New, modern yurt build in Mongolia

[UKadventurer]

Continuing the topic of winter life in the mountains in a 'ger' (yurt), I thought I'd add something about clothing.

As a holiday present my wife had a winter 'deel' made for me. It's a traditional robe worn by Mongolians for eons. I got the winter one, lined with sheepskin. It can be made with lambskin but it costs 2x more. This cost US$230 custom made for me.



Pros: Subjectively it looks pretty badass. It's very long and will cover my boots. You can just throw it on right out of bed and go outside.

Cons: it's freaking heavy. It's made of sheepskin, not just the wool, plus the outer textile material. The weight is 4.5kg (10lb) and you feel it. Not very well sealed from wind which can blow underneath. Not as warm or as light as a down parka but more durable. Not as flexible as a parka and a bit of trip hazard. The sheepskin is still stiff. I hope it breaks in.

Typically I've been a fan of down mountain parkas from way back in the UK, USA and in recent years in Mongolia. I've got 3 now. My go to parka is a Rab brand (UK company) which I got cheap second-hand from my nephew who lived in Mongolia and then left. I think I gave him about $50. I've done tons of mountain climbs or just city walks to work. I still use it if it's not awfully cold.



Pros: it's pretty warm but requires layering if it's colder. Decent for hiking when you don't want to overheat. The hood covers part of your face too. It's light and highly compressible.

Cons: it uses a light fabric which is prone to cuts and tears but can be patched if not too bad. It uses sewn-through panels which causes some cold spots.

I always have a wool and fleece hat. If I'm going to climb an exposed mountain, I'll take dual-lens goggles because the wind chill is killer. In the next photo it was only -25C but there was a high wind. I needed to cover every bit of my skin. A fleecy balaclava is also essential to cover everything the goggles don't cover.



I recently got some locally made boots for about $90. I wear them on the daily. They are cowhide are fully lined with fur. Dog fur, I think. This photo also shows my fleece leggings which I usually wear under jeans or work pants.

Pros of the local boots: slip on, very warm, socks are optional, good lugged soles.

Cons: They wouldn't be a great choice for hiking far. They are a bit loose and can't be tightened much at all. Snow gets in unless I put my pants over the boot.

If I'm going hiking, I'll wear some Columbia winter hiking boots which use synthetic

insulation

. "Thinsulate" maybe and a reflective lining. For snow, you'll want a gaiter to seal out the deeper snow.



In preparation for moving to the mountains, I decided to upgrade my old down parka with higher performance Rab mountaineers parkas. They have a higher loft filling and use box construction instead of sewn-through, so no cold spots. Also I got one for the wife. They cost about $370-400 new.




Pros: extremely light and compressible. Extremely warm. Good hood with some face protection. Perfect for all day or night outside activities.

Cons: the nylon is even lighter than my previous jacket and can be snagged, torn very easily. I have to be careful what kind of activity I do. Construction is out of the question. Sometimes too warm and I don't think I'd hike in it but I'd probably pack it in case I need it.

Finally, to gloves. I don't have anything mega special. I generally wear some cheap wool and fleece gloves. An overglove can be added if I'm out for a long time and/or it's very windy. Generally, I just put my hands in my pockets if they get too cold, if possible.

My daily gloves are the cheap (about $10) wool and fleece lined ones in most photos. These are adequate for a short time.

The Columbia winter gloves came with fleece liners but I'd probably swap them for the wooly ones and liners if it got extremely cold and windy.

This is how they originally came:



But I've found this a better combination in the worst of weather:



I bought some electric glove liners but one has failed already. I'll try to fix it because there was some merit to this method with an overglove of course.

Regarding socks, I just use hiker socks (smartwool, etc) or some heated socks I got last year. Nothing special to say about those. The heated socks are pretty good when inactive but for hiking they'd probably wear out too quickly. Wool is better for hiking.

For me, my hands are the most vulnerable. Then feet. I'm almost never cold in my core area. That's probably pretty normal for humans but my hands get numb probably sooner than most people. I may buy some locally made fur mittens. The winter is far from over.

[TSRalex]

My recommendation:

https://tritongear.ru/

I´m sure, that this stuff - if used in onion principle - will meet your expectations....

https://tritongear.ru/muzhskoj-assortiment/


Last possibility would be clothes from this supplier:



They have nice thermo-hoods for Yurts too:

[UKadventurer]

Thanks for the recommendations. I think we're pretty good on winter clothes now EXCEPT maybe gloves. I like the mitts on the coat and how they are connected to the jacket.

I like fingerless gloves with over mitten covers. I used to have some of these (from a company called REI) years ago. Good when you need to use your fingers but not really warm enough for Mongolia. An over-mitten would be needed for our winter, preferably.



This is what I might look for locally. Fur mittens. Can be worn with a thin underglove then held near the sleeves with a loop through the inside of the coat.



Any yurt cover would have to be custom made for our 'gers'. It's very non-standard shape. However, I think it's actually quite well insulated already. We added thick, interior, door curtains for the glass doors. Nothing for the windows yet. These glass areas are the zones of greatest heat loss (doors, windows and crown). We've got single layer canvas covers for the crowns but they go on the outside. That's a hassle to take on and off every day. Our gers are very tall. We benefit from the sun in the day so we'd prefer an interior solution.

I do feel a cold draught around the bottom ring. I piled snow around the bottom edge to a depth of about 30cm and it helped a bit but didn't completely stop the draught. An insulated, windproof skirt to seal the bottom of the canvas might help a lot.

I'll be thinking of improvements to better insulate but probably for next winter. Maybe I can do window covers this year because winter is long here and it might reduce my electric bills and pay off that way.

