from a pile of wood and material to a finished yurt, and it was exhilarating. The class energy was good, and it was fun meeting a wide variety of people who had one thing in common: we all wanted to build a yurt, even though we each had a different impetus for that desire. The procedure wasn't complicated, and all of the equipment we used was quite common, from jigsaws and cordless drills to a miter saw and table saw. The more finished you want your yurt, the more tools you'll need, of course--our woodworking was basic, almost rustic, since there wasn't time for sanding, priming, and painting. The weekend was all about making a functional structure; making an aesthetically pleasing one falls to the individual going forward.

Saturday saw us divided up into three teams: one worked on the lattice wall, one on the roof ring, and one on the rafters. The instructors did a great job of mixing teams up as we went along, so that everyone was able to experience as many different aspects of the process as they wanted. A lot of thinking and figuring went into the roof ring at the beginning, but once the math made sense and work began, it came together pretty quickly.

I started out on rafters, and it was fun. There were 28 rafters all told, and each rafter required 5 cuts and one drilled hole, so we worked with a miter saw, jigsaw, and a power drill to knock that out. I had very little previous jigsaw experience, but got the hang of it quickly--it ended up being one of my favorite parts, although I would like to try cutting the curves with a coping saw as well.

Meanwhile, the lattice team breezed through their fabrication after they got their templates in order. We used nuts, bolts, and washers to connect the lattice--you can use lashing instead, but the metal hardware provides a more rigid wall, which was useful for our purposes. However, it's not so rigid that you can't fold up the entire lattice, which was neat.

By Sunday morning, we were working on the last stages of fabrication--door straps, the roof covering, and canvas walls. Geometry figures heavily into the fabrication of the roof covering (as does some pretty smelly glue) and it was interesting to watch it come together.

Before long, we were headed outside to begin construction. With about half a dozen people working on raising the lattice and rafters, it went very quickly.

The trickiest part by far was getting the rafters up. The bottom ends of the rafters sit on top of the yurt's steel tension cable (woven into the top notches of the lattice wall) and the curved top ends slide home into the roof ring. But the roof ring doesn't support itself until you have about six or eight rafters in place. So those of us who were inside setting it up had to wear hard hats to prevent injury from falling rafters. I didn't get hit in the head, but I did catch a rafter on its way down, and it had some momentum behind it.

Once the rafters are in, gravity keeps them in place up top and the tension cable keeps them snug at the bottom. Ingenious design.

The coverings went on very quickly and though there was some finish work that we left undone since Yestermorrow wasn't the yurt's final destination, it was complete enough to demonstrate the basics. Everything beyond this point is, once again, primarily aesthetics.

We hung out inside for a while, discussing the construction and alternative tactics for certain portions. During the class, we talked a lot about making it through the winter in a yurt, but I'm more concerned about making in through the summer in a yurt. I was able to talk to the instructors about possible solutions to the ventilation challenges I'll face, and I think I have a reasonable strategy to test. I won't be able to have a dome here in South Carolina--the top of the yurt is too important of a ventilation point to seal it up, so I'm planning on constructing an octagonal cupola instead, with small windows that will open to draw the air up and out. I'll also need to include at least one additional door or window frame, for cross-ventilation. But these are not daunting challenges. The biggest challenges, as I see them, are permitting and figuring out electric and water/septic options. (That's where my mom, who was the general contractor when we built our house on the farm, will come in very handy.)

Once we'd basked in the glow of building a yurt for about an hour, we broke it down again and loaded it up for transport to its permanent site. Amazingly, it all fit in the back of a small truck.

I came back from Vermont rested and ready to build a yurt. The possibilities are exciting, and the potential for literally endless customization very much appeals to the designer in me. I'm in love with the idea of building the mostly beautifully crafted yurt I can, with painted wood and canvas and all sorts of delightful little details.

Infrastructure will be a challenge, but I have every confidence that I can build the actual structure with relative ease. So maybe by the fall I'll be ready to host a yurt-raising party on the farm...at the very least, I know I'm going to start building a test lattice when I take a week off of work after the Farm Tour, and start doing the math for a larger yurt (24' perhaps--twice the size of the one we built in Vermont). Either way, just knowing that building my own yurt is within reach is the second-best feeling in the world right now.

(The best being that the garlic harvest is underway and it's looking light years better than last year's!)