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.