Putting a yurt in storage for winter

[cmwingfield]

I'll offer a suggestion: Wherever you store it, try and elevate it off the ground, concrete, etc. Rather than fold it tightly, store it loosely and if you have electricity put a fan on it that moves alot of air. One winter won't kill it, but a few mice will. Best of luck!

[Jafo]

Just for clarification, the Pacific Yurt walls are just one large section.

[hierony]

Originally Posted by Jafo

Just for clarification, the Pacific Yurt walls are just one large section.

My bad--I only have experience with a Rainier Yurt, which had wall sections. Thing took a full day or so with several people to disassemble too...

Even a 30' has but a single outer fabric section? That seems like it'd be a pain to handle (heavy & awkward)--fewer seams to leak weather though. If there's a second door, I suppose there'd be two pieces.

If you have exposed rafters/trusses/beams in your garage, you probably easily tie the sidewall up to the rafters so it hangs like a curtain, zigzagging it back & forth a bunch (30'*pi=94' circumference, subtract 3' door=91' long sidewall; 16' long folds would require ~6 zigzags, each maybe 1' apart at the ends; total area 16 ft by 6 ft, or roughly 1/3 a single garage). That would keep things loose so they could dry out with just air movement.

I don't have any good ideas for drying the roof canvas though. I guess one could fold it up with towels/cheap absorbent cloth sprinkled with desiccant between each fold (cloth for holding the desiccant in place & to wick

moisture

to the desiccant some). Would require a lot of towels/cloth though and a fair bit of desiccant--here's an article on the different desiccant types. Most desiccants are fairly unreactive but I might still want to double check somehow.

Barns can be great. That Rainier yurt I mentioned has been up in a barn loft for a while--lots of bird poop and dust though

Best of luck!

[Bob Rowlands]

one suggestion is to rent a propane heater for a day. Get everything cloth strung up and run that sucker wide open, that,ll dry it out. The recent commercial job i been on has several propane heaters going and lemme tell yuh, they will dry out cloth in short order. i,m talking MAJOR heat output, waaay beyond any home furnace. what it would rent for i don,t know but i,ll bet it is quite reasonable.

[Jafo]

Originally Posted by hierony

My bad--I only have experience with a Rainier Yurt, which had wall sections. Thing took a full day or so with several people to disassemble too...

Even a 30' has but a single outer fabric section? That seems like it'd be a pain to handle (heavy & awkward)--fewer seams to leak weather though. If there's a second door, I suppose there'd be two pieces.

The wall is polyester and not that heavy, at least compared to the roof. It went pretty quick with a couple of people. Yes, if there are more than one door then the lattice and walls would be in sections, true.

[rangeroad]

Thanks folks for all the great replies and ideas. If it happens it will be this weekend, so I will try to document everything to see how it goes for a few months inside.

[rangeroad]

Jafo meant to ask do you know the length of the rafters for the 30 foot Pacific ?

[Jafo]

Hmm, don't remember exactly, but I think they were 15'.

[rangeroad]

Ok, we are confirmed for the dismantle. I would like to know the best recommendation for cleaning the outer wall for this situation, there seems to be a whole bunch of info on the net, some of it conflicting. Some folks say to never use a bleach dilute with Sunbrella or Marlen canvas. I'm thinking because of the age that it would be best to play it safe and use Dawn soap to do a quick scrub before hanging it to dry in the barn. Thoughts?

[Jafo]

The outer wall? Just use some gentle soap and a scrub brush on a stick. Let it dry when done. I think I used Ivory dish soap when I did mine this year.