Beginner considering Yurt living

[hierony]

I'm working on setting up my yurt for full time living. I've a fair number of ideas & designs, some untested, some untrustworthy, and some rather clever. Disclaimer: you will have to decide which ones are within your capabilities and comfort for DIY applications.

For ease of my initial setup, I'll be using an extension cord from the utility pole. This limits my distance from the utility pole to 50-100 ft. For just lighting and laptop charging, you won't need the really large gauges rated for 15+ amps (very different story IF you're

heating

space or food or water). Mind you, avoid incandescent blubs. You can get $10 (at walmart) LED 100-watt equivalent bulbs that only pull 0.14 amps--about 8-10 of these would be enough to light up a 20 ft yurt thoroughly. I went to the hardware store and got lamp wire plus some nifty two-piece bases/moguls to make my own cords. You could also just use a number of lamps.

Water is a little more challenging. I think in general you will have to accept that it will be different from standard indoor plumbing. There's also several parts to it--kitchen water for washing dishes & food (potentially doubling as a bathroom sink); bathroom water for bathing; hopefully not water for toilet flushing; water treatment (if not from the house); greywater disposal; there's also washing machine & dishwasher water (which I'll neglect for simplicity).

There's 'walking' water, or the 5 gallon bucket method. I think this works reasonably well for kitchen/bathroom sink water.

For bathing, you can use just a bucket & a tub (just try filling a bucket in the bathtub then washing out of it), but I haven't found it as effective as a good shower. You've likely seen the camp showers, which are about as effective as the bucket baths. There's also

heating

water on the stove, putting it in a (new, unused) weed sprayer hooked up to a low-flow shower head--supposedly effective. There's also things like Big Kahuna Portable Showers.

Greywater disposal could be as simple as carrying a 5 gal bucket and water some tree or shrub or a mulch basin. Making sure your soaps and other things in the water won't hurt the plants is important. Also depending on your locality, the definition of 'greywater' may or may not include bathing & kitchen water (mainly just so you're vaguely aware of it).

There's lots of info around the internet about these and other ideas. I find searching 'tiny house' or 'rv boondocking' and whatever I'm looking for useful. Pinterest is also useful for photo ideas (albeit a bit too picturesque).

Hope that helps!