Build yourself a portable home - a mongolian yurt

Step 9 Assembly - putting it all together/up

The best way is to just give it a go and try putting it up. Expect the first few times you do it
to take quite a while. You'll need two or 3 people, but no more. I can do it on my own now, but
it's still easier with two.

Follow along through the pictures below for a detailed step-by-step pictographic guide with text hints. Seriously, looking at all the pictures is worth it - there are about 50 of them on this step! That's gotta be worth more than 1000 words. :-)

Hints:
*) You'll need a "tension" cord/band (or even two) to go right round the top (and optionally
the middle) of the wall. It's important that you put this in place before you put the roof
supports on. Some people use a band of canvas that is a few inches wide, I use a 3mm venetian
blind cord round the top and middle of the wall (a thicker slat might not need two tensioners).
I use two tensioners just to reduce the slight "bow" in the walls after everything is in place.
I bought a complete 100m roll of cord and it was cheaper than buying 40m at the by-the-metre
price, so I have plenty for things like tying the roof down.

• you can fit the tensioner cord permanently to the timber walls, by tying it onto each bolt-head all the way round the wall, which is a great idea, and makes putting it up so much easier too! See the pictures for details.

*) put(or keep) the tensioning cords/ropes in place before even getting the canvas out of the car. I
always forget them, and then have to take the wall canvas off again in order to put them on. You can put them under, or over the wall canvas, I always prefer under, but others use over, it doesn't really matter, and is just cosmetic.

*) If the wind is light, hang the wall canvas over the walls before putting the roof supports on, and hold it in place with bull-dog clips (or stitch little pockets for the canvas to hang from). If the wind is strong, the wall canvas can act like a sail, and blow your tent away, so leave the canvas untill you have the weight of the roof timber/s to hold it down.

*) Put the centre ring up by putting in 3 opposing main supports first, the ring will then
hold itself up, and the person who was holding it up will not get such sore arms. Try not to stand under the centre-ring very much while assembling it, because getting hit in the head with a large heavy object (if it falls down unexpectedly) is unpleasant and dangerous.

*) Start to pull the roof canvas over the roof, and at the same time have one or two people
inside the tent with long poles (borrow a couple of minor roof supports for this if necessary),
get them to use the poles to push the canvas up and over the roof. It's easier than trying to
just drag it over with ropes.

*) Get a tarp, or large black-plastic dropsheet for your floor, you won't regret it. Cut a circle
about 3/4-1' (~200-300mm) larger all round than your tent, and fold the sides up inside your tent to
prevent water getting into the tent. I origninally used 2500mm wide black-plastic "concrete underlay" plastic sheet (as it was cheaper than a 15' square tarp) and joined it together down the middle with
that wide-brown "duct-tape". It sticks to that black plastic like glue, and is waterproof
enough to survive a month underwater if necessary. The longevity of the black plastic isn;t great though ( a dozen uses or more over 5 years) before the ground/rocks tear it up) , so having a tarpaulin floor is good, which is what I now use - I found a local canvas and tarpaulin supplier who made it to-measure for the circular shape for only $AU100 (about $US150) .

*) In anything except nil-wind conditions you definitely will want to take along a few tent pegs, I use 8 or them, placed in the ground directly as the bottom of the walls, and roped to the roof. (ie tie the edge of the roof canvas to the tent pegs) by putting the eye-lets and S-hooks every so soften around the roof hem, and zig-zagging the tie-down rope between these eyelets with the S-hooks and the tent-pegs set at the same spacing around the bottom of the wall. You end up with this nice regular tringular pattern visible around the edges of the yurt.

*) Otherwise (ie in nil-wind conditions) you can hold the roof canvas down with a noughts-and-crosses # pattern of ropes across the roof.

*) take three times as much 'cord' or 'rope' as you think you'll need, use it for:
- tensioning rope/s (about 15m per tensioner - I use two, so 30m)
- zig-zag tie-downs (roughly every meter round peremeter means 35-40m) or # roof ties (roughly 25-30m)
- cap ties (about 8m or more)
- tying wall canvas in place (either side of the door) (about 5 m)
(I bought 100m and use just about all of it somewhere. I even managed to not have to cut it, so it's
still useful for other things for the other 350 days of the year)

Now, the assembly pictures! There are a LOT of these, in the order of assembly, so just have a look!

Comments

[Philthy.Sohoza]

great instructable! withw great pics. i was planning on building a yurt a few years back, but life got in the way. i was planning on useing ab old army tent i got at a reuse center where i live. it's about 20ft to a side and 16ft in the center. i'm now planning on selling it because i dont have any room for it. anybody interested? email @ [e-mail] subject: yurt.

[jimmiek]

I like this .... always wanted to build such a thing ..... I'd like to see how it is dismantled and packed for moving ..... i.e. the lattice work .... does it need to be totally unbolted ..... with 70+ bolts, it doesn't seem that this would go up very fast! Thanks, nice instructable ..... may try it myself!

[davidbuzz]

here's some pictures of the timberwork being folded up, so you can see that no bolts at all need to be undone. It's like 100 pairs of blunt wooden scissors all attached together. ( yes, you can get your fingers stuck!)

[amatureartist56]

I dont see a picture of the triangle or circle that is left over after you cut the wedge so Im not sure how it is put on or tied. Im assuming it is the last step (and covers the hole in the roof ) however you did say you look at the stars through that also. Around here it would let in the bugs especially the blood thirsty ones. So did I miss that step somewhere? Maybe its there but I didnt realize that is what you meant. I was also wondering how both a circle or a triangle worked for this, unless the circle was esentially cut by taking the corners off the triangle, which is probably what was done. I loved your instructable- and thanks for taking the time to do it as well as all the pictures.

[Jim_dJ]

Good job on both the yurt and the instructable - but dang that looks like a lot of work!

[irm224]

 Sorry but this sounds really confusing.  I thought it was easier to put yurts together, and I know there are more ways to put one together so what way is easier??

[knoxville]

so how much did it cost you in total?

[davidbuzz]

the first yurt I built was approx $800AU ( about 10 years ago) .   I've just recently sold my 6th yurt brand-new for $2000AU , with all accessories, and fittings, and a solid door, and a new custom maade waterproof floor, etc.