And rest

Spent the last two days putting the rest of the floor together. By six thirty last night, it was ready for the newly sanded and oiled frame to go on.


Early evening is not a great time of day to start putting up a yurt (when you were already staggeringly tired in the middle of the afternoon), but with rain forecast for first thing in the morning there was no other way. Apart from the road and car park, that's the last bit of infrastructural work finished for the year.

Yes, we're planning even more improvements.

A new floor in our plan

This is what I've been doing for the last few days, among other things:


You might recognise it as my standard joist layout for an 18-foot wooden floor. We'd have done this last year but we didn't have the time or the money. This year, at least we have the time. (The woodyard has the money.)

It's taken a bit longer than previously, because this week temperatures have been in the mid to high 30s. Centigrade. And 38C is a bit hot to do much sawing by hand - even in the woods. Yesterday, I actually had to go and sit in a lake up to my neck. Something everyone should do more often.

The naked yurt

Took another break from the tree bog this week to take down a guest yurt, finish, sand and oil the frame, remake the roof wheel, and lay and oil a brand new wooden floor. (MASSIVE thanks here to Phil and Nadia who were here to help and did far too much of the work - I'll be posting some of Phil's photos later.)

Here is the result of our labour, in all its glory:

How to make a yurt platform - Alex's fairly definitive guide (including pictures)

Now that I've made a raised wooden platform for the play yurt,


a beaten earth platform with dry-stone retaining wall for our 18-foot yurt,


an 18-foot beaten earth platform with woven chestnut retaining fence for our first guest yurt,


a wooden platform for our second 18-foot yurt,


and a second 18-foot earth platform on a slope for our second guest yurt,


I feel qualified to write a fairly definitive guide to how to build a yurt platform. I'll be happy to answer questions if anything needs clarification, time permitting.

Before I started my latest platform, I bought:
o Thirty 2.5-metre lengths of rough 7.5 cm by 4 cm douglas fir from a nearby woodyard
o A six-litre tin of treatment against wood-boring insects
o 27 square metres of pine flooring, 23 mm thick, 10 cm wide and 2 m long
o A five-litre tin of protective treatment for the finished floor - oil with a white pigment
o A box of 200 screws 70 mm long, 5 mm wide
o A box of nails 40 mm long, 2 mm wide

On day one, I laid down and levelled the floor joists 61 cm apart, and screwed noggings between them to strengthen the frame.


I was lucky enough to have almost level ground to work on, and some old tiles and bits of wood lying around. Levelling an area like this takes a huge amount of work and is covered in other posts.


On day two, I joined the ends of the joists, trying to get these outside noggings as close to the finished edge as possible.


The weight of the yurt will be resting on this edge, which is why I put supports at the top, bottom and sides.


An important point here, in capital letters: THE FINISHED FLOOR FOR AN 18-FOOT COPPICED YURT IS 18 FEET 4 INCHES - the 18 feet is in the internal measurement. If you are using sawn timber, just add the wall width on both sides to your internal finished size.


On day three, I started laying the floor, aiming for as little wastage as possible, pre-drilling holes diagonally through the tongues wherever the boards crossed a joist.


This is what I can do in about 10 hours working alone.


On day four, I finished laying the floor while Her Outdoors applied the first layer of oil. Unfortunately, the oil had an eight to 12-hour drying time between coats, so this day ended up being quite long too. Rain had appeared on the forecast I use and we were now chasing the weather as so often happens.


On day five, I screwed 10 cm strips of 5 mm ply to the outside edge of the platform.


For some reason this doesn't come up much in yurt books, or sites talking about yurt platforms, but we find it essential. The edge makes putting the frame up a breeze, doesn't cost much, cuts down on draughts, holds in the insulation and even stops slugs coming in to eat the cat food.

If you have large items of furniture and small doors like us, you'll want to move these onto the platform before putting your retaining edges on.

UPDATE

I've since discovered you don't need to pre-drill those holes. Just make sure they are angled nicely into the wood. Saves a bit of time.

