hexayurt's topics - tribe.net

Home Depot discontinues Tuff-R/Rmax

2008-07-25T16:02:55Z

I've been trying to organize a hexayurt build day for a group of burners in the South Bay and material availability has been a problem. After trying to locate a source for Thermax with little success I decided that I'd recommend the tried and true Tuff-R from Home Depot. I had seen the stuff and priced it just a couple of weeks ago and availability seemed good.

Over the last week I've been checking various Home Depots to see how much Tuff-R they had in stock, and I was surprised that none of them seemed to carry it -- only the unreinforced white polystyrene (styrofoam) panels. Luckily, I knew one Home Depot that definitely stocked it, and they had several pallets the last time I was there. So yesterday I arranged for a friend with a truck to meet me at the Home Depot on Lafayette Street in San Jose to buy my Tuff-R panels.

There was no Tuff-R.

After talking to a couple of employees and escalating to a supervisor I discovered that Home Depot (at least in this region) will no longer carry Tuff-R or Rmax. Unknown if there will be a replacement product but for now they have NO foil-faced polyiso rigid insulation panels.

But what happened to the pallets of the stuff I saw less than two weeks ago? I told them I'd follow it wherever it went, I needed the stuff.

They gave it away. They had it on clearance for a week, and what was left they gave away. "Yesterday." The day before I showed up to make my purchase.

Un. Be. Lievable.

So now the backup panel supply has fallen through.

Now I'm scrambling and panicking to find someone who has Tuff-R or similar *in stock* because my scheduled build day is only a week away and even if I rescheduled the build day, special ordering the stuff would probably take 3 weeks which is way too close to the Burn for comfort.

So, firstly, everybody who is interested in panels should call their local Home Depots to see if they're still carrying Tuff-R or Rmax... and if they are planning on getting rid of it see if you can get it cheap or free. I personally have a need for 100-200 panels of the stuff.

Secondly, if anybody knows of a source for Tuff-R, Rmax, or Thermax (or any similar product) that has it IN STOCK I'd really appreciate the contact info.

Namaste,

Tommy Legba

posted in hexayurt - 0 replies

Another potential hexayurt variation

2008-07-21T03:22:00Z

In contemplating the pros and cons of the different hexayurt (HY) styles to use as my personal domicile on the playa I was leaning towards the stretch HY as it wasn't as large as the full size, all pieces could be made into 4 foot squares or smaller (better for shipment to the playa) and could mostly be put up by one person with one or two people helping at the couple of key points. But I was concerned about the size, since last year I had a tent that was larger than this and additional covered space for gear.

So I came up with a design that was somewhere in between the two sizes. The footprint is roughly the large hexayurt with a 4' x 13'10" rectangle removed from the center. It's biggest problem is that the center section of the roof is horizontal and I may want to make a few sheet metal tabs to make sure it stays up. While sand might accumulate on the roof, I don't think I have to worry about snow. As an aside, it's only 2 more sheets of 8x4 insulation (9 vs 7 for the stretch HY) and is almost a superset of the parts needed to make the stretch HY (it needs two more isosceles triangles, since the roof triangles on this HY are equilateral and too small).

I drew it up in google sketchup and posted the sketchup file and three images from screen capture at
http://xuth.net/other/hexayurt/

Does anyone see anything glaringly bad about this?

--jim

posted in hexayurt - 6 replies

Reflections on 07...aka what I learned on first time build.

2008-07-20T19:30:29Z

I have uploaded photos of my creation in the photo section of this tribe. I have to give a hearty thank you to Vinay for making these instructions so readily available. The hexayurt saved my ass on the playa and made my experience so much better. I will elaborate in a moment...

First, this build was a rush job, about 4 days prior to leaving for BM. I just needed a personal shelter that wouldn't take up too much space (we were limited by our theme camp) The panels were easily found at the local Home Depot. The tape was another story. I eventually found a guy online (who's warehouse was 45min away) who had a case of 3in Intertape Polymer Group filament tape. This stuff is sticky and strong and would take a flame thrower to melt it. It survived BM quite nicely. I have way too many rolls left over from the case, so if any body needs some in an emergency (come to medical station 9 camping). As posted elsewhere, it is a little more challenging to apply 3in tape, so I was more liberal in my application. This also helped with my not so accurate panel cuts. The tape definitely compensated for unmatched corners etc. I also took along a few rolls of Henkel aluminum air duct tape to patch unfortunate dings to the foil panels.

