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.