Night yurt

This is for Dave, who wanted to see why I said the yurt and gazebo look awesome and make two yurts look greedy. Who could want more than this?


Except someone who would want it in focus.

écovallée: the world's No1 family yurt camp?

Two and a half years ago, I had a crack at the yurt camp world record in this post, wherein I mentioned Yurt Professional Matt who hires coppiced ash yurts through Yurtopia (and made our 12-foot Roaming Yurt), yurt makers Yurtshop who crafted écovallée's own coppiced chestnut guest and play yurts - and even wrote 'yurt campsite' a couple of times for good measure.

It was an unveiled attempt at securing the top spot in the world's leading search engine, based on what little knowledge of SEO I had at the time. And it failed, earning a historically forgettable second place according to this computer.

Perhaps I should have used words like yurting and yurters, instead of yurt and yurts; or expressions like nomadic yurts, yurt campsites and family yurt camps, instead of the more simplistic yurt campsite; or included geographical references like Dordogne yurt camp, yurt camp in France and Aquitaine yurt campsite.

Only this post will tell.

Ecovallée II

After a staggering amount of work, with a couple of tweaks still to do, we have become a two-yurt campsite. Here's the second yurt platform before the frame went on...


And afterwards...


Needful to say, we are having a relatively lazy day today and looking forward to that 'relaxing French lifestyle' we came here to enjoy. (A lifestyle that evades everyone we know.)

That relaxing French lifestyle

It's been said by more than one visitor, and not just to us: "You're so lucky. You get to sit around in the sunshine drinking beer all day."

Hmn.

What visitors don't realise is that while it may be true that, at that particular moment, we are sitting in the sunshine drinking beer, it is only because the visitors are there. The rest of the time, we and (almost) all the Englanders I know are working our buttocks off. By way of an example, during the last three days, I've been turning an 18-foot yurt platform into a 19-foot yurt platform.

Here it was on Wednesday:


On Thursday:


And just now:


Meanwhile, between seeding and weeding the lower field, Her Outdoors has been indoors, making the cover to go on the yurt, thusly:


No sitting around drinking beer for her. (Not during the day anyway.) I did have a beer a few minutes ago but, for the record, I stood the whole time. No visitors, see?

Let's. Do. The yurt. Move. Again.

The yurt we've been living in since Autumn last year needed to make a jump to the left (or a step to the right). Here's how you can do it at home.

Move 1
Put some concrete blocks in place, make sure they're level, and paint some blackjack on them to stop moisture rising. Like this:


Move 2
After the heavy rain, stand on the blocks until they stop sinking, pack out and arrange your joists, thusly:


Move 3
Nail your boards across the joists and treat with oil, this-wise:


Move 4
Screw your marine ply around the platform, hereuntoafter:


Move 5
And stick your yurt on it, like so:


(This last move can take longer than anticipated, as with all the previous moves.)

Canvas yurt covers: The disappointing truth

Let's go back for a moment to 2006/7.

Her Outdoors put a lot of work into finding the right kind of canvas for our yurts. She talked to lots of people (they weren't always very forthcoming about their suppliers - not surprising as yurts were really taking off at the time and canvas was in increasingly short supply). She looked at lots of websites. And she settled on the unbleached 12-ounce 'waterproof, rot-proof, flame-proof canvas' everyone was using.

Sounds very reasonable. I can't see why anyone would do anything different.

We ordered hundreds of metres (yards) of the stuff, from two different suppliers. Her Outdoors made a cover for our first 18-foot yurt, we put it in the trailer and off we went.

If you've read this blog from the beginning (or the end, depending on which way you look at it), you may remember that August 2007 was very wet when we arrived in France. Very wet - outside and inside the yurt. So wet, we sought shelter in a house and Her Outdoors began to doubt her skills. Which are considerable (and award-winning).

Time passed.

We built the 12-foot Play Yurt and Her Outdoors made a cover. We moved into it. It rained. The cover leaked. And started to rot. (Waterproof, rot-proof, flame-proof, remember?)

We put the original 18-foot up for extra storage. It leaked a bit less. And was a bit less mouldy.

