So! I finally have recovered from a nasty two days of food poisoning… 10 outta 10, do NOT recommend. Let’s just say both emergency exists were in full use for two days.. I am grateful to have come out the other side Alive!
So having missed two days of work and a staff Christmas party, I was charged and ready to get back to making sh*t happen!
Naturally at the but crack of dawn, I was up and working on things. I started early enough in the morning it was still dark, and got the new door jam made for the yurt. You might be asking, “what was wrong with the old one?” Well, first of all, it was not square. I hadn’t reinforced it sufficiently enough to account for the shear forces of the yurt’s tension straps. So because it was not square it was leaking a lot of air into the Yurt.
The other issue that had arisen from this last cold snap, was the inability for the yurt to drain properly. The way I had placed the rafters initially – while it works – created a bit of a divet on the roof. Not allowing for water that had melted to drain off. Obviously this needed to be fixed. But I could not address that issue until I had reinforced the door Jam to allow for another tension band on the outside to be added. Seems complicated, it really wasn’t. Ha just some changes that I had made with the design early on that proved to be ineffective during the winter. No big deal. That is one thing I am truly grateful for about my Yurt, it is very forgiving, allowing for the learning to occur.
Once I had the door jam built, I had to remove the old door. Now the funny thing about yurts is they rely on the support of the top tension band to keep the rafters in place. So I had to come up with a method to remove the old door without having to take down the yurt entirely.
So I took a shorter strap I had, anchored it to the two ends of the top tension strap and tightened it up. It pulled the tension strap away from the door jam allowing me to remove it while holding the yurt together. Truly amazing.
When I had that removed, I added the new door jam in, complete with 1/2 inch eye bolts, 3 on each side for the interior tension straps. This allowed me to more evenly distribute the tension through the centre of the door jam. Preventing any shearing down the line. It also makes it look pretty cool! What do you think?
With this new door jam in place I was then able to change the position of the roof rafters so they would eliminate the divet on the roof. This worked incredibly well. I added the external tension strap to reinforce everything – and by the way the external strap has a break strength of 10,000lbs! I don’t think I’ll ever come close to that kind of weight in the Yurt..
With that out of the way, I cleaned up the door, sealed the wall to the door completely.
Now I just need to readjust the roof canvas to correct for the shifting from the new adjustments.
This door seals air out so much better now! It’s so beautiful.
Todays reading: Matt. 18,19 and Ex. 13-22
Thanks for tuning in! Until next time!