Washing machine

Yesterday, Juliana discovered an alternative washing machine that uses a design similar to a high pressure cooker. The Wonder Clean looks like one of those late night TV miracle products at first glance. It is reported to use 90% less water and detergent than the average in home washer, does a load in 1-2 minutes, uses no electricity, and costs less than $50. It sounds too good to be true but the reviews and testimonials from a broad spectrum of sources, including FOX news and the New York Times, indicate that the product really does live up to its claims. We feel like this is the perfect option for yurt living because it only uses 8 cups of warm water per load and will not require any electricity. It is also small and will store easily. By using an Eco friendly detergent we can also put the dirty water directly into the garden.

It seems that the inventors of the Wonder Clean may have gotten the idea from an early 1900's barrel butter churn. One of the barrel churn designs that was quite popular over a number of years was available through the Sears catalog and bears a remarkable resemblance to the Wonder Clean. There is even an old do it your self article that describes how to turn the barrel churn into a washing machine. The wooden design of the churn makes it a solidly constructed machine while also being more aesthetically pleasing. In concept the two machines should work the same way. However with a $300-$400 price tag from antique dealers we will settle with the plastic version for now and wait until we find a deal on the wood version or until I can figure out how to replicate the pressure plate portion of the wood churn design.

Do a content search for "barrel churn" in the article below for more info about turning a barrel churn into a wooden wonder clean:

The wood pile

The top picture is of some 1x24x36" compressed wood particle panels we salvaged from a local department store. There are 20 panels in all and I am planning to use them for the floor in our bedroom loft. The next two are a couple of pictures of our salvaged wood and the truck after hitting up a construction site yesterday. I've been keeping it all covered with a canvas construction tarp to keep the snow out. I'm looking forward to some warmer days so that I can sort through the pile and see what we still need.

A day for solar energy and salvaging

I spent some time last night and this morning doing research on 12 Volt and 24 Volt solar energy system components. I was able to come up with a couple of possible systems that would be made up of components that would best balance cost with long term durability.

Possible 12 Volt system:
-(x2) Kyocera, 135 Watt, multi-crystalline panels (Total 270 Watts)
-Morningstar, 45 Amp, 12/24 Volt, Pulse Width Modulating charge controller
-Sima, 1500 Watt, Modified Sine Wave, inverter
-Trojan, 130 Amp Hour, Flooded, Deep Cycle, battery

I have not yet researched the cost of cables and wiring. The 12 Volt system actually came in a around $600 cheaper than the 24 Volt system I cooked up.

Possible 24 Volt system:
-(x2) Kyocera, 185 Watt, multi-crystalline panels (Total 370 Watts)
-Morningstar, 45 Amp, 12/24 Volt, Pulse Width Modulating charge controller
-Power Bright, 1500 Watt, Modified Sine Wave, inverter
-(x2)Trojan, 130 Amp Hour, Flooded, Deep Cycle, battery

While the 24 Volt system would provide an additional 100 Watts of power I am leaning toward the 12 Volt system since we believe that it would provide everything we will need to power the 30' yurt. We would be able to add an additional Battery and another 130 Watt panel at a later date.


We also had some fortune visiting a construction site today. It was at a home building site that we had noticed going up over the last few weeks. I stopped to ask if any of the wood was headed to the dump and was directed to a bin with a truck load of mixed sizes pine 2x4" and 2x8." We even found a few pieces that ranged into the 12-16' lengths. Will post some pictures tomorrow.

Solar panels and Wood burners

Our yurt plans are beginning to pleasantly remind me of "Neutral City" from Keiichi Sugiyama's animated film Origin. Yurts lend so well to the combination of old and new in their design. The basic structure has been in use since the time of Genghis Khan and yet we are incorporating things like cutting edge photovoltaic technology. We will have compact laptop computers and a home made composting toilet.