We put a new 18-foot up on a lovely dry beaten earth platform, with canvas from the second manufacturer. Just before a rainstorm. Which went straight through the cover, almost like it wasn't there.

Her Outdoors made a few calls. Here's one:

Professional yurt cover maker 1: 'Ah yes - 2007 was the worst year to buy canvas - the rot-proofing was water soluble. They've made some improvements.'

Here's another:

Professional yurt cover maker 2: 'Oh yes - you need to re-proof your canvas before you use it. Twice if you can. Otherwise it leaks. We'll send you some proofing, but you won't need any seam-sealer.'

More research revealed people who live in yurts full-time do not use canvas. (Which, among other things, needs replacing EVERY COUPLE OF YEARS.) Everyone's using some kind of manmade material, like polycotton, which costs many, many times more but will last for up to 10 years. (If you really need to know, use the comments thing below and I'll get Her Outdoors to give you all the details.)

Now, call me old-fashioned if you must, but if you sell something as 'waterproof' and 'rot-proof', it should be those things. The 12-foot cover rotted so badly, Her Outdoors had to make a new one before we could open this year. It lasted a few months (which would have cost 1250 GBP if made professionally - no wonder other yurt camps cost so much).

Last week, it rained for the first time since July. Again, inside as well as outside our yurt (we re-proofed the guest yurt and Play Yurt at the start of the season and they held up pretty well. We couldn't re-proof our yurt 'cos the material was so new, the proofing ran off - yes, it's actually proof-proof).

We found how the water was coming in - and will be ordering some seam sealer in the next few days.

And finally

On July 11th 2010, écovallée was open at last.

There's that tractor I killed:


That mirror used to be in our yurt:


This guy can hardly draw at all:


Wait until you see the compost toilet. No, I mean it.

Thank you Dan Kuehn

Here's a shot of me just before the guest yurt arrived, preparing the site:


If you've read "Mongolian Cloud Houses" by Dan Frank Kuehn, you'll be forgiven for thinking it bears a passing resemblance to page 62:


I forgive you. (See?)

Credit going where it deserves, I'd like to thank Dan for saving us hundreds of euros we don't have, by demonstrating how a yurt platform can be made from earth. (I am convinced this is the building material of the future.) We did splash out a few euros on some sand to make it super flat, and we've topped it off with a plastic vapour barrier and some carpet, neither of which you can see in this shot:


Thanks also for giving me permission to use the image from his book. A bottle of something special will be waiting for you in écovallée any time, served in the kitchen on the right of this shot:


I love how the yurt sits into the hillside from this angle. Even though I say so myself, it's superb.

Hard time

Some of these days we think are going to be easy. Like last Sunday.

All we had to do was swap the (Yurtshop) yurt we’d been sleeping in for the (Future Roots) yurt standing outside the kitchen. Why? Because the Yurtshop yurt is a guest yurt and needs to be up on the platform in the guest field (see below), and the Future Roots yurt was made for us (see a long way below). It’s the way it was always supposed to be. An exciting day – a big step closer to écovallée proper.

So we took the roof cover off the Future Roots yurt and took down the frame. Then took the roof and walls off the Yurtshop yurt and took down the frame. Then realized (see as we were moving house) we might as well take up the carpet and live on the groundsheet for the summer, and have a good old sweep and a mop. It wouldn’t take long to dry – it was probably around 30 degrees at that point.

By lunchtime, the walls of the Future Roots yurt were in the right place and we realized time was running out. Because this wasn’t the only thing we had planned for Sunday. The school fete was on and both kids were performing on stage, and we were going round to a friend’s for a barbecue later.

Which is why I put the roof poles in under the now blazing sun, while Her Outdoors hammered grommets into the wall panels. And why we had to leave all our stuff lying around in the open all afternoon. And why we only had a few minutes to feed and water the animals, and to hide all our stuff inside because the forecast said it was going to rain overnight. And why many other things.

Like why we woke up on Monday, tired. Which is how we’ve woken up every day for as long as we can remember. (I’ve been saying I need a day off for days – and I mean it.)

