So, You Want to Live in a Yurt? (4 page)

RAINIER YURTS

http://rainieryurts.reachlocal.com

They offer more than just yurts, with tents and camping cottages being alternate options. They were even choosen by Neiman Marcus to provide a PREMIUM (read: hyper-expensive) yurt. I didn’t look too deeply into their offerings, when we were on the hunt, as I found their website confusing, and the options slightly limiting. But this is another big boy in the yurt arena, so don’t take my word for it. Go with what works with YOUR needs! They are also located in WA, so that was another reason I didn’t put a lot of time into researching their yurts. If we were paying for shipping, I would have gone with Pacific yurts since their options and pricing were more in keeping with our style.

WHITE MOUNTAIN YURTS

http://www.whitemountainyurts.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/White-Mountain-Yurts/206549916977

Beautiful yurts, great website. Great option for people in the Northeast. They didn’t make it to our short list, but not for any reason in particular. It’s like cute puppies, you want to take them ALL home, but there are usually one or two that catch your eye. That was Pacific yurts (since they introduced us to yurts first, and are the most well known) and Blue Ridge Yurts (since they were in our home town, and we feel pretty strongly about shopping locally).

COLORADO YURT COMPANY

http://www.coloradoyurt.com

https://www.facebook.com/coloradoyurt

Offering yurts, tipis and tents. A great option for those in the middle of the country, and they have great reviews. If I were putting up a yurt in an especially difficult, high wind/snow area, I’d focus my search on these guys.

BLUE RIDGE YURTS

http://blueridgeyurts.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Ridge-Yurts/290796774263975

A women owned, small scale yurt company in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is the yurt company we went with, both because they were practically next door to our yurt site, and because of their awesome, personalized customer service. They do great work, and we are beyond happy with our yurt. If you have any questions about this company specifically, we’d be happy to talk with you and with advance notice, we’re happy to show off our yurt!

Another great resource with information about the yurt companies is the book,
Yurts: Living in the Round
and its companion website -
http://www.yurtinfo.org
.

Taking a walk on the new pastureland, pre-yurt-build

PROBLEMS ALONG THE WAY

YurtFAOs com

Our mantra through the whole process was “stay flexible” and I would highly suggest you do the same!

Hopefully by sharing some of the issues WE had, you’ll avoid them and stumble into your own. That’s the fact of it. No matter how prepared you think you are, you’ll still run into road blocks. Just the nature of building a home, but perhaps with awareness of this fact, you’ll have less stress about the whole matter.
Dare to hope!
We thought it would be smooth sailing from all that we heard about putting up a yurt - “it’s so quick”, “it’s so EASY” and so on. And as I’ve said before, the yurt itself
is
…the rest of it?
Not so much
.

If the issue doesn’t relate to you (i.e. you’re building in the city and won’t have septic), then just move on to the next!

*You are told your land has septic, well and electric. You think, “Score! I won’t have to worry about those, they’re already taken care of for me!”

- Truth
. You could be lucky, and have that be the case. In ours? The well pump had been stolen, and the well cap was cracked, which let trash fall in. That meant we needed a new well pump (about $400). It also meant our plumber shocked the well water with a heavy dose of chlorine prior to us moving in, which made our water taste like pool water for a week or two. Minor inconvenience, but still meant we had to bring in drinkable water for that time period.

The water flow was also less than desirable, so we needed a holding tank. More $$. The septic was the least trouble, since it already had a certificate. All we had to do was pay for a trench to run it to the yurt. We also had to make sure that our deck was high enough to account for enough “drop” per foot from the yurt to the septic tank. Lucky for us, the septic tank was buried deep, so it wasn’t a huge issue.

Electric? The power lines ran all the way back to our plot, but the grounding pole had been taken with the previous occupant
(doh!)
. So we had to pay our local power company to come out and trench in a line to the yurt. Plus, pay an electrician to put in a power pole. So we’re talking almost $2K extra for those tasks. Plus, forms, phone calls and red tape. And
TIME
. That added a month to the schedule.

*Your contractors gave you an estimate at the beginning, and it ended up being double at the end. And they want to be paid now.

- Truth
. We loved our contractors, and in no way felt we were ripped off. But this was their first yurt, and ours, and so quotes were tough to come by. What with other expenses cropping up along the way, and final numbers being higher than planned, the end of the project was
VERY
stressful. We also ran into the issue of needing things to be done for the inspection that we didn’t have budgeted for - for example, a light switch with fixture just inside the interior door. That’s another $200 with fixture and electric work, at least. We just went with the cheapest fixture we could find!

* Insulation under the platform is a real head scratcher for contractors.

- Truth
. This might depend on your yurt manufacturer. But Blue Ridge Yurts has a raised platform with a narrow opening between platform and deck all the way around the yurt. This meant that traditional fiberglass sheets (which I would rather not use anyway) wouldn’t work, as the sheets need to be installed in a grid using the under deck supports. Which meant that the insulation would overhang past that narrow opening, and on the first rain get very, very wet.

If we only insulated the areas under the deck that worked with the traditional method of installation, we’d lose a considerable square footage of insulated yurt. Which translates to considerable heat loss. This was a discussion that happened at the very end of the building, when we were exhausted, way over budget and ready to just be in our yurt. Our contractor recommended spray foam insulation, which as he said
“will cost you a little more.”

Music to our budget strained ears.
So?
We went with NO insulation, which I do
NOT
recommend. Make sure you figure insulation out early on, and budget for what you want. I really wanted to stay as eco-friendly as possible, which spray foam and fiberglass are not, but had our budget been able to squeak it, we would have gone with the spray foam.Because sometimes
easy
is what
wins
.

*If you live in a cold area, and plan to live in your yurt full time (as we do), you’ll need to plan for pipe and water heater insulation.

- Truth
. Our contractor went all out and built a little house under the deck. It fits a low boy 40 gallon water heater, the cold sensitive plumbing and similar. It has a cement floor, fiberglass insulation and keeps everything from freezing (well, as long as we have the wood stove going). Just keep in mind, you’ll need to fully winterize your yurt if you go anywhere (unless you have secondary heat like a propane heater or similar. This need for an insulated house led to the next issue.

* Appliances, appliance fittings and furniture will not all fit as expected or planned in your yurt. Keep those receipts!!

- Truth
. We were lucky in that all of the furniture we planned on bringing worked out. I’m glad we built interior walls, since the exterior walls are 7 ft and we had planned on putting a 7 ft tall cabinet, built by my grandfather, against an exterior kitchen wall.
Um
,
yeah
. Well, the ceiling rafters make it more like 6 1/2 ft ceiling clearance.

But the cabinet looks stunning against the interior wall, so it worked out. The kitchen is very much a work in progress, as we want to install custom curved counters and a bar height kitchen island for eating/socializing/cooking/storage. Most off-the-shelf stuff can work, but it results in wasted space since it was meant for a right angle solution! But the biggest appliance issue was the shower kit. I spent hours finding the best price, with the best customer rating for a shower kit. It was ordered early on, and delivered. But it wasn’t even taken out of the box until the rough in bathroom walls were up, and the insulated house under the deck was built.
(Our original thought was a claw foot tub, which seems to be a popular choice for yurt bathrooms….sadly, we ran out of time and budget! But a free standing tub would have saved us the following headache…)