Anyone purchase a Smiling Woods Yurt?

[HawaiiYurts]

What a nice, thorough, honest, and helpful review! Salute!

[1daveman]

Yurt Gurl.
Great info. I posted about my Smiley Yurt in the message above yours, and would say your experiences were similar to mine. I had a neighbor who had a nice crane that we used to hold the ring up at the top, and hired an engineer to review the installation of the

tension cable

...

We went for the pine tongue and groove ceiling and are in Arizona. We had shrinkage so there are alot of gaps between the panels. That is my biggest complaint. It would have been better to set the panels somewhere to acclimate before installing, but this is new construction so there was no place to do so. We also spray faom insulated everything which while costly, really does work nicely.

Sounds like similar experiences - and I think if you are willing to do the work, smiley is a good option.

[yurtgurl]

Thanks HawaiiYurts and 1daveman! And yes, I agree. It's so much work, but worth it in the end

Yeah, I think they could come up with a better ceiling option, I'm just not sure what it would be. I had the panels inside for a while and also polyed them all before install and they are still popping and warping.

Just curious...have you had any condensation issues from the skylight? I know Arizona is a dry climate...But just curious?

[1daveman]

No - we dont have any condensation, but AZ has been quite dry so who knows!

[yurtgurl]

I just wanted to post a follow-up for anyone out there having problems with condensation in a Smiling Woods yurt around the frame of the skylight. I tried a couple different things. Fan does nothing. Window plastic just created more of a humid wet zone in there. So I thought about stuffing fiberglass

insulation

around the ring. So far, it seems to have worked. But, it's only December and hasn't gotten extremely cold yet. But, I purchased an 18 ft step ladder (insanely expensive) and shoved a bunch of

insulation

up around the skylight frame. I can't open the window at the moment. But that's fine, because it's winter. Aside from that, no other problem. And in the spring, I'll just remove the insulation. I will try to add pictures if this helps anyone.

[yurtgurl]

Scratch the fiberglass insulation...totally didn't work. Just soaked up all the condensation and I had to remove a bunch of wet insulation

[Bob Rowlands]

Thanks for update.

Fiberglass holds a lot of water. And can be a pocket fulla nasty when in a confined area. Like under an old school house trailer with plumbing leaks. I worked under some of those decades ago. YUKKK!!!! lol

[Jafo]

Originally Posted by yurtgurl

Scratch the fiberglass insulation...totally didn't work. Just soaked up all the condensation and I had to remove a bunch of wet insulation

Can you show us a pic of your entire yurt?

[yurtgurl]

Sure can Here is my yurt!

Also, I tried another method of dealing with the skylight condensation. We cut two half circles of plexi and set them on top of the ledge of the compression ring with a piece of wood in the middle to hold up the plexi....then lots of tape all around to block off any warm air from getting to the skylight. Also, in between the skylight and the plexi I put a bunch of towels to catch any drips along the ledge. It seems to be working, the towels are catching drips especially when the sun hits the metal and there have been a few drips on the plexi, but it's all contained!

So far it seems to be working, I think I'll change the towels once a month during the winter.

Saga continues!

[TSRalex]

Originally Posted by yurtgurl

.....Also, in between the skylight and the plexi I put a bunch of towels to catch any drips along the ledge.
............
So far it seems to be working, I think I'll change the towels once a month during the winter.

Although it is not the most elegant technical solution, you reached the urgent main goal with.