Frequently Asked Questions

Living in our yurts year-round through many New England winters, here are a few things we've learned...

Why live in a yurt?

Living in a yurt brings life closer to the natural world. You hear the sounds of wind in the trees, geese in the October night, snow on the roof, or the roar of the swollen stream after a big rain. The yurt becomes just one room out of many in your 'home' as you create living spaces both inside and outside. Most yurt dwellers live out-of-doors, using the yurt as a warm dry room to come back to.

The yurt is a warm, cozy, enveloping space to nest into. The walls are low. The stove at the center radiates its warmth quickly to the entire round space. The split sapling lattice walls still have their bark from the forest. After a long day outside, the yurt creates a feeling of protection from the elements just outside.

What is the insulation like?

The insulation is a fire-resistant, reflective, flexible, micro-cell polyethylene foam. The extremely low flame rating of 10 and smoke rating of 15 is achieved without the use of toxic flame retarding or hazardous core materials. It is 1/4 inch thick, with an r-value of 8. Other yurt companies that use it call it R22, but I don't know where they got that math from.

How do you stay warm in a New England winter?

Insulation is a good thing. So is dry fire wood. Not just the 'seasoned' stuff, but wood you've cut and split and stacked undercover for a year or so. A good airtight stove that you can damp down and let purr all night is a necessity.

The space is small, and with a small wood stove in the center you're never too far from the heat. With two and a half to three cords you can keep it 70 degrees, though factors such as snow depth (more makes for more insulation) and whether or not you're home during the day (uses more firewood) will affect that. Even midwinter, you'll sometimes find the challenge is not to get the yurt too warm.

It takes 30-45 minutes in the winter to bring the temperature from 35 degrees back up to 70 degrees after being gone for the day. With a good fire banked for the night, I find on the colder nights (around 0 outside), I rarely need to stoke the fire during the night. Warm blankets and a bed raised off the floor make for a cozy night's sleep. You'll want an airtight stove that's not too small--it's about a long slow fire, not a quick hot one. I recommend the Tempwood stoves--they stopped making them 40 years ago but they still turn up online, especially near where they were built in western Massachusetts--but there are other great stove manufacturers. Some yurt dwellers swear by FourDog Stoves.

Yurts get much harder to heat as the area and height increase. A 30' yurt with 8' walls is very difficult to heat in the dead of winter, even with two stoves running. I have experimented with placing heat-retaining objects around the woodstove, like stones, bricks, or water-filled containers that can double as tables/counters to help hold the heat longer as the fire diminishes. I found that they took up too much space and didn't help much.

Where do you place the woodstove?

It's harder to heat a larger yurt with a stove at the perimeter in northern New England: the heat is less even, and you lose the benefit of heat radiating from the central single-wall stovepipe. A three-season-only yurt--or a smaller one--will work fine with a stove at the side. The center stove changes the feel of the space from a communal gathering space to a residence, by breaking up the yurt into distinct living, cooking, sleeping sections.

A small (less than 30,000 BTU) woodstove is not necessarily a problem, but it may mean more time spent tending the fire, and cutting+splitting your wood smaller. And harder to keep a fire overnight. There's no BTU number per se. The one I use and love is 55,000. The same company (Tempwood) also made a smaller 35,000 BTU one which I have used for a few winters, but it's more work to fit the wood in (especially before going to bed), and I have to cut the wood smaller. You can have a big stove and just not fill it up all the way in spring and fall, of course. Works just fine half full.

My main piece of advice is to get the stove you feel most comfortable using day and night: it will become a part of your life for half the year.

Do you have electricity in your yurt?

I have tried the whole range: from candles and kerosene and propane lighting to solar power and micro-amperage electric. You can run almost any power tools with a heavy duty 10 gauge extension cord from a meter at the utility pole, or a nearby neighbor. A medium-gauge extension cord up to a few hundred feet will run a small refrigerator, lights, a radio, and a laptop computer comfortably. I tend to not use appliances that use electricity to generate heat (stove, water heater, space heater, toaster, iron, clothes dryer, etc.) because of the high increase of energy draw required (and wood is local and free if you work it up).

What kind of plumbing do you use in the yurt?

Most yurts in New England do not have running water as they lack thermal mass, high R-value insulation, and (most of the time) a backup heat source. The issue, of course, is freezing. Yurt dwellers typically carry water into their yurts in buckets and drain it out through the floor into a 'dry well'. This is up to code in most areas. For a bit more sophistication, I have also used these: feed the kitchen sink from a garden hose, siphon water from rain barrel outside the yurt, hand pump at the sink from a dug well, and (my favorite) run a frost-free yard hydrant through the floor in an insulated chase.

