Building a Hexayurt in San Francisco

[eric conner]

Hi all,

Newbie here, 2015 will be my first burn.  I stumbled across a thread on hexayurts and decided that I have to build one.

A couple of questions:

1) Can anyone recommend a good space to test a build in the Bay Area?  Ideally I'd be able to erect the yurt and stay in it over a weekend as a test run.  I live in a tiny apartment in the city and have no space to experiment with nearby.

2) What is the consensus on painting one of these?  I know paint will reduce the heat resistance of the insulation by some amount, but are there other practical risks to painting?  And if not, what kind of paint would be ideal?

Thanks!

-Eric

[hal muskat]

Hi Eric, good questions. 

I don’t know of space, easily, where you could get set up. Perhaps AmSteel or Nimby would let you have some space.

However, on the playa, we use a rope halo to secure the roof cone, via other strands of rope, to rebar. On cement, this is not possible. You’d have to use some weight, water or sand. 

We may be hosting a workshop in early summer, in the E. Bay. There’ll be an announcement here, as well as Black Rock Hexayurt’s FB page.

You don’t really want to paint the outside. For interiors, use a paint that will adhere to the alum coating. 

Peace, Hal

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[Joshua Keroes]

Protip: make sure you thoroughly dry the paint before folding or stacking the boards.

[Dan March]

Hi Eric & welcome to YurtWorld ;-)

Yeah, most paint would present some kind of problem, the most common of which is flaking off and creating moop.  The other problem is reducing the heat reflectivity of the "silver."  If you really, really wanted to mess with it though, there are house-type paints with "nano-stuff" t(usually ends up being titanium oxide particles) that claim to be very highly reflective of IRish wavelengths responsible for heat gain... and yet come in colors.  Getting house-type paint to stick to aluminum foil is a neat trick though - usually it's some chemical surface prep and special primer... a pretty fussy deal.

If decoration is what you're after, there are other approaches - such as fabric drapes, flags... markers... try graffiti with special spray paint (with some surface prep/priming) in limited, more vertical, northerly surfaces.

Hope that gets you thinking... and experimenting.

I'm trying to get a house in Vallejo where I'll be building yurts.  Depending on how much space there is, we might be able to talk about your setting one up for a weekend.

~ Dan

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[Dan March]

Hey Hal & Everyone  ~

I'm declaring my experiment with using house paint to seal the edges of R-Max against flaking off & making moop a "reasonable success."  Assuming you treat your yurt reasonably, I think it should be OK to paint the edges instead of taping them.  Obviously, in the classic design you still create tape hinges to join sections.  If you miter edges, all the hinges are "straight across" rather than "around the corner" (which creates the infamous valley problem in roofs but also covers edges).

[hal muskat]

Does the quality of the house paint (for edges) matter greatly? Could there be any paint flaking on playa?

[Ronald Pottol]

You will need zinc chromate (not certain on the spelling) if you want paint to stick to aluminum, as I understand it.

Plato seems wrong to me today

[Jake von Slatt]

I painted last year's yurt and ended up mooping with tweezers. If you do paint, don't paint the aluminum tape that protects the bifil tape from the sun. It was these flexible areas where all my peeling happened.

If you are dealing with panels with logos on both sides you can "wash" the logo off of the silver side with an acetone soaked rag. Use a respirator.

This year I'm building a pentayurt and am going to experiment with sealing the bifil tape with this stuff: http://simaintl.com/store/aluminum_mylar_PET_tape.html

Cheers!

Jake.

[Eric Conner]

Thanks everyone!  Dan, I am more interested in paint for decoration so ink / markers could be a good option.  Any suggestions there?

Simple Sharpies could work, but I couldn't find much info on their heat resistance. This material safety data sheet just says "boiling point somewhere over 100F" which isn't very helpful

http://www.sharpie.co.uk/pdf/SharpiePro.pdf

They also offer industrial markers that have ratings up to 500F which could be better

http://www.sharpie.com/enus/pages/proindustrial.aspx

Maybe something like this?

http://www.durablesupply.com/higtemacmar4.html#.VMv0A17F_tI

Maybe temperature is not much of a concern though?

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[Alex Gorbatchev]

Wallpaper? Easy to apply, little to no moop.

[hal muskat]

Alex, how effective is the adhesive? How would this wallpaper work if used as strips, to adhere the ground tarp to outside walls?

thanks, Hal

[Alex Gorbatchev]

to adhere to the ground tarp you might want to use 4"-6" painters tape... but in general there really is no need for that (at least in the desert). The weight of the panels creates a pretty neat seal. 

[hal muskat]

Alex, without taping up sides, there is “no seal,” allowing water to seep into the yurt if the tarp is outside. My experience is taping inside does not secure the yurt as well to the ground. 

[Alex Gorbatchev]

To avoid the water getting inside you can fold the tarp along the edges on the inside so that the yurt ends up standing directly on the sand... if you don't like that, you can use two tarps, one for the yurt walls and another one to fold inwards to avoid the water.

In terms of securing the yurt to the ground, ideally you use some kind of straps and don't rely on it being glued to the ground essentially.

[hal muskat]

Sorry should have been clearer. I experienced wind being able to get beneath the tarp, when taped to the inside, even with the roof properly tied off to rebar.