I arrived on the playa early (I am part of the EMS team). The first day I was there, it was gusty, windy, blustery, sandy, stormy, you get the point...It didn't calm down until the late evening. I was tired, dehydrated and just wanted to crash but I really wanted to take advantage of the no wind situation, so I set up some lanterns and began building the yurt at night for the First Time, just going off my memory of what it was supposed to look like. I pulled it off with some creative dancing around with the roll of tape. Next time I will design a pole lift system for the roof panels, which were the biggest headache doing it solo (there weren't so many people around early and those that were are busy with their own crap.

I cut out two windows which I covered with furnace filters (pony up the cash for the cloth like type, not the open weave fiberglass type). Next time, I need to consider about the direction of the sun and make sure my windows are facing closer to the north! The sun will beat through any little crevice. I should have used the foil tape to cover the seams inside the yurt to "seal" out the sun leakage (allows for sleeping longer in a "blacked out" environment.)

This year I am going to re-do the door panel with a floor seam. Meaning, all the walls will be taped to the tarp, to seal out dirt and the door will swing out in the middle of a panel. This was the biggest problem of them all...having the dust storm kicking up under the door.

I also cut out a square in the roof and fit a 6inx6in 12v computer fan from Fry's electronics ($8) which was hooked up to a flexible solar panel that was taped to the roof. The fan would kick on sometime in the morning which worked great to blow out the accumulated heat and stink. With ear plugs and an inflatable mattress, I slept very comfortably well into the 10-11am time zone. This was crucial to get good sleep in order for me to survive working the medical station and partying too. The misting idea didn't work very well, I think you need a large space and tall ceilings for that to work effectively. Just spraying my body for evaporation worked well though. The yurt was a tad too hot to lay in at times during the peak hours of the day, it was cooler being outside under the shade with a cross breeze. I would have to create a larger fan system to pump more air circulating through to keep it cool enough during the day.

All in all, it was an awesome last minute creation that is coming back this year, probably hybridized into a stretch version so I can invite playa dates over for a sleepover.

PS I ran into a friend from medical school who i hadn't seen in a long time. She was camping in a tent that was destroyed by the winds (it snapped her poles like toothpicks) and her stuff was buried in playa dirt. She was more than envious of my luxurious 41sq.ft.

posted in hexayurt - 2 replies

Most cost effective?

2008-07-18T01:37:09Z

I am wondering what is the cheapest way to make one. Does it have to be all of the same material? As long as materials is all the same thickness could one have a wall out of honeycomb a wall out of Tur.. etc?
Can one little person build by herself??

posted in hexayurt - 1 reply

R-MAX, Tuff-R and Home Depot Hexayurts - fire safety news

2008-07-17T22:10:48Z

We now have some video of R-Max burning. Turns out that it burns reluctantly, although the smoke is likely pretty damn toxic. Here's the video.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=36DB80EAF1D4161B

As a result, we've updated the safety policy here: http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_Safety_Information

While I can't *recommend* anybody build a hexayurt out of this material, or anything which is not properly safety rated for this kind of application, I can say that the flammability is much less bad that I'd feared.

I think that anybody who is thinking of using this material for Burning Man or other uses should watch the video, maybe do their own testing on a single sheet, and decide for themselves. I can't make your safety decisions for you, but I can pass along the data.

Have a great burn,

Vinay

posted in hexayurt - 0 replies

Ventilating your Hexayurt

2008-06-22T04:58:35Z

Hi there. I was blessed in 2006 to assist Vinay in building a Hexayurt that became the Axial Temple in Entheon Village at Burning Man. This will be the first year that I will be building one for the playa for myself. I wanted to share with you an idea that I am going to be trying out that may work to keep your Hexayurt a little cooler during the day.

My idea is to install a cheap, solar powered exhaust fan in the roof. I found one on ebay for about $25 that seems to move a decent amount of air and is totally silent. It won't move enough air to cool you off directly, but it I'm hoping that it will be strong enough to stop hot air from collecting at the ceiling. It is small, light and low-profile.

