A Gift of tools

Wow, I'm honestly a little overwhelmed by Shelley's donation of tools. There are now very few tools that we need. Tonight I lashed four ladders to the top of the car, including a sturdy twelve footer, and filled the trunk and seats with five gallon buckets of tools. We now have a circular saw, table saw, jig saw, router, drill, level, L-square, shovel, trench digger, post hole digger, sledge hammer, wood working tools, concrete tools, electrical equipment, antique hand tools, ...the list goes on. Tomorrows task will be sorting through everything and taking stock of anything we still need. I feel like we are going to need a work truck just to haul the tools around. I will need to decide on some outdoor storage options for the yurt. Maybe I should put some thought into a raised, semi enclosed, storage area underneath the yurt. I will post some pictures of the entire donation tomorrow.

Excitement over donated tools!

On Sunday we will be picking up our first goods donated to the yurt venture. A local woman, Shelley, who saw our ad on both Craigslist and the Bloomington freecycle network, has offered a myriad of tools including saw horses, ladders, hand tools, saws, and everything else in her tool shed. We also set up a meeting with a man, Chris, who has offered to show us his 16’ pacific yurt on Monday.

I spent some time this morning searching for a “bar carrier” roof rack for the car. It is a simple design, and not rated above 150lbs of weight, but should allow us to transport salvaged materials without having to invest in a pickup truck at this time. It looks like the best place to find the carriers are at auto part and accessory stores and it should cost around $30.

We have been talking about ordering some blue prints as well. Bill Coperthwaite has some really ingenious designs, "they look like yurt palaces" my partner Juliana exclaimed, and the 30’ plans sell for around $50.

I spent a little time looking at construction sites yesterday and ran across an apartment site that looks to have a lot of lumber laying around in big piles. Made an attempt to talk to the foreman, or superintendent, but he was away at lunch. The guys working at the site were friendly and helpful. I will return early next week to try some salvaging there.

We also came across an interesting site, tumbleweedtinyhouses.com, where we got an idea to use a ceramic water dispenser that sits above the sink instead of running plumbing for water. We might also adopt a similar idea for the shower. Something like an outdoor indoor shower.

Down the Rabbit-Hole 1/28/2010

Over the last week we have really cemented the idea of buying a piece of land and building a Yurt down in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We started our research online and I am in the process of reading two books, the first of several to come, “Build a Yurt” by Len Charney, and “Tipis and Yurts” by Blue Evening Star. Build a Yurt has some interesting design concepts but might be a little out dated. Tipis and Yurts has a nice simple design and an easy to follow materials list. There is not much detailed information about Building at the 30’ size and we are forming an idea about writing a book about our experience.

We made up an ad for materials that we hope people will donate to us and posted it on both Craigslist and the Bloomington Freecycle Network. Our first response was from a man named John who has some experience building the traditional style Ger and who offered to meet up with us to talk about the process. I also plan to make a flyer out of the ad and post it at the recycling center, Bloomingfoods, etc.

Today we spent about an hour and a half touring some home construction sites. So far it looks like there is a lot of smaller 2”x4” lumber pieces and particle board being thrown away. We need to get a roof rack on the car so that we can start salvaging.