Hot water can be heated in a pot on the stove, in heating coils running through the woodstove or with passive solar systems including tanks, solar collectors, or even a couple garden hoses coiled in the sun. In terms of bathing, there's the bucket bath, solar shower (those black bags they make for camping), and (my favorite) visiting friends once a week for tea and a shower.

*** see 'How to Live in a Yurt' for more on water and outhouses.***

What do you do for bathroom facilities?

Most methods center around the bucket humanure collection system. I've opted for the simplest: a 5 gal bucket in a little plywood box with a store-bought toilet seat lid on top. When full, the bucket gets emptied outside. My poop bucket has lived in a variety of places: in an outhouse (that doubles as a storage shed), in a nearby hemlock glade (beautful but cold), and occasionally in the dead of winter in a corner of the yurt. Each time you use it, cover with sawdust. Check out the Humanure Handbook by Joe Jenkins.

Peeing in the humanure bucket is ok, but it does fill it up a lot faster and makes it heavier too. Peeing outside is more common.

Can I live in a yurt in _____ state/town?

We get this question a lot. In general, larger municipalities have more regulations and restrictive codes. More rural parts of the state, and smaller towns, usually have fewer.

If you are 'from away', you may want to rent as close to the area where you want to buy land, and spend as much time there as possible: a year is not too much time to get to know the feel of a place. You'll make friends who will begin to trust you and who may eventually be willing to put out feelers for land for sale in the area, and you'll learn which towns don't restrict yurts.

In New Hampshire, regulations come in two forms: state and town. The state regulates environmental-type things. In this case, water - coming in and going out of the yurt. The towns on the other hand regulate building: what you can build, and where, and what uses are permitted in what you build. This general pattern holds for neighboring states as well.

There are some areas of town/state overlap as well. For example: the state dictates what constitutes a suitable water system for a dwelling, and licenses those (civil engineers) who are authorized to design and certify them. But it is the town which enforces this, and it can issue you with a notice of occupancy upon completing your water system. Another example of overlap: NH mandates that if towns use a building code (many NH towns don’t), it must be one particular building code, known as BOCA. BOCA is written with conventionally-built houses in mind. Making yurts that comply with BOCA is quite difficult, even if they are built with graded lumber and insulation. The code is just not designed with portable fabric-covered structures in mind. Some yurt companies have BOCA wind and snow load-certified yurts (I have not sought certification for mine), but no fabric-covered yurts meet BOCA’s insulation R-value requirements. However, BOCA is not usually a deal-breaker to living in a yurt, and I have known hundreds of people who live or have lived in yurts in New England without breaking any laws.

The State Part. The state of NH requires you to have a way to deal with the water you use. If you use more, you must have a better system to deal with it after. Makes sense. If you are going to be cooking and/or bathing in your yurt, you can--as a bare minimum--carry in your water to use at a sink (or washtub if you’re super-simple), and set up a pipe leading out of your sink to a dry well (or carry out the washtub to pour in the dry well).

Copied this from the NH RSA:

Env-Wq 1022.02 Mini-Dry Wells for Gray Water. (a) For purposes of this section, “gray water” means residential wastewater other than from a urinal or a toilet. (b) A mini-dry well shall be used for the disposal of gray water only if there will be: (1) No running water to or within the structure to be served; and (2) No other wastewater discharge from the structure to be served. (c) No mini-dry well for gray water shall be within 75 feet of drinking water wells or surface waters. (d) A mini-dry well for gray water shall be a hole up to 18 inches in diameter and up to 12 inches deep, filled with stone or gravel. If you carry your water into the yurt, this is how you should dispose of it.

So, no running water = dry wells are acceptable. There are many ways to not have running water. Most fall into either carrying water (from a nearby house, pump, spring, rainwater collection, etc), or hand pumping it inside (or nearby) the yurt. You can store the water in a barrel, in plastic buckets on the floor, or in a spigoted container above or beside the sink. The general idea (which makes sense if you think about it), is that if you have to do work to get the water, you’ll use less; and a dry well will suffice.

In my experience, a dry well built like they prescribe tends to clog. If it clogs in winter, the drain pipe quickly backs up with ice. A better system involves 10’ of 1-1/2” perforated pipe on top of the ground covered with some sort of mulch. But if you’re going to go by the book, then it's the dry well.

The Town Part. Towns regulate where you build a yurt; what you use it for (is it a full-time dwelling, a studio, a rental, a summer cottage, etc?) and towns with building codes regulate what you must build for each intended use. Towns will also tax you on your buildings, though because yurts are portable, most towns do not tax them. A few of NH’s larger municipalities require you to have hot running water in the kitchen and bathroom, a flush toilet, and the infrastructure to accommodate that amount of water both coming into and leaving the dwelling. Don’t try to live in a yurt in these places. But most smaller towns don’t.