Here is an existing auction so you can see what I'm talking about here.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Solar-Panel-Roof-Vent-roof-fan-solar-cell-ventalator_W0QQitemZ380011153370QQihZ025QQcategoryZ41980QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Cheers!
Spiral

posted in hexayurt - 15 replies

the other thing is...

2008-06-21T17:58:28Z

How do you take it apart- do you pull the tape up?

posted in hexayurt - 2 replies

First time build, lessons learned

2008-06-17T11:21:19Z

Yesterday, my son and I assembled our hexayurt. (http://flickr.com/photos/timgee/sets/72157594368383502/detail/) We wanted to build it before we got to the playa, and it was worth while. Here's what we learned.

1. We got all our panels from Home Depot: most are Dow Tuff-R, but the last 3 are R Max. The 8' sides of the R Max panels have some sort of coating that keeps Gorilla tape from sticking. I tried Windex on the R Max to remove the coating so Gorilla tape would stick with no luck. The 6" packing tape was wide enough to extend beyond the coating.

2. After taping together the first two pairs of panels, don't be tempted to build the rest of the roof structure two panels at a time. Bad idea, as the greater distance of taping together two panels (rather than one) make it hard to apply the tape.

3. We used a closet rod cut to 4' as a prop for the roof. After the first few panels were taped together, the rod also made a good way to pass the tape roll from one person to another.

4. We used a chalked line to mark the panels to cut. This worked pretty well and eliminated the need for a straight edge.

5. If you want your roof pieces to have the same side showing (mine alternate) cut half the panels left to right, top to bottom and the other half right to left, top to bottom.

6. If you use packing tape to tape the edges, it is easy to remove the tape used to assemble the hexayurt. Gorilla tape is not wide enough, and pulling packing tape stuck directly to the panels removes part of the panels.

posted in hexayurt - 1 reply

2008 hexayurt theme camp?

2008-05-23T13:28:54Z

Anyone interested? In addition to helping one another set up their structures and sharing hexayurt experiences, we could provide info to others on building their own structures. I've got bunch of USB drives from trade shows that info could be loaded on and given away.

Now's the time to get something started so we're more likely to get limited theme camp space.

Tim

posted in hexayurt - 3 replies

Tape - where to buy, what best to use for taping edges

2008-05-21T02:52:34Z

The folks at Tapes Unlimited were not very helpful so I poked around on the web. I settled on this outfit:

Ameripac Industries, Inc.
2124 Caughey Road
Erie, PA 16506
Local: 833-8755 x 25
Toll-Free: 888-872-7225
Fx: 814-833-1709
www.ameripac.net

I worked with Amanda Lasky who was very helpful. She quoted me $29 per 60 yard roll - minimum order of a case (8 rolls). The tape is an alternative to the 3M 8959 (which is very hard to find in the 6" width). Here are the specs:

SPECIFICATIONS:
5.2 mil. Fiberglass reinforced polypropylene. 220# Tensile in both directions --- Bi-Directional Filament. Clear synthetic rubber adhesive. Adhesion: 91 oz/in. Elongation: 6%. High strength, bi-directional filament tape for extremely demanding strapping, bundling and palletizing applications. High tear resistance makes it ideal for tabbing/seaming in metal fabricating industry. 3" neutral core. Standard Available Widths: 1/2", 3/4", 1", 1.5", 2", 3", 4", 6", 12", 53.5". Jumbos available.

Upon ordering, the tape is cut per order. Available to ship in 3 - 5 business days via UPS. Delivery is estimated within 2 weeks of order-----I'm giving extra time becase you're in a different part of the country.

Per the handy tape calculating spreadsheet, it takes approximately 280' (99.3 yards) to tape the seams, or just over 2 - 60 yard rolls.

Question: what is a good tape to use to tape the edges of the panels? I was going to use a high quality duct tape (Gorilla from Home Depot) but friends have warned me that duct tape performs very poorly on the playa. Recommendations? In my search for this tape, I've seen numerous high temperature tapes - would that be best?

posted in hexayurt - 6 replies

ThermaxHD- thickness? weight?

