You're welcome. You need to fully understand yurt geometry if you aren't working off a specific set of plans.
As you expand the wall it goes from tall and narrow to short and wide. The lath shape from vertical diamonds to squares to horizontal diamonds.
A big advantage to squares is, not strength per say, the yurt wall is very strong through redundancy. No, squares are an advantage when erecting the yurt. Eyeballing the lath cross until you see squares is a fast easy way to get the proper overall wall length, ASSUMING you built the yurt with squares in mind. Correct length is a BIG deal. lol
Expanding the khana to its planned length is CRUCIAL to erecting the yurt easily, and safely-with nobody getting hurt. Why? If the khana is too long, the rafters will pop out of the yurt ring and bop the people in the middle on the head. Why does that happen? While you guys are messing around trying to comress the wall with rafters stuffed into the ring, there's a whole lotta shakin goin on. Doing this shake and compress thing over uneven ground is even worse.
It is a REAL pain in the head, believe me. Fall out, bop those inside the wall, and cut them. Or the whole shebang collapse. I know. It's happened to me.
Conversely, if the wall is too short, you'll never get all the rafters snug into place, and again there goes the wall shake to expand. No fun with rafters up in place and dangerous as well.
BTW, even if the door frame bolts align with their holes in the khana, there's sufficient play in the system for the wall length to be off by several inches.
Getting the overall wall length is such a big deal, and such a pain to rectify, while installing 'exact fit' rafters like mine, that I solved that problem. Like this: I adjust the wall to squares, install the door frame, and IMMEDIATELY drop my
-pre set to the EXACT length- into place. Do *not* install any rafters until the wall is the correct length.
No rafters in place. If the cable is slack, expand the lath a bit. Jusrt shake and pull apart as you walk around the perimeter. No problem. No weight of rafters no bopping.
If it won't fit into the crosses, collapse the wall abit. Again, no rafters, no problems. Shake the wall abit and tighten, until the cable drops right in place.
Doing it this way, I set the ring atop its temporary stand and start stuffing in the rafters, confident they'll fit perfectly. Voila!
If your rafters are notched to sit on the crosses, and fit slots in the ring, such that the geometry up top is correct, (as mine do) an exact circumferential wall length is crucial.
If the rafters are slotted to sit atop the
, and tenons stuffed into holes in the ring, there's bit of play allowed, but correct length is still good. If the rafters have looped cordage at the outside so the rafter simply drapes around the khana cross, and the tenons fit into holes in the ring, there's even more allowance for rafter-and wall-length variation. But you still have to tighten it all up, and that is a pain in the butt if you are doing it yourself.
IMO, all this jibber jabber is key to understanding how to build the yurt without an exacting set of plans. That, or follow a teachers lead. Or, learn as I do, by the school of hard knocks. lol Now that's learned me good. lol
Good luck.
Re: Building a Yurt
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