yurt vs house

[Bob Rowlands]

Speaking from experience, I put off building our home WAY too long. I should have built it when I was 30, not 45. It would be paid off well before retirement. The way it is now, I can't even consider retiring until this dude is paid for. FWIW.

I'm bring as straight forward as I can be here. Building/owning a small home is probably the single wisest financial move a family can make. The sooner you get after it, especially with the mind blowing low interest we have now, the better. You can always build a yurt later, when you're empty nesters, like we did. IMHO, I'd take care of business now-while the family is all very young.

[newt]

Thanks Bob. Valuable insight.

[camptc]

I thought of buying and building a yurt on a properly zoned piece of property and living in it until the property was paid off. Then, start construction on a long-term home and use the yurt as a rental. Getting very popular these days... Just a thought on a decent way to recoup costs after the house is built. The other option I've considered is building a hard sided yurt home, which is built to code. They are easy to add onto later and come at a competitive price vs. a stick built home. Good Luck!

[Knecht]

Originally Posted by Jafo

For a 30 foot yurt, expect to burn all of 10 full cords, and probably more, depending on what part of PA you are in.

I'm not familiar with your wood measuring, but as I'm just expecting my first winter in a yurt, it concerns me quite a bit. What shall I imagine as 10 full cords? And is that just for winter, or a year?


As for the original topic, how about learning from the way Mongolians do this. As I've read and heard, many of them who live in cities have a yurt on their property, plus a house. The yurt is bedroom/living room, while the house provides a safe lockable storage, bathroom, sometimes kitchen, etc..
So you could do something like that, maybe build the house by parts, adding slowly. Start with the kitchen and bathroom, plus some place to keep valuable items, also guns and such. Of course, I'm used to think about the kind of house we mainly have here, that means brick houses. Those are quite easy to add. Not sure how about those timberframe constructions you guys have, those may require to be built whole at a time. JMHO. If I have to move any time soon, this may well be the way I'll do things.

[Jafo]

A full cord is 4 ft. x 4 ft. x 8 ft. I was considering just for winter alone.

[Knecht]

Thanks! Guess I should make some more

[Jafo]

A 30 ft yurt too mind you.

[Bob Rowlands]

A true full cord is nothing less than 4x4x8, split and stacked. Anything under that is a fraction of a cord. Some call an 8' pickup bed mounded up with the splits tossed in it, "That's about a cord". That's not even close to a full cord.

10 cords is ALOT of wood. I read in a John Rowlands book, 'Cache Creek Country' (superb) that they planned on using TWENTY cords in a long Canadian winter to heat their little rough hewn cabin. Now that my friend is a mind blowing amout of wood to cut and split.

[Jafo]

Yurts will use a lot more wood than a small cabin though, unfortunately. As soon as the stove cools, the room cools.

[Bob Rowlands]

Yes, it does. lol