2008-04-15T23:07:45Z

Haven't been able to find a spec for ThermaxHD thickness for a hexayurt made of 12 4'x8' pieces. Would 1" thick be strong enough? Anybody know how much the sheets weigh? (After Googling for 20 minutes and not finding this obviously basic info, it seems fair to ask the list.)

posted in hexayurt - 1 reply

My Hexayurt Experience at Burning Man

2008-04-06T06:02:24Z

A complete account of my Hexayurt Experience at Burning Man.

Time for me to give back with my experience building a hexayurt for burning man. So here goes my attempt at a brain dump.
This is long. I apologize in advance. But I was looking for something like this last August and couldn't find it. So here it is.

First off, photos:
Good photo where you can see some of the details:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barleygarlic/2100535120/in/set-72157601926422465/

Holga photo of Karl and the Hexayurt:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barleygarlic/1347969261/in/set-72157601926422465/

Our group shot inside the Hexayurt (gives a good perspective on scale)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photonfiend/1316958994/in/set-72157601842908386/

Turkish caravan showing the truck
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barleygarlic/1351933883/in/set-72157601926422465/

I ran across the hexayurt concept literally a week and half before the day of departure for BM'07. I was immediately turned on by the simplicity of the design as well as how it seemed to be perfectly tailored to handling the burning man environment. I spent pretty much the entire first night devouring all the information I could find on the web. Luckily Vinay gave me all the information I needed to jump in head first. Nice.

By the next day, I was convinced that building a hexayurt was not only doable, but was also a very very good idea. I like to bite off more than I can chew, and building something completely new with only a week to go seemed perfect. Time to call Karl. Karl and I were originally planning on sharing a tent. Karl was balls-in immediately. (you gotta love Karl) Now we were going to be sharing a hexayurt. The plan: full size hexayurt. No messing around here, thank you very much.

So on to supplies.

Tape. I can’t tell you how long I stared at the various tapes in home depot and lowes. I initially called the tape supplier suggested by the hexayurt parts list, but they only had the 3 inch bi-directional filament tape instead of the 6 inch and it would have cost me an extra $100 to overnight the required tape to reach me in time. On to the old standby of… duct tape. So, duct tape. I had no idea how many different types of duct tape there are, and all of them looked deficient. Two main things I was concerned about were heat resistance and width. Initially I was thinking that I just wanted the widest tape I could find (generic 4” stuff), but in the end, I decided upon the scotch brand, 2-1/2 inch super-weather resistant, uber duct tape. I think I ended up with 5 rolls of the stuff, bought from Lowes in San Bruno. As for heat resistance, I also got several rolls of the silver, semi-pliable heating tape (the kind that feels like tin foil and has a peal off backing to it). I have to say, the tape was the biggest unknown to the whole thing since it was the only place where I was straying from the off-the-shelf hexayurt recipe. Also, I’d read a lot of stuff on the web of people’s experiences with duct tape on the playa and was pretty nervous about melting tape. So, next time, start planning with more than a weeks notice and order your damn tape early! Get the 6 inch stuff that’s recommended.

Tuff-R. Found 1” Tuff-R at the home despot in San Mateo. Had a little bit of an issue finding 12 pieces that didn’t have issues (and that was on a fresh palette taken down from the storage up by the ceiling). A lot of pieces were either split in the middle from the stress of shipping, or had strap indentations on the edge because of the way they’re strapped together. Most of the pieces that had been on the showroom floor had been carved in by bored kids while they waited for their parents to buy grout. But I did find 12 pristine sheets. I was lucky enough to have borrowed a Ford Ranger pickup with a lumber rack on the top that perfectly fit the 4X8 sheets, so they strapped down nicely. One thing to note, I bought some 2X4’s to put on top of the foam to keep the straps from cutting into it as I drove on the freeway. They worked ok, but I did end up slightly splitting one of the boards lengthwise from the stress. I reinforced that area with tape. For the actual trip to bm from san francisco, I ended up making a sort of a 2x4 frame that would tightly encapsulate the foam, without putting any undo stress on the foam.

