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Building a Yurt

Starting Wall 2 now this one is done.

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I spent a few hours this morning tying and tying and tying and tying and tying and some more tying. It was worth it since in just about 3 hours I have my 2nd wall just about done. I would have been done but I ran out of slats. Off to Home Depot.

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Your khana is growing nicely. Mine is about to be made yet. I plan to go the classic way and use rawhide straps for connecting.
 
I hope to start the khana in a week or two. Right now I'm building the platform under the yurt (see my thread here).
 
OOOOh Yeah!! The wall is done. I'm building a door frame this afternoon. Then I'll check out how the crown and rafters work. I built a 32 slot wheel when I think I should have built a 36 Slot. I'll see if it will work. If not I have to whip out a new wheel.

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Should be fine my 16 footer takes 32. and i just wanted to mention that i use bolts for my wall and i put longer ones around the top to use for coat hangers.
 
That's a good looking 9 cross yurt khana. Well done.

32 rafters will work fine based on eyeballing the crosses in your photo, and with 2 above the door frame. If not, just skip a rafter cross on the khana in a couple places so they orient straight into the roof ring. Or stuff a couple of yer bowed ones up in there. :D
 
You did a good job tieing up the two khana sections. When I first started looking at yurt 'wall joints' a couple years ago, how the sections joined together totally blew my mind. I musta spent hours stareing at the joints in different yurts trying to figure them out. lol
 
So...a question. Do the walls have to have perfect square openings or can they have a diamond shape and have a bit more wall Height?
 
Either is fine. Since you have your khana built, you do know that going from square to diamonds will change the rafter, ring, and door frame details, right?
 
You're welcome. You need to fully understand yurt geometry if you aren't working off a specific set of plans.

As you expand the wall it goes from tall and narrow to short and wide. The lath shape from vertical diamonds to squares to horizontal diamonds.

A big advantage to squares is, not strength per say, the yurt wall is very strong through redundancy. No, squares are an advantage when erecting the yurt. Eyeballing the lath cross until you see squares is a fast easy way to get the proper overall wall length, ASSUMING you built the yurt with squares in mind. Correct length is a BIG deal. lol

Expanding the khana to its planned length is CRUCIAL to erecting the yurt easily, and safely-with nobody getting hurt. Why? If the khana is too long, the rafters will pop out of the yurt ring and bop the people in the middle on the head. Why does that happen? While you guys are messing around trying to comress the wall with rafters stuffed into the ring, there's a whole lotta shakin goin on. Doing this shake and compress thing over uneven ground is even worse.

It is a REAL pain in the head, believe me. Fall out, bop those inside the wall, and cut them. Or the whole shebang collapse. I know. It's happened to me.

Conversely, if the wall is too short, you'll never get all the rafters snug into place, and again there goes the wall shake to expand. No fun with rafters up in place and dangerous as well.

BTW, even if the door frame bolts align with their holes in the khana, there's sufficient play in the system for the wall length to be off by several inches.

Getting the overall wall length is such a big deal, and such a pain to rectify, while installing 'exact fit' rafters like mine, that I solved that problem. Like this: I adjust the wall to squares, install the door frame, and IMMEDIATELY drop my tension cable -pre set to the EXACT length- into place. Do *not* install any rafters until the wall is the correct length.

No rafters in place. If the cable is slack, expand the lath a bit. Jusrt shake and pull apart as you walk around the perimeter. No problem. No weight of rafters no bopping.

If it won't fit into the crosses, collapse the wall abit. Again, no rafters, no problems. Shake the wall abit and tighten, until the cable drops right in place.

Doing it this way, I set the ring atop its temporary stand and start stuffing in the rafters, confident they'll fit perfectly. Voila!

If your rafters are notched to sit on the crosses, and fit slots in the ring, such that the geometry up top is correct, (as mine do) an exact circumferential wall length is crucial.

If the rafters are slotted to sit atop the tension cable, and tenons stuffed into holes in the ring, there's bit of play allowed, but correct length is still good. If the rafters have looped cordage at the outside so the rafter simply drapes around the khana cross, and the tenons fit into holes in the ring, there's even more allowance for rafter-and wall-length variation. But you still have to tighten it all up, and that is a pain in the butt if you are doing it yourself.

IMO, all this jibber jabber is key to understanding how to build the yurt without an exacting set of plans. That, or follow a teachers lead. Or, learn as I do, by the school of hard knocks. lol Now that's learned me good. lol

Good luck.
 
I'm finishing up the 36 slot crown today I hope. I'll have an extra crown with 32 slots I guess. Wonder if I could sell it?

Can't wait to see it all up. Then of course I need to cut and sew up the covers. I'm thinking White with Blue Trim. ;)

Oh, and thanks for all the great info Bob. Made me think.
 
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