Kia Ora! We are on a similar journey, currently in the process of building a rather large deck for a 20 foot (6m) diameter yurt on the West Coast, South Island of NZ. We bought this yurt from Colorado Yurt Co a couple years back, new, due to the very wet and cool climate here which we felt would likely not be conducive to most locally available canvas or traditional yurts. The yurt has a big wind loading hardware package, insulation for walls and roof, and is sitting in a box awaiting erection!
Our situation: We own 22 acres of beautiful elevated off-grid regenerating native bush and this project is a fairly major undertaking for us - it will be our primary dwelling space for the next several years at least. At some stage we may extend onto the yurt deck by incorporating it into a house but for now this will be us. Our plan, which is very dynamic, shall we say, is to construct this yurt platform to building code but not involve council at the moment.
The deck will have not only the ger but also a covered, partially closed adjacent pavilion for outdoor living space. As well there will be an attached kitchen (separate from the yurt), current thoughts being either to convert a shipping container into a kitchen and putting that on piles abutting the deck and pavilion, or building a de novo permanent timber structure to hold kitchen, shower/composting toilet and possibly an additional small room. power (eventually) will be from a combination of stand-alone PV solar panel array and a micro hydro undershot water wheel from the low head, high flow creek which flows through our land.
at this stage we have not applied for building consent due to our fear that the local council will reject a consent for a yurt as a habitable structure, despite having all the engineering stamps from North America already available. This council is notoriously old school from what we have heard and can be quite difficult. We are also contemplating using some very grunty old hardwood jarrah bridge beams and large native timber piles to construct the outdoor pavilion - which ideally needs an engineers stamp, yet we again are nervous that the council won't approve such a project - and we are frankly anxious to approach a locally registered structural engineer in case they are obligated to report to the council what we are doing. so kind of at a sticky crossroads at the moment....decking nearly completed, area for raised ger footprint is next on construction list followed by getting the yurt itself up, with larger projects of kitchen and outdoor pavilion looming in the not-t00-distant future. we've heard that Tasman council has recently approved a yurt for habitation, but the consent process was long, difficult and expensive for those folks.
the local code DOES in fact require that all permanent OR temporary structures mandate a building consent - this means the yurt technically requires one. we're not interested in additional high costs, delays, engineers reports or refusal of consent etc etc if we can avoid it! but we also don't want to be evicted either...so fingers crossed we can fly under the radar, build everything to code to appease ourselves of sufficient structural integrity, and hence also avoid being told to take it down if the council does approach us at some stage. to be honest this situation may change in the near future if we decide the risk is too great. But hopefully we come to a decision we are comfortable with and can crack on with building our beautiful little yurt home soon.
Anyone know of a structural engineer who loves working with hardwood timbers and alternative living projects so we can at least get that part sorted? South Island preferable as we would obviously be obligated to pay for travel costs. Any other thoughts re: council consents? Cheers!
I have been reading those posts with interest and have learnt a lot. The only thing is that the materials we have available to us are different so I'm hoping to marry that info with some from an experienced local.
