Beginner considering Yurt living

[Zelig]

When we researched yurt living and the challenges involved, the biggest thing that seemed to come up was the problem of condensation. There were lots of stories of indoor glaciers forming and causing grief. We chose a traditional Mongolian ger/yurt from

Groovy Yurts

because it provided breathability to let excess humidity find its way out through nearly the whole surface area of the yurt without having to open doors, windows or toono. This preserves your precious heat as much as possible and greatly simplifies things. We are in a quite cold climate, so we discovered this winter that there is a boundary, temperature-wise, where the escaping vapour can't get out before condensing and freezing. This seems to be in the -15 to -20degC range. Any warmer and things worked fine, but below that we began 'warehousing' our humidity in the felt

insulation

which waited until warmer weather returned to slowly drip back into the yurt. We have only a gravity/bucket fed kitchen sink for plumbing inside and keep all our bathing, etc confined to our sauna but I had been stacking about 15 cubic feet of firewood inside the yurt and realized that this wood was giving off as much as one gallon per day of vapour. Once I stopped doing this our problems seemed to end. Most importantly though, we love our yurt, especially when it's bitterly cold outside, the snow is blowing horizontally, and when you step inside it's toasty warm.