Juliana worked through some numbers again for us today and put together a sizing profile for the solar panels that will provide our electricity. She used the "Backwoods solar electric systems" book we received today as well as info from the web for references. This is the chart she came up with:

WATTS, Hrs/day, Watt hrs/day,

Food blender, 200, 1/25, 8,
Sundanzer fridge, 240, 1, 240,
Fluorescent bulbs, 15 (x2) = 30, 4, 120,
Computer, 100 (x2) = 200, 3, 600,
Printer/toothbrush/shaver, 90, 1/4, 22.5,

991 Watt-hours per day/6 = 165 watts
165 x 50% = 247 watts (to allow for solar module derating)
247 x 33% = 328 watts (to allow for lack of sunshine)

Sample system:
(x2) 130 watt Sunelec panels
Trojan 120ah 12 volt golf cart battery
Steca Prs 1515 charge controller
Wagan 1500 watt inverter

Awesome work Juliana!

With this information I was able to begin searching for deals on the system components. We have decided to look at buying the components separately rather than in a kit form. So far the best deal I have found is for a 180 watt monocrystalline panel at $425. Two of these panels would be enough to power everything in the 30' yurt and probably have enough left over to run the 20' workshop yurt we have in mind for Juliana's writing seminars.

We have also decided on a wood burning stove called the "Five Dog Stove." The Five Dog Stove is made by the Four Dog Stove company out of St. Francis MN. Check them out at fourdog.com. It was a suggestion Juliana discovered after researching some yurt forums and we both feel that it's the best thing out there for the price.

Sketches

These are a few sketches I have been working on. The first two are of a couple of warm up projects that I want to get into this winter. The first project is a easy to break down wooden truck ladder rack that will help us carry larger pieces of lumber. I also want to construct a couple of saw horses that break down for easy storage and made a preliminary sketch in the middle picture. The last picture is of a foundation and platform design that I have been working on today. The plan also includes a 10x28' front deck. The entire platform/deck will sit on concrete blocks. I have yet to determine whether we will incorporate a significant raise.

Two heads, or even three, are better than one

Above is a picture of Juliana and our daughter Luna. Juliana is using her brain power to figure out some of the math that was boggling my mind. Luna is helping. It's a good thing she ran through the inner liner calculations because I almost ordered 30 fewer square yards than we need.

The calculations that Juliana did also gave us an estimate of the amount of insulation material we will need. I spent most of the evening pouring over shopping results for for "Reflectix" double bubble double reflective insulation rolls and converting the varying sizes to determine the best price. At some point my thoughts turned towards wishing that someone made a generic version of the product but I had seen nothing about one. A quarter second google search later I had discovered www.insulation4less.com and a line of insulation products from the maker "Prodex." Prodex makes a double bubble double reflective insulation product that compares almost to a T with reflectix performance ratings. Prodex also only costs 1/2 as much as the most discounted rolls of Reflectix I could find. In addition Prodex also makes a "Total" insulation product that is supposed to last much longer than the foil bubble wrap insulators and has won awards for the best metal structure insulator. I even found a few reviews from people who have used it in their yurt and this stuff sounds amazing. The Total insulation also costs about $100 less than the best reflectix price I could find.

We also may have found a nice piece of property. It's just under an acre of land with a stream and lots of flat area for building. It is sandwiched between two wooded hills and will probably look amazing in the spring. It has an old single wide trailer on it that we could remodel to be a guest house/wood shop with a log cabin feel. We will be traveling down to visit family mid March and will make a day trip out of looking at the property and it's surrounding area.

Solar panels and interior cover

These two items have proven to be quite the math home work problems.

While researching the solar power set up we encountered the issue of sizing the system to our needs and were forced to begin thinking about what electrical luxuries are most important to our family. In a traditional home the number one consumer of electricity is the AC/furnace system. We can easily avoid this since we will be burning wood for heat and relying on passive solar design and ventilation for cooling. The number two traditional big electricity consumer, the refrigerator, is something that we are not ready to give up. We cook nearly all of our meals at home and generally keep our refrigerator moderately to well stocked. This will be by far the greatest consumer of our solar generated power. Aside from that we will use what I think of as very few electrical luxuries. We will need to power and charge two laptop computers, a minimal use of 2-3 lights in the evening, a toaster oven, possibly a coffee maker, and occasionally an electric tooth brush or shaver. We will likely add a small flat screen TV at some point. From the research we have done so far it looks like we will need something around a 160 watt system. It has been difficult to figure out what kind of energy needs our gadgets will have but I hope to do some more productive work on this aspect soon.

