More Yurt Work

I feel bad for folks who follow my blog wanting to hear about weaving. I'm in a lengthy "production phase" right now wherein I weave many, many yards of cloth that I designed earlier in the year. There's not much to write about on that front.

On the new studio construction, however, there's a LOT to say. I'm still waiting for the covers to arrive. It's actually good that they're not here yet. The extra time is helping me to do the preparation slowly and thoroughly.

Last week I removed the weak old horse hair ties from the roof poles. This week I replaced them with cotton ties. If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll remember that I made friendship bracelets for a special event a few years ago. (Kid's Day) I still have rolls of colorful cordage sitting around to serve as beautiful roof pole ties.

After that was done, I set my sights on the most complicated and critical part of the yurt setup: the stove pipe. As you can probably imagine, living in a canvas house with only one door, I take fire safety VERY seriously. Oh, yeah, and then there was that little 60,000 acre fire in my back yard this Summer to really drive the point home.

So here's the challenge: to take a handmade, round Mongolian roof and securely fit an American stove pipe to it, leaving at least two inches on all sides for safety.

The first thing to notice is that the window panes were not made for this yurt. Mongolian construction is very individual. Nothing is a standard, universal size. The yurt parts are all marked to indicate WHICH yurt they came from. So, I had to make a few modifications to get these panes to fit this crown.

But I did it. In the end, they all fit snugly in their places.

Then I went to town and trusted the stove pipe experts to design and sell me the piping system to go through the crown.

When I got home, the next task was to cut and install plywood "windows". This would give me a stable place to attach the mounting brackets for the stove pipe.

It's much easier to snip and modify cardboard than plywood. I went through about three versions of each pane before I got them fitted correctly.

It turns out that I only needed the two outer panes. I decided to leave out the center frame so that there is lots of extra air space around the insulated pipe. It'll make sure that there is absolutely no chance of having the wood heat up to the point of combustion. Code is two inches of space, I've given over three.

The trickiest part of the mounting was building custom wedges that slope in two directions for a stable, weight-bearing surface.

Once it was done, though, the installation of the pipe system was simple and straightforward.

There was one last thing that I needed to check before I could be sure that this whole thing would work... Can I fit out through the adjoining openings in the roof ring to install and maintain this system when the yurt is set up? Yes, I can.

Of course, there's one glaring task yet to do: prevent rain from entering the yurt through the crown. This task is waiting until the vinyl top arrives. It's tough to visualize what needs to happen when I've never seen the parts before.