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Insulation

In addition to heating the yurt, a properly installed woodstove also exchanges fresh air in the living space. It does this in the form of intake draw. As a rough rule of thumb, a woodstove will draw same CFM as the temperature it burns at. The cooler your fire, that much less air is being circulated in the room.

A 20' yurt has a volume of around 2000 cubic feet. With a 500 degree fire burning, the air being pulled through that stove to fuel your fire is also exchanging 25% of the volume of air in your yurt per minute. That is a very good ratio. Where does this air come from? Provided your yurt is reasonably airtight ( weatherstrip, door sweeps, insulated draperies, drip skirt/ outer cover interface sealed, no errant holes in floor, etc) it comes in through the dome opening! With no fire, much moisture is being created but zero air exchange is happening.

Wait, aren't all of the components of a yurt are designed to work together in some sort of big round shangri-la or something like that? That's the way the brochure makes it sound. I think there is much info out there now about how to buy yurts now, and a plethora of options for every budget, and this is a good thing. Unfortunately not much info around about how to actually live in a yurt. Yet.

Do you have an insulated roof? Meaning some sort of reflectix (the material pacific yurts uses in their insulation packs). Not the rigid board, but an actual insulating layer between the roof skin and the rafters? How about the walls?
 
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Hi I am new Im jason and I live in a 30 pacific yurt in southern Oregon. This is our second year in our yurt and after last winter with the bubble wrap insulation decided to up the game for this winter. Well after looking at the budget and searching online we decided go do our ceiling with standard fiberglass insulation. We then skinned it with thin plywood called luan. It looking amazing and works great BUT! A few day ago and a week into cold weather my wife informed me that the roof was dripping. Well I investigated and soon realized that there was a moisture problem in between the outer layer and the fiberglass. Argh!!! I thought I was almost done. Well now we are not able to take it down because it is cooooold. So we decided to just live with it for now and hope it doesn't mold. We decided to live in a yurt to make life simple. I feel I have been battling for two years making this thing work. weather its to hot or to cold it seems to me that as much as we would like to think that these tens are livable full time. The materials say different. I am actually considering framing in my whole yurt and making it an actual hard structure with a real roof this spring. Any one ever have this problem and how long did it take for mold to grow?
 
I don't think it is likely a wood stove would draw from the dome. The yurts I have been in are far from airtight. There are plenty of places to pull air in.

The moisture is an issue because you have warm, moist air touching the cold roofing material/insulation. The air must be vented. This isn't exclusive to yurts. Look at any standard home and you will see the attics breath through the soffit, and usually some sort of vent pipe. Years ago when I used to work with a handyman as a helper, we would get jobs where the home owner had a damp attic and mold issues. Almost every time it was because the insulators had put insulation blocking the soffit. Once we cut it back, the problems ceased.

How do we vent the yurts without freezing our butts off? That is the question. I think the only real practical way to do it without making a lot of modifications, is to always keep the dome open. I am open to any other suggestions?
 
It comes though the path of least resistance. if the dome is open, the room fills comes from there. If not, the stove has to work harder (less efficient) to pull the air from all of the little drafty places instead. Meanwile, there is no fresh air exchange happening in the upper half of your yurt because it's all sealed up. Pretty safe to assume there isn't much air leaking in through the roof. But now the inside of the roof cover gets wet because there is no cool air moving thru the dome, across and down the ceiling as there should be whenever moisture is being created inside the yurt.

The dome has to be open. That is why it exists. The fact that it also acts as a skylight is only because it happens to be made from clear material. Your living space needs air exchange. When the doors or windows are closed up and moisture is being created your air exchange is not sufficient. Open the dome. Let it breathe. You will stay warm and dry, I promise.
 
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The thing is, I don't think the dome would be the least resistance because the warm air is naturally going up, and warm air seeks cold air. With the dome open, the hot air rises out, pulling the cold air in from below. This is one reason why a yurt cools well in the summer.

Now if the entire yurt was air tight, sure, I suppose it would have to pull from the dome, but I would think it would be the last place.
 
hi everyone, I live in Connecticut. am planning on putting up a yurt. need to decide which company to go with. want to use it over winters there, as well as summers. am willing to put in wood stove. can anyone recommend which company to go with? there are so many and they all look good.
thanks
linda roth
 
lindaroth said:
can anyone recommend which company to go with? there are so many and they all look good.
thanks
linda roth
Click to expand...

Can you tell us how you plan on using your yurt? Will this be a full time home? How many people will be living in it if so?
 
We have been having quite a few condensation/frost issues in our yurt with the cold weather spell that has hit the country. The past week or so we have been dealing with temps as low as -30F (Not a windchill!). We have been able to keep the yurt warm, but if I open the dome up, it draws out too much of the warm air making it cold inside.

I installed a small fan up in the rafters that points at the dome opening from the opposite side of the dome, and we blow air all day on it to keep the moisture from building up (and subsequently raining down on us). This moisture also drips down the dome to the edge, where it freezes (ice dam style), making the dome not open and close correctly.

We are hoping that the arctic freeze will pass by soon and allow us to dry up in here. I do open the dome most of the day when the sun is out to try to vent out some of the moisture.

