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Hi Omshanti! My uncle and aunt have lived in a yurt in WA full time for over 5 years! If you go on the inside, you would NEVER know it was a yurt. They have plumbing, electricity, and all the other amenities….kitchen, bathroom, woodstove, etc. I LOVE their house! In fact, my husband and I were trying to figure out how to get some land and connect a whole bunch of yurts together to make a “complex” to live in. They are soooo inexpensice compared to buying a house.
On another note, the Navajo and Hopi tribes up here in Northern AZ have Hoguns that are very similar to yurts, just made from pine, and many of them live in them year round. If you ever take Hwy 89A between Flagstaff and Page, you will see one on just about every property through the Navajo Nation.
I want to hear more about yurts. I’d love to live in one – but I don’t have a car, and it’s only possible to get land in the woods (I’d need to drive to work). Does anyone have ideas about how to make my yurt living dream a reality? (aka buying a used yurt, what are the challenges of living in one, are the really portable, etc)
My husband is a general contractor, and he builds yurts for a living! He works for/with these guys:
http://www.yurtpeople.com/yurtpeople/
We don’t live in one, but I’ve been inside several and I have to say I really love the energy inside a round house. It’s just different than square corners somehow.
Winona, the ones my husband builds are permanent houses & structures, with foundations and decks and all that, but I’m sure there are more temporary or tent-like options available
I knew if i asked you guys there would be all kinds of info!!! i have researched yurts and dome homes and strawbale( my fav so far) ect ect forever, and while i get plenty of info on building one and how great and inexpensive they are…i really want the nitty gritty on living in one… warts and all! when i embarked on my rv life i realized later that the people i had talked to didnt do it full time and lived in camp grounds with ameneties…big, huge diff! so inspired once again by living softly onthe earth and possibly building astraw bale barn for my critters i thought…hmmmmm, yurt…could happen! my hubs initial reaction will be “hell no woman!” but ya know when they love ya, sometimes pigs fly.;)
jeneregy anyway your hub cna give me some stats on full time yurt habitation?, snow loads, and wind tolerences? hey and what about round hojmes being bad feng shui? not to mention homes not “grounded” in the earth aka built on a deck….please all chime in
spirited mama, how cool! ill have to check them out next time we are in AZ, i was thinking main yurt, horse yurt? guest yurt, and studio yurt….like your complex! i wonder about insilation and if i could heat with a soapstone stove, then there is air in the summer….hmmmm
AAAAAAAHHH YOU CAN DO A STRAW BALE YURT? HOLT SH**T!!!! OH GENERGY IM AM SPEECHLESS, ok getting a grip… im actual not speechless just freaking , hugely, wonderfully excited!!! breathing, breathing…this has made my day, my month even! so cool….oh i guess you can tell i went to your hubbys work website…now the realresearch begins!! i gotta talk to these strawbale yurt people…if i call there do you think i can get that number through them? oh i love this website, kisses!!!
Oh yeah, my other big concern is safety. Couldn’t someone easily break into your yurt?
I haven’t, but my ancestors all lived in yurts long ago, I’m Hungarian lol :)
I love these! I went to the site jenergy posted. I have a cute apartment at the ranch in Texas (previously a horsebarn/worshop), but I live in an old motorhome in New Mexico and have for three years. I know your frustration omshanti!
My teacher lives in a Yurt with no electricity. She’s such a dear friend of mine, and so wildly eccentric! Her yurt inside is beautiful. She says she regrets not ordering some kind of padding to go with it cuz the wind gets in. When you buy a yurt- you can add/subtract things from the package. Her yurt is on the edge of a lake and has wooden floors and christmas lights all around it.
How does she operate the Christmas lights with no electricity?
eerr… i dunno…. 0.o she has some kind of battery… i think it’s solar charged. I dont really know the full story about it all. I know she has no heat because she has no electricity.
She has a blog about yurt life. http://spiderspring.wordpress.com/
Omshanti – he he! Your posts are so funny! I would love to build my own straw bale house someday. I love all those round corners and smooth earth ends. With solar and other alternative energies, you don’t have to worry about electricity and the comforts of home anymore. :)
Maybe you need to have your husband stay in a rent to try it out and see how he likes it – than you can convince him:
http://www.yurts.com/how/yurt-vacations.aspx
Here is my favorite alternative housing – EarthShips
Live completely off the grid. No off-gassing. Recycled materials. I want one so badly. I have been doodling different designs for the past year.
queen fluff, great minds think alike!;) my big 40th birthday is coming up and he wanted to get me together with friends in OR as we are friends since 5th grade and both 40 with in 12 days of each other… i think a yurt rental would fit the bill! great links! thanks loads….ive been drifting around all day with a goofy grin, i got a text from hubby after i sent him an email similar to my post above, he said,and i quote ” yurt people make my ass twitch” very funny…not!!! grin…so we will go slow and wear that sucker down…teehee im kidding but its worth exploring. i love straw bale but those earth ship things are pretty cool too Dain! ah…the possibilities are endless. one of my fav modular green homes is the glide house…google that, they are cool! thanks again guys!
123 are you still rving it? ugh , i gotta say i moved off the mountain and out of that god forsaken rv the night my rv cover flapped loose and when i went to restrap it the wind picked me up with the cover acting like a parachute and dumped me 10 yards away over a cliff in my PJs… i packed up both dogs and the cats, fed my goats and horses and went to a hotel for the rest of the night then found an apartment, and went back and moved my critters to a friends ranch…i thought i was living close to nature and saving money and energy…lordy the things you learn!!! i have 101 shit tank storys….hahahahaha, o h and lets not forget when my eater lit my couch on fire and filled the rv with toxic smoke while i slept, thank god i had the windows open in my sleeping area and my jackrussel was dilligent in snarling at the smoke!!! what can i say? good times!!! heehee
fly baby, hungarians lived in yurts? i spent a summer in pest, and once knew , oh , 5 or so hungarian words! teehee all i can think of now was my address: ishten hedgy number 8 ( thats “god” hill i believe) i loved goulash but those where in my meat eating days…..
this is another reason i love this site so much! i would have never known about this whole yurt thing! it is wicked!!!!! i don’t know if this would be a permanent house to me, but definitely an alternative to a cottage type thing when I am older- and they are so affordable! it looks like something out of “world’s coolest homes” or some show like that on HGTV that I am obsessed with!
omshanti I got big grins from your post! I’m glad you like the info… and that you’re going to research the website and maybe try calling them. I didn’t really think about it when I posted the link, but I don’t think my husband would appreciate me “volunteering,” his services as a consultant. In fact, I think he would have a few choice words about that. ;o)
“Yurt people make my ass twitch…” LOL!!! Now that sounds EXACTLY like something my husband would say. ;o)
Haha omshanti, jenergy – ya’ll are funny. A yurt sounds fabulous, I really wish I could live in a small yurt community. And take care of horses and animals for a living. It’s good to get a dose of reality, omshanti – living close to nature sure is more than ya bargain for, sometimes!
I'm also a little nutty for yurts! I stayed in one camping in Oregon and fell in love. Look at these luxury yurts - *swoons*
My experience is limited to spending a few nights in a teepee. It was awesome once we figured out how to properly vent the smoke through the top. Before that we had a ton of smoke billowing out of the bottom. From the outside the whole thing looked like a spaceship about to take off.