The interior and exterior cover layers have proven to be mostly a problem of conversion or lack of information on 30' yurts available. We are still waiting for our amazon book order to arrive and I am hoping that they will contain some direct guidelines pertaining to square yardage of material. There is a rather ingenious yurt calculator at http://www.simplydifferently.org/Yurt_Notes?page=1. My only issue is that everything on the site is in centimeters or meters and I am used to working in inches, feet, and yards. It has mostly meant a lot of plug and chug into conversion calculators. What I think I have come up with is a total of 135 square yards of surface space for the roof and wall of a 30' yurt. We will be getting the vinyl outer material free, thanks again to our local outdoor advertisers, and the inner lining should cost us between $150 and $175 from an online clearance sale. We considered using burlap sacks that would cost in the neighborhood of $80 but decided that the material is too dark and that a lighter natural color will help the feeling of space in the yurt. We found an unbleached 100% cotton fabric, pictured above, for 1.98 a yard and are thinking of going with it.

Aside from this we were able to salvage some excellent pieces of finished particle board that were being thrown away by a local clothing store. The boards have smooth finished surfaces and we are thinking that they will become the floor of our loft area. Juliana brought home some nice fruit crates today that we are thinking of making into cabinet storage in the kitchen area. We have also begun the process of cutting down our physical belongings in order to accommodate less storage and less clutter in the yurt.

Lessons from those who have gone before us

By fortunate chance Juliana ran into our midwife's apprentice, Connie, and discovered that she and her partner Matt have been on a similar journey to our own. They have been living in a 30' yurt, off the grid, for a while now and invited us to come over earlier tonight. They have done a lot of work on their own and now have a warm cozy yurt to call home. They have made good use of re-used furnishings, fallen timber, and even brought new life to an old wood burning stove after refurbishing it. Matt built a loft area for their bedroom using cedar branches he found on their property as posts and also erected a beautiful center support made from a trimmed cedar trunk. They plan to build a larger sustainable home in the future and are also in a constant process of digesting green living information.

From our visit I learned that we will really only need 36 rafter supports rather than the 60 called for in several of the plans I have looked at. This is good news for me since I am expecting the rafters to be some of the more difficult or pricey material pieces to come by. We also got to see a well thought out and simple shower/toilet system. I am relatively certain that we will not be worrying about building an additional outhouse structure and will be using a composting toilet instead.

The visit was exciting for us both. We left feeling energized and with many new ideas swimming through our heads.

Resource management in the lumber industry

I've spent the last few days looking at saw mill operations both online and in my surrounding community. In Len Charney's book, "Build a yurt," he suggests that mills are a good place to find nearly free 1x2" lumber for khanas and even cheap larger pieces of scrap lumber for the rafters. Granted the book was written in 1974 but I still expected to be able to find some freebies that would otherwise be going to the dump. This was not the case. Instead it seems that any scrap lumber is being sold as firewood or ground into saw dust. One of the men I spoke with informed me that he was making around $1,000 a week from the sale of his ground wood scrap. I am glad to see that the scrap is being used for something and not just ending up in the landfill in the same way that construction debris does. At the same time though this eliminates the primary source I had been expecting to be able to get cheap long cut lumber from.

If we were to buy the wood new, in rough cut pine or douglas fir, we could probably get everything we need for the yurt's frame for 2-3 hundred dollars. Feasible though this would be it does not really fit into the green design concepts. After all we are trying to do this in the most ecological way possible and I can not see where supporting the timber industry really follows our guiding construction principles.

