Yurt Build - Bamboo Frame

I'd done a yurt building course in Scotland a couple of years ago. The style of yurt we constructed was a Turkmenistan style bend wood framed yurt. Lighter and more elegant, in my opinion, then the Mongolian style which uses all straight wood poles.

The course was great but it surprised me just how much work was required in prepping all the pieces and then assembling them.

It took 15 - 20 of us students a week to construct the yurt (walls, roof poles & crown wheel). This was mainly down to having to strip all the coppiced poles of their bark using a draw knife and then steam bending the poles & crown wheel planks.

Mongolian Yurt

Turkmenistan style yurt

After the course I began looking for a supply of timber to construct my own yurt frame. I found a couple of places online that would supply coppiced wood (ash or hazel) frame kits for £250 - 300. I'd need to strip and straighten these before steam bending to shape - not a quick or simple task. So thinking of oak lathes might be easier I started looking for a supplier, not easy even online, and definately not a cheaper option - gulp! So I put the idea of the build to the back of my mind and started thinking a bell tent might be the way to go - £500 but no work involved.

Anyway, 2 years later and after seeing something online about traditional scaffolders in Hong Kong, bingo - Bamboo!

I thought that bamboo might be just the thing to construct a yurt frame. So I went online and order the 100 8 foot lengths of 20mm for £50 including delivery. I was now thinking it'd be a good experiment to see how cheaply I could build a yurt for!

The bamboo came and I started marking, cutting, drilling and stitching the 3 wall trellis sections together. An afternoon and a morning later the walls were done. Remarkably quick and easy to make and they looked brilliant.

Next moving onto the bent roof poles. How was I going to bend the bamboo? I did a test bend on a scrap length of bamboo, heating it with a heat gun. Nope, the bamboo section just collapsed on the inside of the bend. Hmmmmm. Well I had some blue plastic water pipe in the garage which might do the job; flexible enough to form the bend and perhaps stiff enough to maintain the bend and take the weight of the roof structure!?!?  So I cut 36 8 inch lengths of pipe, heated the ends with the heat gun until the plastic became pliable, then I pushed the roof poles into the pipe 2 inches or so. The scrap pieces from the wall construction formed the stub end of the roof poles (the bit that attaches to the walls). The first plastic / bamboo roof pole was tested and proved to be just the job.

All the roof poles were done in an afternoon.

With the walls and roof poles done I made the door from some scrap timber I had in the shed, along with some timber, 6mm ply and hinges from BandQ.

Reciprocal roof structure

So I'd made everything bar the crown wheel in 2 days and spent about £90.

Thinking about the crown wheel I thought that maybe I do away with it and use a reciprocal roof structure, something I'd seen used on round houses built on eco villages down in Wales.

Oh yes, I also needed some tension bands to go around the frame at top and bottom. These bands stop the weigth of the roof structure from pushing the walls out and collapsing the yurt. I thought upholstery webbing would be perfect for the job and so ordered a 30 meter roll for £7 online.

The next step was a test erection of the frame which would also give me a chance to work out just how a crownless roof structure might be done. So I took the pieces I had to my brothers, my garden doesn't have a big enough area to erect the yurt and did a test erection (phenar, phenar!).

The walls, door and tension bands went up without issue. The crownless roof prooved less successful, I needed a crown wheel. A plastic bucket with the bottom cut out and holes drilled around the circumference had been in my mind earlier. This is considerably smaller in diameter than a traditional crown wheel (which is 3 and a half feet) but what the heck this is an experimental build!

In the hunt for a suitable bucket I found a plastic garden sieve which did the job. If this turns out to be no good or not strong enough I'll try cutting a ring section out of an old plastic water barrel, which will give a larger diameter crown wheel. But we'll see.

First Test Erection of the bamboo Yurt Frame - roof pitch needs to be lower / shorter roof poles.

Roof pole to wall connection.

The roof poles went in once the new, plastic crown wheel was made. Because of the plastic section of roof pole I had to tie the stub end of the roof pole along the wall trellis in order to maintain the bend in a solid fashion. Having the end tied in the traditional way (vertically down from the top crossing of wall poles) wasn't rigid enough & the plastic section tried to straighten out. This solution seems to do the job but does mean that the weight of the roof gives a twisting force down to the wall frame, rather than being straight down - so not as good as the traditional set-up, but time will tell if it's good enough!

Plastic Garden Sieve Crown Wheel - note roof poles need shorthening.

The roof poles need shortening, but I think that the experiment is going well. The frame is essentially there. 

Now for the covering I'm thinking cheap tarps from the pound shop and some rolls of heavy duty duct tape.