Material preparation: We followed the instructions. One observation is that the wider tape would have made construction much much much faster and easier. With only 2-1/2” tape, we had to be pretty precise when we were doing all the edging in the garage to make sure that we had the tape centered. That slowed things down quite a lot. We still did all the cutting and edging in a night (I think about 3-4 hours total). The only other thing to note is that it’s very very important to have the diagonals cut straight. I was using a 8’ piece of aluminum as a guide for the cutting, but (do the math) had to do 2 passes for each diagonal. My edges were very close to straight, but the few parts where it was off (and only by maybe ¼ inch stray from straight), it made things all the more sketchy. This was mainly b/c of the tape width issues and where these diagonals actually reside in the finished structure. More on this later.

Transport: As you can see from the picture, I built a sort of wooden frame to house the foam while I was on the road. The palettes for our shower acted as a base to provide a relatively uniform area for the foam to rest on. You can also see from the pictures that we had a futon mattress on top and then some bikes. There’s no way I would’ve put the bikes directly on top b/c they’d ruin the foam. The mattress actually provided the perfect cushioning to remove all the pokey bits from the bikes. I don’t think it takes a google employee to figure out that the truck was WAY over loaded. I was a little concerned about the foam acting as a wing of sorts and providing lift to the truck making it less maneuverable. In the end, we had so much shit piled on that poor truck that it didn’t make a difference. It handled like a boat. As soon as I hit the freeway, I knew that it was going to be a very slow trip. Karl earned his ‘good buddy’ merit badge award by tailing me all the way there while I drove 45mph to keep an eye on my load, lest I should lose my load crossing the mountains. I’m sure there’s a ‘load spotting’ merit badge, but I don’t want to get into the details of that. Besides, you probably earn that badge at burning man, not on the way.

Construction: We pulled in to hushville at around 8 or 9 am. Karl and I were both bm virgins, so we quickly started to get that “man… that sun is really getting hot” feeling. Two minutes later, we were both realizing that we needed to get shade and FAST. Thirty seconds later, I was sun burned. Another 3 minutes and Karl died of heat stroke. First things first. Hexayurt. So, big surprise to all of our other camp-mates, out pops the hexayurt kit. Who would’ve guessed? We laid it all out and followed the directions as best as we could from the memorized steps. Popping the roof up to connect all the pieces was a little tricky, but we managed ok. Everything went together relatively easily. Again, 6” tape would have made things sooooooo much easier. No need to be exact when you’ve got 4 spare inches to play with. On the whole, it went together as it shows in the videos. A little bit of jostling. A little bit of coaching of the various players to get everything lined up. We did little 6-9” pieces of tape to quickly join the roof to the walls and get everything lined up before doing the official joins. Since we were using duct tape for the joint where the wall meets the roof, we taped around the whole structure several times just to be safe. We used the silver heat reflective tape to join everything together for the roof panels, figuring that they’d get the most direct heat abuse. As you can see in the pictures, we also did some tape crosswise over the joints just to shore things up.

Some notes/thoughts/questions on construction:
-> The reflection off the pieces when you’re putting everything together is brutal. It’s literally like taking a mirror and reflecting the sun directly under your sun hat and into your nostrils. Very very painful. We ended up having a rug that we would throw over the reflecting bit for whoever got unlucky enough to have to hold a piece and get reflected upon. Usually it was one person or the other.
-> All told, I think it took us about an hour to put up. This was the first time we did this, so I think we did pretty good. I had made a model out of 3x5 cards though… Do it yourself. It helps.
-> So the roof is made of 6 isosceles triangles. These triangles join where the diagonals were cut. And since there’s the joint involved in bringing two, one inch pieces of foam together with square edges, there’s a gap. That’s where the trouble will be if you’re not careful when cutting the diagonals. Unless you have 6 inch tape… which is my new mantra.
-> It was pretty tricky getting the last few seams of the roof taped up. We used a long piece of pvc with a T joint at the end as a sort of, well, stick thing, to push the tape down. I’m still not sure what a good way to get those last few seams sealed well. If you think about it, you’re trying to tape something that’s about 9 feet away from you.
-> I still don’t know exactly how the anchors are supposed to work. I took 6 pieces of ½ inch pvc (each 6” long) and secured them to the center of each roof panel with a couple of pieces of tape. The tape started about 4’ up the roof, covering the center seam, ran the tape down towards the wall, taped the pvc up against the roof panel, and then continued the tape into the inside of the yurt and taped to the inside of the roof another 4’. Once everything was all taped up and secure, we tied down these anchors to rebar by passing rope through the pvc (you can see one in the detail pic). This apparently did the trick. Something that worked well was to hammer the rebar in, rope the anchors to the rebar, then hammer the rebar a few more times just to get the rope really taught. I was very confident in tying everything down b/c the structure just feels so solid once it’s all taped together.
-> If you look at the detailed picture, you can see that we covered the tape for the anchors in plastic. We were paranoid about the rain weakening one of these and then the whole thing falling apart. Not sure if that did anything or not. I’d like to rework how I did the anchors or get some better guidance or ideas on ways to secure them.