I'm heavily leaning towards salvaged lumber but as one person put it "salvaged lumber is a good deal, provided you are the one doing the salvaging." From what I have found a lot of the lumber being sold from salvage operations is reclaimed antique hardwood which carries a heftier price than I would care to spend. In our most recent craigslist ad I offered to help dismantle existing structures, such as collapsing barns or outbuildings, in exchange for the lumber. In essence I would be conducting my own salvage operation. A single site could potentially provide all of the longer 6' and 16' wood beams we will need. Best of all no new trees would need to be cut.

Hunting for tools at the pawn shop

I spent this morning searching for a good deal on the last few tools that we needed. After searching through the Lowe's website and visiting a few local hardware stores I was sure that we would spend a hundred dollars or more if we bought things new. The local pawn shops were a different story. They were filled with gently used, and some not so gently used, tools. I spent a little time picking over the selections and came home only $48 lighter and with more tools than I had originally gone out in search of. In all I bought a heavy weight framing hammer, 16oz fiberglass handled curved claw hammer, slap stapler, 26" cross cut saw, leather tool belt with 4pc utility rig, and a 19" multi-compartment tool box. I will definitely be checking the pawn shops first from now on.

Recycled billboard vinyl

Last night I did a little research on materials for the weather proof outer covering of our yurt and discovered that some people have put recycled billboard prints to good use here. There is a whole sub industry of manufactured goods that are derived from recycled billboard vinyl. Industrial tarps, color guard flooring, purses, wallets, book bags, etc... are all using this material. The vinyl material comes in 14'x48' sections and is UV resistant, water proof, easy to work with, and best of all FREE! I looked up an outdoor advertiser in the yellow pages, went to their local office, and told them about our yurt project. The gentleman I spoke with informed me that they regularly make donations of the material and would be happy to give us however much we need. Right now the company is sending all the extra vinyl they have to the relief effort in Haiti so we will need to wait until the middle of March when they will have a surplus again. The only catch is that we can not display the advertisement on the outside of our yurt.

The end of a long wait

We were finally able to pick up Juliana's wedding band today! It was made for her by a local jeweler and features forget me knots and willow branches. It has a nice organic quality to the design and suits Juliana perfectly. (picture to come)

Foraging for materials

Earlier this week we picked up a 1984 Dodge 150 pickup truck (pictures to come) for $700. So far it has proved to be an oldy but a goody and has allowed us to begin looking for materials. It drives like a tank and is slow to do everything, starting, acceleration, braking, but feels solid and has already nearly hauled it's purchase price in salvaged lumber.

We have only been dumpster diving at construction sites for a few days but have already learned a few interesting things. To begin with it seems that 2x4" is pretty expendable at large work sites. We filled up the back of the truck with 2x4" after searching at only two sites. There are lots of short cuts, as could be expected, but oddly enough some 6' or longer pieces can be found as well. I actually found one 24' board. It also seems that asking permission to do this puts the project manager in a sticky insurance position. If they were to give a salvager permission they would become technically liable for any injuries which that person sustained while on the construction site. It felt like the various project managers who I spoke with were saying "don't ask permission" so at the next site we checked I just jumped right into the dumpster. I found that all of the people we encountered working at the site were either indifferent to our presence or offered help by pointing out where some particularly good pieces were at. On a return trip to the same site I found a neatly parceled bunch of treated 1"x2"x6' boards at one end of the dumpster. It kind of felt like someone had left them there for easy access.

I began downloading yurt foundation and deck plans last night. There is a nice assortment of free plans on various prefab yurt websites. The sets from Colorado yurt company look very detailed. The Rainier plans seem very user friendly. I think that this needs to be the next serious research portion of the project. We are planning to order a couple of yurt building books from Amazon.com and are hoping to find some useful info there as well.

