Anyone purchase a Smiling Woods Yurt?

[yurtgurl]

haha true.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm all ears.

The humidity inside is around 43%. I have the woodstove going. The temperature inside is between 60-70 F and this winter the temperature outside is sometimes -10 F at night to 20-30 F during the day. I live in a humid climate, lots of ice and snow and rain. And the skylight frame is metal.

[canada]

Hello all,
Since this is the most current post i thought i would give it a try to activate it again. I am almost done building a smiling woods yurt ponderosa. Is anyone still active here? I have some questions but also have some answers if any of you guys are wondering. happy to share what i learned along the jouney.

happy yurting

[yurtgurl]

Still here for sure! Would love to hear about your project

[canada]

Hello yurtgurl,

I wanted to ask if anyone had issues with the roof rafters contracting and expanding? I realized that there is about an 1/8" to 1/2" gap between the compression ring and the the rafters. This happened after having a heavy snow load on the roof. It was quite a stress test. From -25C with lots of snow on the roof to +2C, rain on the snow and than sudden shedding. Did anyone ever re tighten the cables or had some issues with them stretching? I already added an extra cable due to heavy snow load in our area. I guess overall I would like to snow how the structure settled over the first year or so.

Thanks

[yurtgurl]

Canada, I think the pictures look totally normal to me! I do have some tiny gaps here and there from the compression ring to the rafters. But from your pic, I don't see any difference from mine. I've been through three winters with a variety of snow loads and also negative temperatures. To the summer where it's 90 degrees and really high humidity. I've never had to add anymore cables. The yurt seems very solid. The only movement I've noticed is the birch ceiling panels popping out and moving a lot. I see yours look really tight and nice. Mine are kind of all over the place now lol. When the sun hits the roof, I hear a lot of pops and bangs of the metal roof expanding and contracting. Sometimes really loud! That took some getting used to. But I've definitely had a couple feet of snow up there and it handles it no problem. Mostly slides off within a day or so. If you want, I can send you a pic of my rafters...

[yurtgurl]

Do you have condensation on the skylight?

[canada]

Thanks for your response. I have to agree with the movement of the panels. I had some move on me which creates tension on the brad nails which fasten them. Some of them broke and three of my panels opened to the side torears the rafters. Should be an easy fix. Regarding condensation I only had issues one time when it was -25C outside. But my skylight is currently not connected to the opener mechanism since I apparently mounted it to low. Last fall when I had the skylight closed with tension water came in. I am a bit disappointed in the quality of the skylight. I used some silicone on the outside to fix it. Back to condensation. I had some ice build up when it was cold and when it melted it was dripping from the compression ring on the rafter side. Where the gaps are :-) besides that I never had issues with condensation but my guess is it is due to not being really air tight up there and allowing for enough venting because of that. Have you siliconed or glued the gasket between the compression ring and metal ring? Anyways I will get up there in the summer to try to get things more tight and reinstall the opener.

[yurtgurl]

That's interesting about the fact that you don't have the opening mechanism connected! Because that is currently where most of my condensation is coming from...very interesting. No, I haven't caulked anything. They told me to caulk the edge of the metal bracket that the skylight sits on top of. And I'll do that in the summer when it's all warm and dry up there. It's been quite the saga figuring it all out. I also get frost and ice build up in the coldest times.

Anyway, I'll try to get some pics of my compression ring/rafters connection in the next couple days and post them.

[canada]

Regarding the opener. It seems to be not well thought out. This is where water leaked once in the fall. Also when I had my blower door test the guy mentioned that around the opener is where he could see cold spots with his thermal camera. Did your gaskets between the two glasses of the skylight move torwards the Center? Mine tightened and moved. Don’t ask me why. Like mentioned before. Not super impressed with the skylight quality.

[Bob Rowlands]

I'd tighten up the cable.