I don’t know the specifics of each of the two hundred plus cities and towns in NH, but most small towns don’t care what you live in. And as long as you don’t have running water, the state will not require you to have a septic system and there will be no notice of occupancy requirement before you move in. Of course, no matter your town, there will be someone enforcing the building ordinances (such as they may be), and that person will have the final say on whether you can live in a yurt. How they interpret the state and town regulations will depend on their experience (which may be zero as regards yurts) and how many chocolate chip cookies you bake them (I’m joking. Do not bribe officials.)

Towns will have different requirements depending on your intended use. For example; rentals, schools, and dwellings may be stricter than agricultural worker housing, or a studio in your backyard. Speaking of backyards: often if a yurt is located on a property which also has a conventional house, the facilities rules will be waived; as they assume you can go inside if you feel the need for a hot shower, a flush toilet, or to sleep in a room heated by a central furnace. I haven’t covered your town fire marshall’s wood stove requirements, but basically: heat your yurt by burning dry wood (not pellets) in an airtight woodstove (modern EPA certified ones with catalytic converters are probably good but many yurt dwellers have trouble with them). Make sure you observe all safety clearances around the stove and stove pipe, and put a hearth below your woodstove (and behind it too for a wall-exit chimney).

I also recommend a look at yurtinfo.org/yurts-and-building-codes by Becky Kemery.

How many people can live comfortably in a yurt?

The 20' yurt, I find, fits a couple and a toddler comfortably. With 2 kids one starts thinking about a cabin. After my second daughter was born, I built a woodshop with an attic, a shed that doubled as an outhouse, and a bakery. Our living space expanded outside the yurt into the dooryard and we found nooks and crannies all over the farm for sleeping quarters.

How long does a yurt last?

The roof cover material is warranted for fifteen years. I've seen it at twenty-five looking almost new. The most common issue is mice damaging the roof liner. They don't create leaks, but they leave a stinky mess. Set traps!

What material do you use for the cover?

Our standard roof cover is made from Duro-last, a super-heavy duty 40-mil welded polyester membrane. The seams are heat welded instead of sewn to decrease possibility of water penetration through the material. Also, even the best thread deteriorates much sooner than Duro-last. It has a Class A fire rating, -40 degree cold crack, and is mold and UV resistant. It comes with a 15 year warranty. For what it's worth, this happens to be the same material that some other folks offer as their heavy-duty roof option at an increase in price.

The walls are a high tensile 18 oz. vinyl with polyester thread inner weave. It is UV resistant and anti mildew. It resists cold cracking to 30 degrees below zero.

What kind of saplings do you use?

We use only New England hardwoods. Species include Yellow and Black Birch, Red and Sugar Maple, Hophornbeam, Black and Pin Cherry, White Ash, Beech. To sell us saplings, see here.

Where should I place the yurt?

In looking for sites for a yurt, you'll want to consider moisture and sun exposure. A yurt will warm up quickly in the sun during the summer months, so some shade is nice. At the same time, a yurt in deep shade may have more trouble with dampness. If you have to be on a wet spot, you'll want a platform that allows for good air circulation underneath. On dry sandy soil, the platform can be closer to the ground.

If you build your yurt on a slope (more than about 30" elevation change from one side of the yurt to the other) you'll need to sink posts, and add bracing. You'll get some storage space underneath, but more draftiness in winter. A more level site is easier to insulate as the snow gathers around the base of the yurt.

How do I build the platform? Is it included?

We don't build platforms: you can either create it yourself or find a local carpenter to construct a circular deck for you. Frost footings are not necessary. Plywood works, as well as tongue and groove or planed pine or just rough-sawn.

Can the platform be bigger than the diameter of the yurt?

No. You want the platform to match the size of the yurt so that the wall cover can hang down below the edge of the platform. Otherwise, water will flow off the roof and right under the wall. If you'd like to have a deck outside of the yurt, build it a step or two down so your door clears the snow.

How long does it take for an order to be processed?

Generally a few weeks. We make every effort to facilitate folks ready to take the jump out to year-round yurt living. That said, if you're looking to move out to your land in the spring, please give us a heads-up as soon as you can.

Can I visit a yurt that's already set up to see what the space is like?

We welcome visitors to the farm in NH to see a 20' yurt in action.

Can the wall height be adjusted?

We currently only build six foot walls. The ring of a 20' yurt is ten feet from the floor. It is twelve feet up in a 25' yurt.

Do you ship your yurts?

No. Our yurts are prepared for you to pick up at our shop in Acworth NH, or we can deliver and raise them with you, within a few hours of us.

25' yurt with 6' walls, with a woodstove, couch and futon, you can squeeze 14 yoga mats plus instructor.... but 12 feels pretty maxed out. (above)

How do you transport the yurt?

The yurt is best transported with a truck and trailer, or box van. If someday you move both the yurt and platform, plan on two trips.

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