Ok. So it’s up. It’s ready. It’s impressive. So here’s my notes on the experience.
- First off, being my first time at BM. It was absolutely great to have this very spacious place to crash in and escape from everything. There’s nothing but privacy and lots of room. I had a queen size air mattress inside and Karl had a regular sleeping bag/mat type thing. 2 lawn chairs, a bunch of plastic tubs full of crap, a cooler, etc. You get the picture. It’s spacious. It’s wonderful. Let me repeat. IT’S WONDERFUL!! It really does make it so that you can stay out there longer. I was there from Monday morning till Sunday afternoon. I think I would’ve bugged out earlier if it hadn’t been for the yurt.
- Temperature: we were regularly the last ones up in our camp b/c everyone else was in the classic tent-under-an-easyup setup and were forced out of their tents from the heat about 1-2 hours earlier than we were. By around 11am, it would start to get pretty stuffy. I tried the window with the heater filter and it did help a little. But overall, you couldn’t really hang out comfortably in the hexayurt in the heat of the day. There just wasn’t any breeze getting in.
- Mist: I’d read that you could mist the inside and it would drop the temperature down. We had one of those garden misters that you can pump up and spray a fine mist and we did this several times when things got rough. It never really dropped the temperature all that much. Not sure if we needed a finer mist or what. Ended up just spraying yourself to cool off instead of the inside of the yurt.

Weather: Again, it was my first time there, but the dust storms were apparently some of the most sustained and some of the worst. I’m from Florida. I’m familiar with hurricane force winds. The winds on Thursday and Friday were pretty damn close to hurricane force in my book. Definitely a good solid tropical storm if nothing else. Let me tell you, being in the hexayurt was exhilarating and scary all at the same time. Because I was stressing over the inferior tape, I was very worried that things were gonna turn pear shaped. The roof was bowing. The walls were shaking. The door kept blowing in. The foam was making crackling sounds as it flexed. But it was rockstar all the way. It weathered two severe wind storms and probably could’ve done another 5 without any problems. One more time… if we’d had 6” tape, we could’ve gone to mars in our hexayurt and been ok. (we may have on day 3, but the pictures and memories came back blurry) Friday it was supposed to rain (and did a little) and again I was panicked that the rain would ruin the tape and it would all blow away, but again, it held solid. We did throw a tarp over the top to fend off a little of the rain. What a sound that made when the tarp was whipping the yurt. Crazy. One fantastic thought was that, if any portion of the tape did fail, the whole structure would collapse and be sucked up into the sky in an impressive display.

As for the dust, all of our stuff was almost completely protected from dust, whereas everyone’s stuff was completely covered. I guess the dust comes up under a tent’s rainfly and in through the top vents, so no matter what you do, you stuff is covered in a layer of dust after a dust storm. Unless, of course, you’ve built a hexayurt. There was almost no dust at all. The only dust that got in came in under the walls. I didn’t do anything to really try and seal the tarp to the walls, so some inevitably blew in. Some also got in from the door since it can’t really create an air-tight seal. But there was very little dust and several of our campmates came in to escape the dust and be able to take their masks off for a while.

And finally: teardown. Way too easy. Unfortunately, I knew it was going in the landfill to be found 8 million years later. I think if I’d had a 3/16 piece of plywood for top and bottom to make a sandwich, I could’ve transported the whole thing in a way that made it last more than one trip. Next time, and with wider tape.

Next time:
get recommended tape early... maybe I’ll do it tomorrow
Make a plywood sandwich to transport and protect the foam walls.
Figure out a better way to get a good cross breeze going.

There. I’ve done it. If you’ve read this far, then I’ll see your hexayurt at BRC next year!

