Natural Materials

[phil]

Has anybody done any work on making Hexayurts from materials that can
be found on site ?
Wicker, lath, clay !, otherwise HYs are just a rich culture's toy for
people with access to oil based synthetic building materials.

regards Phil

ps The provocative message is often the most stimulating.

[Vinay Gupta]

For those kinds of materials, you'd be far better with domes.
Hexayurts are really specifically designed to be made in factories -
industrial-style mass production.

The one exception might be casting panels in the field, but at that
point, if you can cast a panel, why not cast a dome?

Vinay

--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest

http://hexayurt.com - free/open next generation human sheltering
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"If it doesn't fit, force it."

[Richard Ginn]

And domes are patterned after Great Circles which can be made from tying sticks together (like in the bamboo domes).  The great circle pattern can be made by marking long sticks (bundles of them as needed) where they cross and then bending and tying them together and raising up a dome.  Then you skin it.  The skin is the fancy part, but it could be just waterproof tarps, or tarps on top of blankets.  Or the skin could hang underneath the dome.  This is a fancy tent.  Good for temporary shelter.  A way of hanging up waterproof insulation so you can get inside it.  That's what a house is, too.  Houses last longer and have more features, hexayurts last longer than tents, but tents will do for temporary shelter, and anything is better than nothing on Day 1.

Simple shelters can be made of natural materials, people do that all over the world, but sometimes the materials aren't there and/or there is no time to construct them.  You can die on Day 1 if it is too cold or too hot.  So speed matters.  Maybe geodesic tents for starters and then bring in pre-formed hexayurt panels and make those next?

Look at how the original settlers in any part of the world first lived and you get an idea of what the natural way of doing things could be.  In many cases it can't be done that way now, things have changed too much.  I see the hexayurt as a transitional structure, with improvements to come.  There are other solutions, maybe we can figure them out?

...some thoughts on waking up today...

[The Distinguished ...]

Greetings,

I tend to prefer Tipis for the "day 0" shelters, mostly because they are
simpler than domes. You use the same materials (long, or lashed
together supports) and lay them together in uprights. Then wrap them.
They can be used in the warm (loose upper wrappings, with a raise at the
bottom for ventilation) or in the cold (fire inside, good draw) or in
the windy/rainy/snowy (it's height/width ratio sheds really well).

Then I would go onto a hexayurt, as fast as I could, then, onto more
permanent structures (adobe cliff houses?)

Percival