Q: Thickness of polyacrylic domes?

[TSRalex]

Do anyone know the thicknesses of polyacrylic domes?

Which thickness is recommended?

I don´t expect, that it could stand an extreme hail like shown in this Video (it´s an exception, where we´ve to accept damages...), but it should be resistant against typical hail sizes.

[Jafo]

Honestly I do not know. The one on my Pacific Yurt is pretty tough.

[YurterRT]

All yurts come with a dome that measures five-feet across and 16-inches tall. The domed yurt skylight is ¼” thick pure acrylic. Pure acrylic outlasts other clear polymers when exposed to the elements for five years or more.

This was copied from the Colorado Yurt company's website.

[TSRalex]

Originally Posted by YurterRT

All yurts come with a dome that measures five-feet across and 16-inches tall. The domed yurt skylight is ¼” thick pure acrylic. Pure acrylic outlasts other clear polymers when exposed to the elements for five years or more.

This was copied from the Colorado Yurt company's website.

Thank you very much!

If I´m right with converting inch into millimeter, the Colorado-dome should have a thickness of 6.35 mm and that means, a

dome

with 8 mm thickness should be strong enough.

How do the community see bigger domes than 5', as Colorado-Yurt offers?
E.g. 1900 mm (6.23') inner diameter on a 32'-Yurt?

[Bob Rowlands]

A 6.23 diameter opening has an area of ~about 30 square feet. A 5' opening has an area of about ~20 square feet. So the bigger

dome

would admit substantially more light. As for yurt dome materals and thickness I don't know zip about that. From a structural strength perspective, the dome shape is incredibly strong.

[Bob Rowlands]

I always opt for as much natural light as is reasonable given the budget. For illumination reference, a typical 4'x3' bedroom window in an older tract house from the 60s / 70s admits about 12 square feet of light. That lights the standard bedroom fine during a sunny day. Not so much when it is overcast and rainy. But with 8' tall exterior walls and budgets like they were back then, that was 'the bedroom window' size. It is an illumination level boomers grew up with. You need task light on the desk to work.

However today a typical window in a bedroom/office in medium sized home of modern construction, with exterior walls 9' tall, is 6x4 and admits 24 square feet of light, twice the light of older homes. That's the size in this office for example. Very common now. Even aging eyes can see very well with that amount of light, with no light on, during a sunny day. Doing paperwork on winter and overcast days requires additional light.

Combine the natural light from a 5' dome with a few conventional size windows in the kitchen, lr, bath and a couple bedrooms, you are lit OK. But no better than OK imo.

I'd say the dome size is a toss up, UNLESS there are very few exterior windows, or they are very small, like 3x2. Then for SURE the larger dome would be better.

On a personal note, I do NOT like 'underlit' spaces, like older non walkout basements with area wells in front of the bed window for example. I have carpentered on WAAAY too MANY houses including modern, that do not have enough natural light coming in. I really hate that. Trying to work with drop lights strung in a dark rec room sucks. Did that for decades. If you want natural light, opt for 'alot', if it is in the budget. JMO

[Jay Aimes]

We have had hail that put small dings all over my car and shredded the leaves off the trees and that didn't phase the dome on our pacific yurt one bit. mind you, it was deafening in here at the time and I expected catastrophic failure at any moment. But our yurt never fails to amaze us with the punishment it takes here on our flower farm. Our winters are extreme.-30 celsius. 6-10 feet of snow plus the drifting.The wind is relentless. Yurt stands strong through it all. it can be nerve racking at the time, but thats just us letting our fears get the better of us. Cheers and no worries. These are incredible structures. dont sweat the small stuff.

[Bob Rowlands]

Thanks for that post, Jay.

[TSRalex]

Originally Posted by Jay Aimes

We have had hail .... that didn't phase the dome on our pacific yurt one bit.

Do you know how thick your dome is?

Originally Posted by Jay Aimes

Our winters are extreme.-30 celsius.

Which

insulation

is used on roof and on the walls?

Originally Posted by Jay Aimes

6-10 feet of snow plus the drifting.

Do you have the Snow- & Wind-Package, which is offered by

Pacific Yurts

?

Originally Posted by Jay Aimes

The wind is relentless.

Are you working with the valance lacing?

[Jay Aimes]

I have never actually measured the thickness of our dome but it is aprox 3/16 thick. the

insulation

is the foil bubble wrap for lack of a technical term with what I would call a moving blanket material aprox 1/2 inch thick and then then liner on the inside. we do have the snow and wind load package and we made sure our valance lacing is screamin' tight, anything we could do to stop the wind from getting in under anything, we also made a mid roof rope ring to alleviate the ballooning in strong winds. Hope that helps.