Vinay, I suspect that you will have read this far. Just want to say a big thanks for all the time and effort you’ve put into this project and all the resources you have made available. It’s impressive and inspiring.

-Big Barley

posted in hexayurt - 3 replies

Where can I find Hexacomb?

2008-04-01T00:42:21Z

I am interested in giving Hexacomb a try as the material for my very first hexayurt. Anyone has any idea where I can get some from? I am even willing to go to a warehouse to pick it up myself if in a reasonable distance from San Diego. I have a truck which makes it convenient.

posted in hexayurt - 4 replies

Pentayurt

2007-11-22T17:30:02Z

Vinay says pulling in a side will increase the roof peak and make the roof capable of bearing snow loads; the 5-sided pentayurt! Working on a model now... but if anybody has any drawing software, a drawing will speed the concept. I am still thinking about starting with a temporary structure to evolve into a permanent structure with grancrete or some such coating.

posted in hexayurt - 3 replies

Hexayurts at the Pentagon

2007-11-19T14:23:40Z

http://gallery.mac.com/cglusky#100024&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=131

I couldn't get them to do a Pentayurt for the occasion, alas. But they're there! part of http://STAR-TIDES.net

posted in hexayurt - 0 replies

Idea for hexayurt

2007-10-08T21:29:05Z

First of all...Vinay, you are DA MAN! I saw your hexayurt at Bman this year, and have pretty much been obsessed with building one for next year ever since. So in my ruminations on the subject, I was concerned with the whole problem of taping it all together strongly and accurately on the playa, which can be pretty breezy under the best of conditions. So I thought about having some plastic or aluminum extruded clips made to hold the panels together at the proper angles. Have you ever seen those cheap little balsa wood toy gliders? The wings are thin sheets of balsa, and the body is a light rail of balsa. And there is a plastic clip with grooves that the wings slip into, and a grove that slips onto the body...do you know what I mean? On a larger scale, envision an H shape, except the sides of the H are bent at an angle of 15 degrees or 30 degrees to the center bar...that is the cross section of the clips, and they would be 4 feet or 8 feet in length, depending on which seam they held together. The edge of the boards would slip into the channels formed by the H shape. Does that make any sense? I can send a conceptual drawing if anyone is interested.....
Anyway, my though is that some light plastic clips that hold almost the entire length of each seam between boards, and would hold the boards at the correct angle to each other, would really simplify construction. The boards could then be taped right to the clips. I suspect the clips would also help compensate for small errors in cutting the boards by covering over gaps, etc. The down side is...I did some very cursory research on pricing custom plastic extrusions, and there were some $1000 minimum charge for custom jobs. However, if enough people were interested? The cost per each yurt could go way down. Anyway...just an idea....
Also......Vinay, could you put out some info on the actual yurt that was at Bman this year? It had a peaked roof at the entrance. I am interested in the size and shape of the sheets you cut for the entrance roof, etc. And the tape anchors came out from the edge seams on the roof, not like the ones you have given instructions for online. So can you please comment a bit on these modifications? I believe that type model is the type I want to try to build. Thanks again for your great contributions to humanity...
Steve

posted in hexayurt - 14 replies

Looking for a Hexayurt Barn Raising to participate in.

2007-09-08T01:02:14Z

Hi,

I’m looking to participate in the creation of a hexayurt somewhere in the San Francisco or Monterey Bay areas. If anyone knows of any please let me know.
I live in the Santa Cruz Mountains and have been living off-grid for about 25 years. I would be happy to share my experiences with you.

Rick
rickniemi@juno.com

posted in hexayurt - 0 replies

hexayurt's topics - tribe.net

Home Depot discontinues Tuff-R/Rmax

Another potential hexayurt variation

Reflections on 07...aka what I learned on first time build.

Most cost effective?

R-MAX, Tuff-R and Home Depot Hexayurts - fire safety news

Ventilating your Hexayurt

the other thing is...

First time build, lessons learned

2008 hexayurt theme camp?

Tape - where to buy, what best to use for taping edges

More Tape Questions

ThermaxHD- thickness? weight?

My Hexayurt Experience at Burning Man

Where can I find Hexacomb?

Pentayurt

Hexayurts at the Pentagon

Idea for hexayurt

Looking for a Hexayurt Barn Raising to participate in.