Rain rain rain......

The persistent rain is have a bit of a negative effect on the canvas walls, I've noticed that right at the bottom of the canvas, it's pretty much saturated and is resulting in some black mould, nothing terminal or damaging, but it's not ideal.  It's not bad enough to smell or have any other undesirable consequences, but it will need some thought, and the thought is this...

Plasti Dip

You might want to turn the sound off for this video, also, if you can work out where the bloke's face is for most of the video, you can put a Post It note there and still see the video without having to look at the gurning idiot.
I've used it years ago to rubber coat tool handles and anything else that remained stil for long enough to get rubberised.  The idea is to wait for a good hot spell, get some air to the walls, wait till they are totally dry, then with a spray gun and thinned out Plasti Dip, rubberise the canvas to make it totally waterproof.  Not sure how much 5 litres will cover, but the bottom will get treated first and then we'll see what's left.

Last weekend was a hum dinger for some pretty lairy blustery wind, with 50mph gusts, it was a bit noisy outside, so noisy I had to use earplugs to get to sleep.  It's at times like this that I truly appreciate the importance of considerate and well thought out siting of the yurt, why? because the next morning I was shown by Lou (one of the lovely house people) that the previous night's wind had torn a significant chunk of 8" leylandii bough down, depositing it perfectly next to the chickens.  Although the yurt is close to trees, none of them are large enough to pose any real danger, nor are they of the randomly falling over flavour of tree (Chestnut is the closest).

While we're here I'd like to nominate the Bissell cordless sweeper as most awesome yurt tool of 2011, using compressed logs for fuel is a messy business, touch one and there's sawdust all over the floor, on top of that, I like toast and other crumbly foodstuffs that the Bissell munches down like there's no tomorrow.  It gets used multiple times a day and I'd be lost without it.

So, this drought...

I just wanted to share with you what rain sounds like from inside my lovely canvas pie.

The Spring Scrub down.

After contemplating buying a new cover to replace the rather manky existing one, I decided to risk it and use neat bleach in a trigger bottle, a dish brush and some water. I think it worked rather well. Still a long way to go but it's far from being hard work.

Humming Yurt

Windy today, windy enough for me to realise that using flat webbing as ties for the crown cover is a really bad idea. Flat straps hum and drum against the roof, so I've had to go all the way round and throw lumps of wood on the roof to keep the straps from humming interesting chords.

Also, I am trialling the idea of putting ex-storage heater bricks on top of the woodburner and inside the oven as a base. The idea being that they will release the heat once the fire has gone out and keep things warmer for a little bit longer though the night. A nice hot one makes a brilliant foot warmer.

New year 2012.

Been a while since the last entry so I'll try and lump it all together here.

Electricity:

Trying to get though the winter months with a 60w solar panel is a fail. I've run a massive extension lead from the house to the yurt and I'm a little ashamed to say that it has transformed things inside the yurt. Apart from the obvious like being able to make toast, it has opened up new winter possibilities, the main one being how to deal with very low temperatures on a Friday night when I roll up after a week at work.

The week before last hit a personal yurt record low of -11c, it took 2 hours to get the inside warm using compressed logs (more on that later), that's 2 hours wasted, so I have invested in an electric duvet, so I can at least hit the sack while the yurt warms up instead of sitting there listening to the shipping forecast and watching my breath drift away. At £99 that aren't cheap, but a decent goose down duvet is £60 and doesn't have flashing lights and dials. No brainer for a bloke.

Fridge:

Milk and cheese goes behind the sofa, it seems to be a natural cold spot, so no fridge needed yet. Of course people survived without them for thousands of years anyway.

Heating:

The previously mentioned paraffin heater is still working well but really dries up the air, meaning that I wake up in the AM with a dry throat. As an alternative I've been using Wildfire coal nuggets, they will keep going till morning and the coldest it's been so far at 8am is 10c, that's acceptable. The tonne of compressed wood waste briquettes have been slightly disappointing in that they were part of a batch that were not sufficiently compressed, therefore they burn too fast and are quite messy. The seller has kindly offered me a discount on the next batch so the jury is still out on briquettes. We shall see.

General state of things:

The outer cover is looking rather green now, it's not nice, but the inside is still lovely. I'm considering using a jet wash to blast the green off but will need to be careful not to blast it all under the crown cover and into the yurt. The door is holding out well, no swelling, splits or cracks.

Stove:

The Prithy FG15 has given sterling service through winter, stews, baguettes, pizza, jacket spuds all in abundance. Money well spent.

That's it for now, come spring (hopefully the earwigs will stay away this year) I'll pull the covers off and have a look to see how things are doing there. I suspect there will be the entire ladybird population of the world just waiting to rock.

The General State of Things.

The general state of the yurt after a year and more outside is as follows.

Inside: Absolutely tip top, no wood splits, no peeling paint (other than that which has blistered due to heat), averything holding out well. The horsehair string that holds the poles to the lattice walls also makes excellent bedding for fieldmice, as I found out after I caught two of them nesting in a drawer. Ingenious little beggars they are, they stole a variety of materials from around the yurt including a final layer of aluminium foil as a reflective surface. Quite how mice go to know about the thermal reflective properties of foil is beyond me.

Outside: The side of the yurt facing the trees and with least airflow has begun to go green and it looking grubby, the other side that catches the sun and wind is in excellent order. The time is coming for a major airing of all the layers and maybe a blast with a jetwash to get the green off.

The outriggers we made to make up for the incorrect measurement of the base are holding up well, but I fear they will not last as long as the rest of the base due to their being quite thin and closer to the elements than other parts of the structure.

All in all, I still love time spent in the fresh air, with good people and close to nature, all of which come with yurt life.

Robin Attack!!!

Ok, so there I am round the back of the yurt fiddling with the leisure battery when I hear "donk, donk donk donk....donk donk....donk....." coming from inside. I knew full well that no one was in there so I tentatively went round the front to have a look though the open door and was rather taken aback by a robin coming at me, full pelt! Luckily the cheeky little chap swerved at the last minute and escaped.
He had left, how shall we say, a few messages to indicate his presence. Curious as to why he was in there in the first place, I sat quietly and waited. Within a couple of minutes there was a flutter at the door, followed by the "donk donk donk...." I heard earlier. This time I saw exactly what the robin was up to, he was attacking my toaster! He must have flown past the open door, seen his reflection in the chrome toaster and got all alpha male over the idea of another robin on his patch. The little bugger was furious, flapping and jumping around, showing his bum to the toaster and generally being a thug. I'll try and lure him back next week and get some footage.