Platform questions - 30 foot yurt

[rpelaez1]

Hi everyone-
Total newbie here. We just bought a piece of land un NE Maine - on the coast. We are considering buying a 30 foot yurt- first contender is

Pacific Yurts

but totally open to another company if they are better suited to accommodate the harsh winters...We will mainly use this as a summer vacation spot, I don't think we are planning to spend much time in the winter (I hate the cold!)

So, we have a TON of questions, but for starters - we gotta get the platform built so will start with those questions.

Maine requires that we put the footers 4 feet down - we may hit granite ledge or dirt - there's no telling what's under there...We are looking at the platform instructions from Pacific and they have the footers every 4 feet totaling 32 footers. Is this really necessary or have others built their own platforms with fewer footers or their own design?

Do we have to use the exact plan per whatever company we get the yurt from? The plan from Pacific seems way over engineered, but maybe that's needed for that exact yurt?

What about

insulation

? It gets cold in Maine, so we need to keep it warm, but some people we talked to have mentioned that stuffing the holes with

insulation

is just going to offer up a nice warm home for critters...so what do people do about that?

Any advice you guys can offer is welcome - we are super excited but really hoping to lean on this community for help.