Yurt wall construction

There’s an easy way to build a yurt – find a quality yurt kit supplier, select your options and size, and then go shopping. There’s a harder way to build a yurt – tour yurt demos from a variety of vendors and build based on those model units. Then there’s the road less traveled – design and build your own. This is the option that my wife and I have chosen.

Conventional commercial yurt walls are constructed using lattices wrapped with pvc tarpaulin material. A thin aircraft cable is woven into the upper openings of the truss and tightened with a turnbuckle. This structure supports the walls inward in a circle, while the weight of the beams resting on the cable pushes the walls outward. In this way, stasis, strength, and stability are achieved.

Our wall framing begins with a 2 * 3 frame installed around the inside perimeter of a 24 “by 84” piece of 7/16 “thick oriented strand board. Since our yurt is twenty-eight feet in diameter, with a circumference of approximately eighty-eight feet, 44 sections are needed. Each section is joined to the next at an eight degree angle, requiring one of the two 2 “by 3” vertical studs to be cut with a cone of eight degrees.

To attach the bottom plate, forty-four 2-foot 2-by-3 pieces are also cut into a “V” shape, at an eight degree angle. Each wall segment will meet the next at the “V” point, with a one-foot extension extending toward the base of the adjacent section. By attaching the wall to these bottom plate segments, a solid circular frame is created.

As each section is positioned contiguous to the next, an upper plate, identical to the lower plate segment, is attached along the upper horizontal 2 “by 3” piece of the wall.

After ensuring that all wall segments are plumb vertically, metal tie plates are attached to join the segments at the top and bottom of each wall segment.

The windows and front door are then framed in place, in the same way that a conventional wall and a door or window are installed.

For our yurt, we purchased the 7’6 “tall by 94 ‘long tarpaulin from a New Brunswick supplier. The fabric was intentionally ordered longer than the actual circumference of the yurt, to allow for gathering and darts around of the doors and windows.

Before installing the tarp around the perimeter, the edges of the windows and doors will be caulked and sealed. Along the bottom of the wall segments, a velcro strip is fastened. The tarp will extend an inch below the bottom of the wall so that the water drains off the floor. After wrapping the tarp around the walls of the yurt and temporarily holding it in place, six 15-foot-long ratchet ties are connected and tightened along the upper perimeter of the walls, permanently fixing the wall tarp at its place.

The walls are now complete.

The following article will describe how to build the roof rafters and install the assembly in the yurt.