[Bob Rowlands]

Thanks for the useful posts U.K. You're getting it worked out.

These comments have nothing to do with yurts.

It's been in the teens F here. This house is well insulated, but has a lot of large windows. I turn the stat down to 62-66F to save money.

I heat up a microwaveable bean bag and toss it under the covers for extra warmth at night. My wife's been using her electric blanket. Both work fine, but I like the bag better because it's a concentrated heat source I can shuffle around as needed.

I've also been burning a lot of wood. That only heats the LR kit dining area, which is about the size of a 30' yurt. Bedrooms are cold with the stat down at 62. The supplemental heat is nice.

[Bob Rowlands]

Just got back from an ice fishing trip out of state with my son. -10f in the A.M. The vrbo house trailer he rented had a very nice ~2 cu ft airtight wood stove in the LR. Lined with fire brick, glass window in loading door. Burning totally dry ponderosa pine on low, extremely pleasant LR DR KIT in the house trailer. Adjustable air going in. No flue damper seen. Burned about 1/4 the amount of wood I do in our fireplace. VERY efficient burn, nice and slow, and plenty warm. NO creosote, the wood was bone dry.

[UKadventurer]

Sounds like a great wood stove. It's amazing how far burning wood has come and the developments haven't stopped because there's plenty of people who still have wood as a primary heat source.

I could use ours to heat our gers but I'd have to stay up all night to feed them. So it's our very nice secondary source of heat. We're still around -30C (-22F) at night but the days are very warm and sunny at around -10C (14F). It feels lovely after temps down to the -40's (C and F) low and -30's (-20's F) high.

Spring is in the air.

I used to fish but haven't for years. You have to travel a bit for river fishing here but they have some massive trout called 'taimen' and I think they fly fish. I might get my hand back in but it'd be a summer activity. No lakes near here. No tour for me, just friends. The tours are pricey $7k! Not including airfare to Mongolia. Probably another $2k from the USA.

https://www.orvis.com/mongolia-river...erian%20trout.

[Bob Rowlands]

"..there's plenty of people who still have wood as a primary heat source."

Damn straight.

I fly fish mostly, and bait fish with my son.

$ :come up with a number: K is just a bit out of my league too. lol

[TSRalex]

Originally Posted by UKadventurer

Sounds like .....

..... that we didn´t read long time from you, @UKadventurer ..... ?

Hope you & your family is well and everything runs good for you.

Here maybe an little inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahLhpdkLUag

[UKadventurer]

Thanks. We're all good. I hope you and yours are doing well too.

We've been busy. We went commercial with our home as a tourist camp. We started a bit late in the season (1st week of August) but have had a steady, but small, number of bookings. We're only offering 2 gers at this point. One for a couple and the other for up to 4 guests. We hope to keep getting guests maybe even into winter. So far we have bookings into early October.

I made improvements to the modern gers but we also fixed up 2 more traditional, Mongolian gers for guests.

A couple of improvements to our modern gers were adding exterior metal corner trim pieces to the bathroom/hallway. Before, the ends of the steel sandwich panels were exposed, showing the EPS, and looked a bit ghetto. Sort of like this, but I added door trim (brown sheet metal too) more since this photo. Looks much nicer than before.



We put an enclosure around the bathtub so it'd be suitable for taking stand up showers. Plus a shower curtain.



Also, I finally put up shelves and desks. More of those to come.




The biggest project was an entirely new

heating

system. The electric

heating

supplemented by wood stoves was too expensive to run last winter and not even that warm on the coldest nights. So I had a semi-coke briquette boiler installed in a partitioned room in one of the shipping containers. It's got 5 radiators, either large or small, depending on the room size, running anti-freeze. It should cost 5-10% of the cost of electricity to run and it cost $3k installed. Hopefully, it'll pay for itself by the 2nd winter and be more cozy too. In exchange for a little work, I should be able to save >90% of what last heating season cost.




The 2 Mongolian gers are looking really nice inside. For winter guests, we'd need to add an extra layer of felt and convert the wood stoves for semi-coke briquette use and airflow control on the flue. It's essential to have a full night's burn which is almost impossible with wood. Coke can do that and costs far less. They look like this inside (outside they look pretty standard:




We offer activities, such as hiking, horse riding, e-bikes (electric dirt bikes and mountain bikes), archery, ping pong, etc. I'm really enjoying having guests on a small scale and it gives us a little income stream.



I traded a cheap Chinese herder motorcycle, which I didn't like anyway, for 2 horses and we got a couple of cashmere goats (mother and kid) free from one of my wife's herder relatives. It's made life interesting. Baby goats in particular are hilarious.



We think there's a good future in adventure tourism, so it's something we'd like to pursue. I think we'll be much better prepared for the high season next year.

I actually know the YouTube couple "Simple Wild Living". We've chatted and shared tips and tricks but have yet to meet in person. He's doing some interesting projects but we're taking a different approach. It'd be nice to grow our own veggies though! His interpretation of "wild" is not the same as mine.

[Bob Rowlands]

Thanks for update. Very nice place you have there UK.

My Hungarian friend Bela heated his small mountain house with coal burned in an old school late 1970s Fischer wood stove, that he retrofitted into his old fireplace. He burned wood in that fireplace many years. His old wood bin got turned into a coal bunker.

Burn time differential wood to coal I do know know, he just said coal burned longer. Cost wise beats me, I never asked. Heating with coal was a WHOLE lot less work vs cutting and splitting wood. He was fit in his retirement years, but regardless, making a wood pile is a LOT of work.