We are also dealing with frost down on the bender boards, which hasn't been fun to deal with either.

But we have gone through about a week of nights were the lows have been between -10 and -30 and seem to be staying warm.

I've got some major ice dams on the edges of the roof (right before it got cold we got 20" of snow), but I think those will melt and slide off once we get some temps above 10 degrees.
 
One thing you might try doing is every once in a while, firing up that wood stove as high as you safely can. Heat the room right up, and then crack the dome enough where it can stay comfortable, but vent out moisture at the same time. I would refrain from adding moisture to the air whenever possible. For example, don't leave that pot of water on top of the wood stove.

Are you cooking with propane or NG? That adds a lot of moisture to the air. Can you get by cooking on the wood stove on these really cold days?

It is basic science though that when moist warm air comes in contact with a cold surface, condensation will happen. You see that on a bottle of cold water in the summer. Traditional structures vent out moisture from their roofs or via HVC. Unless this is done, I see no way to get around it.
 
I do fire it up hot during the day and try to dry it out, but even then, on the icy cold days, that ice buildup on the edges of the dome start to get worrisome. I may try a de-humidifier as well. We do cook with gas, and there is a bathroom in the yurt, so there is moisture from that as well. We try to open the dome when cooking is being done or ample humidity is being added to the air.

When we got the yurt we got a screen option for the dome (we have quite the bug problem in the summer here in MN), but I think I may order a ceiling fan kit so we can install one of those right under the dome, this would allow me to blow warm air on the dome to keep it from icing up. This would also give us a large vent to vent out moisture during the day quickly.
 
Insulation..........I have been a proud yurt owner now for about 10 years...It's held up well and have been very happy with it....However, on the subject of insulation. Companies who sell yurts should find a way to just include the insulation in with the basic package. There is no way....no how that anyone should own a yurt without it being properly insulated. In any climate, it just doesn't work.

With that said, if it gets up close to 80 degrees, then an noninsulated yurt will get to over 100 degrees......Unbearable!!!!......I keep going back to the websites and looking at the insulation packages. Besides the unbelievable cost $3,000....I keep looking at the roof and remember how heavy the actual roof is.....removing the roof to put up the insulation, I'd have to once again call in all my favors and fork out the time and the labor to get this done...

It's driving me crazy!!!!!.....There has to be a better way....I'm thinking of foaming the rafters in the roof and under the floor....then cutting foam board between the rafters on the walls.....

I did notice that you can get a roll of reflective insulation for $150.00....It'd probably take about 4 rolls....On the sides...I could take out the screws at the bottom and staple it around...cutting out the window.....

Anyways....I'm lost and at this point a bit $@^$^, and frustrated. Any help with the insulation issue would be appreciated by many....
Sincerely,
Yurtin for Certain
 
We tried a dehumidifier and reducing all moisture and everything. I helped a bit, but it did not solve our dripping problem and made living in the yurt unpleasant - extremely dry air is not nice to breathe all the time. It also created issues trying to live, we need to cook and clean.

Leaving the dome open also helps, but it doesn't fix the issues, nor is it practical all the time - it just gets too cold, heat rises right out.

We heat with wood, we have insulation under the floor, in the walls, and thick foam insulation in the ceiling.

Our current thought is to try a moisture barrier on the inside of the ceiling, though I would imagine air/moisture could still get in there from where the roof fabric meets the dome.

I'm really at a loss and rather frustrated that yurt companies say this can be done, when my experience is saying no it can't/

Any ideas? Any at all?
 
Moisture is being trapped inside your yurt by the insulation and covering material. Open the windows and open the roof vent. Roll up the side cover, and get a draft going.

Aside from that there is no easy solution if your yurt is covered with impermeable materials. All small tightly constructed tents have condensation problems unless the coverings are permeable. Todays new skool nylon tents have large panels of breathable mesh directly under the fly to alleviate condensation. I still find nylon tents nasty, regardless of how well they breathe.


I covered my yurt with 17oz. double fill cotton canvas with sunforger treatment. It is a superb material for tents. Not only does it breathe great, but it doesn't leak in heavy rain, or with a snow load.

I know zilch about yurt wall insulation. I DO know wool insulation breathes. If I insulated my yurt, I'd pay strong attention to installing a permeable insulation.

Wish I could give you better advice. Good luck.
 
I need to stop by the local HF and pick up a cheap infrared sensor but I will let you know how my testing goes. It was 97 and 90% humidity here the other day. Probably well over 110 in the yurt and that is with 1.5 tons worth of AC going and the insulation package. Given I am not fully sealed up yet and I was opening the door constantly for construction, but I hear what you are saying. The AC can keep up when the sun is not hitting it, but when it is forget about it.

I can purchase the reflective backed 1/2" foam insulation for 6 bucks a 4x8 sheet at the local Lowes. I would love to give it the required air gap but cutting it is time consuming. I just slipped it in behind the rafters in about 1 minute per panel. But I have a feeling without the air gap the radiant heat will make the insulation a moot point all together. I'll let you know.

Also doing some research on insulation, with that many rafters in the roof there is almost no way to stop the heat transferring thru the wood into the house. In hot climates yurts are a battle between the AC and the elements. We will see who is stronger in our situation.
 
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