First thing to living in a yurt is the water situation. I am wanting to live in the yurt off the grid as much as possible and affordable. So simplifying living is a key thing. less electricity as possible.
- How to prevent the water from freezing in the yurt during the winter.
We, meaning my husband and I, have a water system connected to the yurt that words great for the warmer months. On the hillside from the yurt are several 55 gallon plastic barrels filled with water. A black water pipe line from the barrel to the yurt underground. This is gravity fed to the indoor faucet inside the yurt, works great! However, no "hot" water, that is made on the propane stove in a kettle. Washing dishes is a little more time consuming but not too bad. Heat water pour in dishpan and wash, rinse and dry in a rack on the counter, old school, no problem. My issue is a bigger sink, have a camper sink currently.
Back to the freezing issue, since the water is outside it is prone to freeze during the colder months of winter along with the pipe freezing as well. So, we came up with an idea of placing a 55 gallon plastic barrel in the back bathroom of the yurt. This will keep the water at room temperature but then we had to figure how to pump the water to the faucet. Well, as of now I use a hand siphon pump and fill jugs to take over to the sink area. I have a large thermos that holds a gallon of water and I set it at the corner of the sink, just pump the top and squirt water out as I need it..... runs out quickly though and have to refill. I am looking at a battery operated pump to connect to the barrel and run along the edge of the floor to the sink to get it back working as before.
- How to heat yurt efficiently enough for the cold months of winter.
No problem, a wood stove! We had been heating with a infrared heater, works well in the spring and fall. Not for the cold, cold winter nights though. We had insulation in our yurt, the "bubble wrap" from the beginning when we first put in our yurt. It had basically dry rotted, crumbled away after a few years standing. We then started using close cell polyurethane for insulation, it works pretty good but I wanted to try something different. we were given rolls of 1/4" filter fabric from a friend. It is only 2' wide large rolls, but we wrapped our yurt walls with it about 2 layers thick. then put our outside wall fabric back over it. It seems to do as well as the polyurethane insulation. However, for the roof we didn't want to take it back off, (big job to do so) so we decided to actually use regular R-13 4" insulation strips in between each rafter. ( I have a picture uploaded of this being done.) It was alot of work as well, but turned out to work great and worth all the effort.
We decided on attaching a small 4x8 shed to the yurt from the back bathroom. (due to the size of the yurt we needed the space for living) The wood stove was placed inside the shed and with a door frame cut in the yurt providing access to the shed we could keep the mess of wood and coal for our stove out of site and contained in one area. It turned out well, and now for the past cold spells that we have had the yurt is staying toasty warm in temperatures of 8 degrees outside and mid 70's, 80's or warmer in the yurt. Sometimes I have to open the door to let the cool air in cause it gets so hot in the yurt. lol One night it got to 95 and I was baking... opened the door and started to fan it trying to cool off.
I have alot more to share about my experience so far, so keep up with the post....
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