The barbecue was lovely, though. It's nice to take it easy once in a while.

The Mark III yurt porch

A bit bleached out, this shot. I'll have another go. But integrating the porch instead of retrofitting to avoid rain coming around the top of the door is a definite improvement.

Eye on the pyramid

Apart from being ill for a few days (and discovering I'm not very good at it - what's the point in being this fit and healthy if you're too weak to do anything with it?), I've been working on the first guest yurt platform...


...the outdoor kitchen/eating area...


...and the compost toilet.


But I couldn't help noticing that the pyramid orchids are through.


(For precision-oriented nature watchers, Her Outdoors said they came up about a week ago.)

Busy, busy

Now I've finally managed to post those rocks (New readers - see below and below below), I can show you what's on the work-in-progress list.


First: Grey water treatment for the outdoor kitchen. Washing-up water will drain through a straw bale grease trap, run along the pipe (a nice, easy bit under the floor there) into some mulch, filter through some washed sand, then gravel, before draining into the ground under a vine. Ooh - and must lay the patio floor and build the kitchen on that weed-suppressing matting you can see behind.


Equal first: Yurt platform. If you can get any more local, or sustainable, than using turf from the upper side of the slope to build up the lower side, I want to hear about it. This is huge fun, and much warmer than making igloos (I imagine). It also takes a surprisingly long time. It soon became clear I had too much mud, so I started making...


Equal equal first: Compost toilet platform. We're going for a 2m x 2m toilet for comfort. This shot's a bit out of date. There's now some of the ramp leading to the toilet (for baby buggies and off-road wheelchair users).

Equal, equal equal first: Take down the 12-foot yurt, replace the cover, sand and oil the frame - when it's not raining. And put it all back up in time for one of Her Outdoors' friends, who's arriving on Saturday. Lots to do. Got to go.

Toying with telly

Have been dabbling with the idea of doing some TV in relation to écovallée. But as a producer in the UK suggested the other day, why should people care about the self-imposed difficulties of a middle-class family living in another country, when there are so many more needful subjects to cover? (My words, not his.)

Fair point, I thought.

Meanwhile, I've had meetings with the mayor and the regional Chamber of Commerce and in a few short weeks, I'll be able to report (how's THAT for positive thinking about two and a half years of tilting at hot air?) that we'll be open for business - legally - this year. Of course, there's the question of finding the money for the wood for the platform, and the new cover (I never did tell you what was so wrong with the original material we bought, did I?) and a few furnishings.

Horse. Cart. Cart. Horse. (Hang on - we do have a cart horse, but we did get the horse before... No. We haven't even found the cart yet.) For old times' sake, and to give your eyes a rest from all these weary words, here's a photo of the yurt we were originally going to live in, in front of the Brighton Earthship.


And to keep you really up to date, here's the yurt we're living in now (when the snow kindly covered all the crap lying around in the yard).


Maybe I should have called this post: Spot the snowball.

A bit of a rollercoaster

The last couple of weeks have had their downs and ups.

One down was a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, which started well. The very knowledgeable and energetic woman said this should be easy enough - a yurt camp on our own land. Several phone calls later, she left us with a very familiar look on her face - a kind of resignation meets bewilderment, crossed with a well-it's-to-be-expected - and the words: Bon Courage.

Good luck.

Another down was a further trip to the Social Services. You may remember, we have completed many, many pieces of paper with a view to having some kind of housing benefit. I'm on the dole. You'd think we'd be entitled. (I know I did.) But it seems the system is still hung up on the money I earned as a self-employed person in the first six months of 2007. We "don't have the right", the woman said. "It'll be different in January."

"I'll be going self-employed to open the campsite," I said.

"Don't do that!" came the reply. "You'll lose all your rights."

It's complicated. Many things are.

On very big up was a very generous donation from an anonymous source that will allow us to complete work on the Shack before winter. Which meant we could buy a load of wood and put that up:


And buy a load of tiles and put them up too:


You'll see our bedroom yurt in the background which has also gone up, so we can put down the adobe floor which needs a couple of weeks to dry before we can move into that.