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Our Savannah Yurts

Well it has been about a month. Been swamped with work and has been pretty much a one man show at the yurt site since. I've had a little help here and there though so that helped. Also just had our second child this week so that makes things a tad bit more difficult. At that tricky stage where it is hard to keep things dry and keep moving. So here are the pictures.

I was short about 30 boards for the deck. Bad math as it looks like I have plenty of extra sub flooring. Ohh well.
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Besides bending all of the warped boards and keeping the deck straight the hardest part was placing the approx 7000 screws in the decking top. I lost track but it took 2 people about 3 or 4 full days to finish laying the decking.
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All Done
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Laying the joists for the subflooring
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Actually had to rotate these sub flooring boards. Learned it is a nominal width so it wasn't lining up on 16" on center. Had to remove 4 boards then start over. The insulation was rained on in one spot when the wind blew up my tarp but I let it dry for a week and seems to be fine. I did not end up laying house wrap on the bottom as I did not want it to hold water and figured it would breath better under there this way. We will see if that was a mistake or not.
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Complete square. I didn't count but I think I used less boards than the plan called for by reusing the left overs from other cut boards.
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And then it was round. I drew my circle twice in one spot and on about a 5' section I sawed the wrong one making it to small. I figure when I cut my finish bamboo flooring I can cantilever that extra 1-2" out to make my perfect circle and should be fine. We will see.
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Damn near had heat stroke. I was drinking water so quick I wanted to puke but by 1500 I had to start cleaning up as I had a headache, the shivers, and was lucky to piss the little bit of orange I did. Even flying in 120 degree heat with full flight gear and body armor in a black helicopter I had never been so hot. That tar paper and black flooring was miserable. I have to do it in the morning and evening to finish in the shade. I need a sharper or more teeth on my saw blade to cut the bamboo without it blistering. Maybe a jig saw this time I don't know. Also the flooring bubbled where the vapors were trying to escape out of the cheap pain on top of the flooring. It was the cheapest flooring that was not laminate that I could find and my wife helped decide but I think she is going to hate the dark dark brown/black flooring with all of the dirt that it shows. We shall see.
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If all goes well and I can get time on the weekend we might have the small yurt up next Sunday.
 
So I haven't had a lot of time and in fact I should be sleeping so I can get out to the site early tomorrow morning but I wanted to update the build. Last Saturday I went out and the bamboo flooring was ruined due to water that seeped past the tarps and was trapped all week. Would have been better without it. Decided to rip it all up and finish the platform. The moved on and finished 90% of the 30' platform by myself before heading home. On Sunday one of my friends came over around 0900 and by 1800 we had one entire yurt up. Only needed one other person to help get the ring up initially and later on to help get the roof through the center ring.

Tomorrow I will be finishing the 30' Yurt platform and installing the doors. Hopefully have enough day to lay out all of the hardware and parts so when I show up with 2 buddies on Sunday we should have the 30' Yurt installed by the end of the weekend.

Should have some photos here shortly but I am having a hard time with the forum attaching files tonight.
 
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I'm seeing alot more pics than I did before for some reason. Sorry you lost the flooring. Keeping laminated/manufactured wood products dry is a big issue on a wet site.

Off topic comment. I built our 3800' house. Did all the carpentry frame trim plus helped tradesman friends. It took exactly one year. I worked fifty days straight one stretch alone, in addition to maintaining my carpentry business. I had three 'open' shoulder and bicep surgeries in that year as well. That year taught me what I was made of. lol During one fifty day stretch without a single day off the fun just went right out of the job. I closed exactly one year to the day from signing the construction loan paperwork. FWIW face every challenge look it in the eye and say gimme your best shot, and you WILL get there, come what may. Good luck..
 
Still unable to post photos. Didn't get the insulation up but the 30' Yurt is now up. It was considerably more work than the 24' yurt. Much more difficult to get the center ring up. I need to go do some work but the roof appears to large and or the walls are to long. But other than that no issues. Hopefully can get back up there in the next week to finish up and start on the interior walls.
 
I will try and get some pictures up. But the walls go all the way down to the deck while the 24 yurt I had at least 2 inches all the way around before the walls reached the deck. At first I thought the roof was a little large all the way around the circumfrence but it appears to line up at both doors just right. I will have to go back and take measurements but I'm thinking the fabric on the walls is just a couple of inches longer. Not really sure.
 
Got it. You're talking the cover. Glad it wasn't something structural. To my way of thinking a quick check for correct size of wall length with tension cable installed and rafters in place is to stand off to the side of the door frame and eyeball it for plumb.
 
I had to reboot my computer to load photos. So here they are.

This part was quick and easy.
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Got the height of the wall within 1/2" and only took a few minutes.
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Just held the ring up while three friends inserted the first rafters.
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Cooled down quick with shade.
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All Done.
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I have been swamped with work, family, and of course building the yurt. Been at it all by myself since it went up so it has been slow going.

That being said the electrician is coming by tomorrow and the HVAC technician on Saturday. The following weekend I plan to install the plumbing and then it will be small details until we move in. My original goal was 6 months which would be around August first, so not to bad considering construction plans and life never go to plan. Here is to hoping we make it in by mid August. Just in time for the heat to peak!!!! IF the AC can get us through this period we know we will be good to go.

Just a few pictures. I managed to install all of the bamboo flooring, get the interior walls up, installed doors for the first time (tricky), painted all of the cabinets, made a counter top, finally built stairs, cleaned up all of the trash from the previous tenant, mocked up the AC units, and placed all of the appliances in. Whew.

Ohh and the batteries were a batch of 5 pallets there were throwing away at work. Supposedly they were all bad. The deep cells I'm having a very hard time bringing back to life but 12 of the 15 starting batteries were almost perfect. Plan to use them on an emergency back up power system or just for fun. I wish I would have grabbed all of them now.

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Just a few more. We decided to go with composting toilets so I don't have to worry about septic. Found a couple on ebay for about 1/4 the price of new ones. We will see how plumbing goes but I will be using PEX for almost everything. Also thinking about using LED lighting exclusively and running it off of the 12V battery system and one 100W Solar panel. Pretty impressive what they have out there these days.

I have restored a few cars in my days but never really built anything that wasn't made out of steel before. Been a fun project for sure.

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Looking really good. Love that bamboo floor! I assume you are planning on wiring the batteries together in series? What voltage are you looking to go to?
 
I planned on leaving the Voltage at 12V. Mainly because most of the LED lighting systems are 12V. Then I would run a small inverter in case the power ever went out. That would keep our fridge and our lights on at least. Who knows maybe even run our heat pump water heater if the sun was out, as it only pulls 3 amps when running.

Electricity and HVAC should be done today if all goes well. Here is to hoping.
 
I run everything at my yurt at 12v. It usually isn't an issue until you get to using larger appliances like washers, air conditioners, etc..
 
Well I gave our 30 day notice last week and time is slipping away from me fast. Electrical is 95% done and plumbing is ongoing. Still have more work than I know what to do with but here is to hoping. Some how have to pack up this house and move as well. Should be fun.

By the way on 98 degree days with the sun on the yurt 24K is NOT quite enough. Maybe once I get the last few holes covered up and a bit more insulation we will be ok. Thank goodness summer is only another month and then I will have a year to figure out what I want to do.
 
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