Tonight I have been putting together some drawings of a few wood building warm up projects. I learned my lesson after carting around a 24' salvaged piece of lumber today. I tried to pull in at the University parking garage only to discover that the board wouldn't pass the 8' clearance. We need a ladder rack for the truck but I refuse to spend several hundred dollars on one. After looking at some of the designs online I was able to modify a removable wooden ladder rack plan to serve our purposes. It will be using a tongue and groove design to allow for relatively quick release of the horizontal beams and the vertical supports will attach to 2x2" posts that will slide down into the sides of the truck bed. I also modified some sawhorse plans to make a 3pc sawhorse that can be broken down easily and only requires 2x4" and nails or screws.

Almost forgot to mention that we found some yurt builders who have been using the recycled vinyl from billboard signs as an exterior waterproof layer. The stuff is super cheap and seems to hold up well. We also discovered that recycled concrete blankets can be a cheap insulation material.

Family time

In considering our current project, and looking at the other people who have built or are building yurts from scratch, I see one stand out difference. That our project is a family project and not a bachelor project. I mean to say that the stories I have read up to this point seem to be those of the single guy constructing a yurt in his spare time. I feel that one perspective we have to offer in this journey is how do you do this as a family unit? How do we incorporate family time into what can be an all consuming project? What choices do we make to facilitate togetherness during and throughout this process?

It is easy to get caught up in the project. There is so much research to do, so many places to check out, that we can end up going non stop for several days in a row. This last week has been particularly crazy with Juliana sick and then Luna sick. We were rushing around gather tool donations, rushing around to check out trucks. All of this in the midst of our normal, already full, school and work schedules. We both stopped tonight and, 5 month old daughter Luna permitting, crashed out on the couch for a few. It felt pretty great. I feel like we are accomplishing a lot but we are also going in lots of different directions. Juliana especially has been pulling extra time with Luna so that I can run project related errands. We need to set some time aside to decompress now and then. We also need to set aside some time for Juliana to get away on her own.

Rescued from the city dump

I forgot to mention, previously, that the tools we received would have gone to the city dump. The lady who gave them to us was in the process of moving and didn't want to take the time to sort through her tool shed. She had seen our ad's asking for donations and decided to give the contents to someone in need. Lucky us! In one fell swoop we received nearly all the tools we need that we didn't previously own.

Included in the donation: 12' 7' 5' and 4' tall aluminum step ladders, 10" tall table saw with extra blades, 24" 9" and 8" L-squares, 2' aluminum level, 1' wood level, 10lb sledge hammer, 5lb mattock, post hole digger, shovel, 2 strait line chalk reels, 10" tin snips, 10" steel snips, 70pc ratcheting screwdriver set, combination crimper and wire striper, 7" strap wrench, wire cutter, putty knives of various size, large groove joint pliers, 18 range multi-tester, respirators, goggles, rosin core solder gun, 2 bow saws, caulking gun, files of various size, circular saw with blade assortment, jig saw with blade assortment, jewelers saw, router with bit assortment, drop light, extension cord, interior and exterior electrical outlets, light switches, outlet plate covers, 100+ drill bits and grinding accessories, 3 hand wood planers, ball pein hammer, small hatchet, 3 C-clamps, 12 assorted concrete troughs and plainers, 6 wrenches of various size, small chisel, 2 canvas painters drop cloths, 50' rope, oil can, 2 antique hand crank drills, 15'x24' black canvas tarp, painting supplies including brushes sponges squeegees, 1 five gallon bucket of various hardware pcs, and an LED flashlight.

Thank you again Shelley!



We still need a 26" ripsaw, saw horses, protractor, heavy duty stapler, cable cutter, and a couple of heavy claw hammers. But I think that’s about it.

Today we got to meet up with a local man, Chris, who has a 16' Pacific yurt sitting on a nice secluded piece of property not far from us. It was reassuring to see the simplicity of the frame construction. I will probably be using 2"x4" for the rafters now rather than the 1"x3" boards I had been thinking of. Chris also tipped us off to a potential exterior material, recycled billboard print, that can be purchased in 14'x48' section for $25. We need to do some further research on the durability of the material but it looks similar to a water proof canvas.