Starting the journey

[Bob Rowlands]

Just copied and pasted my link and it came right up. Maybe there isn't a rafter to wall detail like I thought there was. I didn't look at all the photos, but I could have sworn there was one in there. All I remember is I took several detail shots and had my wife load them but that was 2013. I dismantled my last yurt early this year so I can't take any more photos.

[James]

oh that sucks you dont make them anymore, at least you live in one right, but you put the rafter onto the walls the same way you do a mongolian yurt, and yes I saw the pics,I was going to ask you about the bracket you have on the bottom of the wall attached to the deck , could you tell me more about them and now that you do it that way does the outside skin now come over the top of deck and cinged down.

[Bob Rowlands]

Ell brackets are a snap to fabricate from 3/4" x 1/8th mild strap steel. Cut to length, grind the cut edges, bend with 4" tab and two inch tab. 1/4" drill for a lath cross bolt 3" up to center, and a 3/16th hole on the platform tab for deck screws. I bend the ell in the vise and with a hammer to make it nice and square. Really it couldn't be easier. Just some work is all. Do that and your yurt is NOT gonna come off that deck, I guarantee. Mine withstood 80 mph winds. Now NO tent can do that.

The 15'9" yurt had the bottom of the cover lap over the edge of the 16' platform. Snug cover to frame with the low rope. The 12'6" yurt on same 16' platform. Cover just piled up on the platform. Snugged with low rope. Not exactly ideal like an overlap, but it worked good enough. Either of them I could hike up the cover a foot or so at the bottom and get a real nice breeze through there on hot days. Natural cooling.

Off topic. No more yurts in my future. I made three the 14'er, 15'9" and 12'6" Why no more yurt? Cotton cover rotted out. But mostly, grandkids are teens now and little interest in making roasted marshmallows or smores in papas yurt in the fall and winter. It sucks when they grow up. Simple happy childhood pleasures like that disappear like tears in rain.

[James]

I hear that , but they will be back and they will want to make there own yurts when they complicate there life to much, I am going to try those bracket if you do not mind

[Bob Rowlands]

Go for it. I can't remember what size you yurt is, but if you have a large yurt say 20' or bigger, you probably should consider 1" x 3/16ths strap and 1/4" lags into the deck. The heads on typical deck screws WILL break off under stress. Snapped screw heads happened on several of my anchors in the 80 mph+. If that storm had continued much longer I would have lost the yurt. I had a few rafters snap and laths break. The wind pressure on yurt in a big blow is nothing to mess with.

I lost my first yurt, the 14'er to a blizzard. No anchorage just sitting on the ground. Stupid, really. By God that was eight full days of work gone in an instant. The yurt looked like a crashed wwI era plane in the snow. Fabric and busted wood everywhere. Damn that sucked.


You're gonna dig that bombproof anchorage when sitting inside by the wood stove and it is blowing like a banshee outside. Sit in there, yell 'blow you .........' and laugh in its face. I HATE high wind. Always have. Especially when sheeting houses back in the 1970s. Popped my thumb out of joint many times dealing with that.

[James]

I build 20 to 30 I have a 35 foot one now I stake my frame to the deck, I never had a rafter break on me on the walls , the skin has ripped on me but I did not know about it till the next day when I woke up and there was a tree laying across the top of the yurt, we had a small tornado close to the yurt the winds in the area was 60 miles but I want to move to Hawaii and build one they have hurricanes.