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Straw Bale Yurt

Dan R-M

Dan R-M

New member
So here we go. A new idea for me. How about straw-bale walls? What kind of roof might I put on it?
The purpose is two-fold. 1) I want the yurt platform to be used (for a yurt), and 2) we're considering doing some straw-baling on the house, and this would give us some great practice on a building that doesn't need to be up to any kind of code. Probably. We'd have to check in with our zoning board friend on that one. But I just started thinking about this one, so maybe ya'll could weigh in.
 
All the pics I have seen of straw bale walls were square. I guess I am wondering how it would work with the compression/tension design of a yurt. I would love to hear some ideas on this!
 
That is beautiful! And fancy. I'm picturing full strawbale walls for ours... Maybe putting rebar down through and leaving a little poking out the top to hold a cable. I haven't quite thought that part out yet.
 
Loving the idea of straw bale stem walls. Any reason i can't do this in the North East? (moisture, frost heaving). i'm thinking i would need to get the bales off the ground a bit, maybe earthbags for a couple of feet?
Jenny
 
Lloyd Kahn's books get into this type of building style (straw bale/adobe/ rammed earth/ etc with various post supported roofs, gabled, tension roofs and all of that)

Specifically, the book called Builders of the pacific coast would be a valuable resource for you.
 
Jafo said:
All the pics I have seen of straw bale walls were square. I guess I am wondering how it would work with the compression/tension design of a yurt. I would love to hear some ideas on this!
Click to expand...
One thought is that the straw bales positioned in a circle would present gaps where the bales join at the corner edge. However, loose bales can be cut to the right shape and fit into the triangular gaps. Then, the entire circle could be secured with the clay that is generally applied to a straw bale structure.

Question remains, how to secure the bales to hold up to the tension from the roof ring. Plus, where would one buy a roof-only yurt? May be possibilities here, but challenges also.
 
It would not be necessary for the bale walls to support the tension of the roof, only the vertical load. A commercially produced yurt roof structure is very light compared to what we normally think of as a "roof" (talking square houses), and straw bale walls are ridiculously strong. You would just use a large diameter (you would have to do some calculating to arrive at the exact size cable) capable of supporting the entire weight of the roof on its own? The concerns here would be finding the tools and hardware to terminate the cable ends properly (extremely important. catastrophic roof implosion = bad.) and also to keep it from blowing away. I would recommend cable here too, anchored vertically right down through your stacked bales into concrete anchors which you poured before setting the bales. Bolt it from the bottom and thread the cable up. Mark the spot, drill the bale, thread the cable, stack the bale. All the way up and out the top and aroundthe tension cable. Something like that.

I don't think you would find too much trouble finding a yurt roof, but I would probably source these parts first if you're going to base half of the design off of it. You could build the ring and rafters easily, there are formulas for all the measurements.

On second thought you would probably end up having to build the rafters anyways, because they won't set the same and modifying someone else's pre-built ones at all will only make them shorter. Then the roof cover won't fit right.
 
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