Yurt Deconstruction Mostly in Order, Part 2

This is part 2 of yurt deconstruction with commentary.  We'll start right out with an out of order photo.

1.

Here's an inside shot of the roof with the felt removed but the canvas still in place. Note the pieced together construction of the canvas cover.  The long transverse lines are not seams but shadows of  tiedown ropes.  Also note the irregular nature of the rafters.  They are probably made from willow branches with the bark peeled off.

2.

So now all the coverings are off the yurt and the frame is standing naked.  Note the height of the wall and  the door. You have to duck to get inside.  But as will be apparent from a later shot, furniture and assorted stuff gets lined up along the wall so that even though you can't stand up straight in the yurt right next to the wall you don't have to because you will be farther toward the center on account of the furniture.  Also note that the rafters are curved at the bottom giving the roof just a little more elevation. So why don't they just make the walls taller so you can stand up in the yurt right next to the wall and also don't have to duck when you go in the door?  Two reasons. One is that a lower volume yurt is easier to heat.  The other is that the walls would be heavier and the wall lattices would be longer and harder to transport.

3.

A closeup of how the rafter poles are tied to the top of the door frame. To the extreme left, you can see one of the wooden knobs on the top of the frame that the rafters are tied to.  Elsewhere the rafters are tied to the top of the wall lattice.

4.

The tono, the ring into which all the rafters are mortised is supported by two wooden supports.  The wooden supports have a dual purpose.  One is that without supports, the weight of the rafters and the tono combined would exert much more outward pressure on the top of the wall lattice and tend to push it outward. The second purpose of the tono supports will become apparent in the next picture.

5.

Setting the tono up or taking it down would require a ladder or some tall furniture to stand on if it weren't for the supports.  Here, all but three rafter poles have been removed. Two people are holding on to the supports while others are pulling the last of the rafter poles.  

6.

With all the rafter poles gone these two guys can lower the tono to the ground.

7.

Once on the ground, the supports are untied from the tono.  Here you can also see the square mortises that the tips of the rafter poles go into.  The ends of the rafter poles are also square to prevent the poles from twisting.  Remember that the lower ends of the rafter poles are bent downward  and the square mortises keep them aligned in that position.

8.

Here's the tono all by itself. Rafter poles are lying on the ground.  The tono looks to be about 5 feet in diameter.  The tono circumference needs to be large enough to accommodate all the rafter poles with enough clearance between mortises.

9.

View of the yurt interior with all the furnishings and household goods still inside.

10.

The wall lattice comes in sections to keep size and weight down to manageable dimensions. 

11.

Here's a section of wall lattice small enough for one person to handle.  Note the curvature of the lattice poles.  They are bent that way before the individual lattice poles are assembled.  They are curved because  the wall is curved.  The curvature at the bottom section of the poles is inward and at the top section, slightly outward.  A tension rope is run around the entire outside of the wall lattice at the point where the curvature of the wall goes from inward to outward.  

12.

Sections of wall lattice are overlapped at their edges and lashed together. The number of  intersections of lattice poles at the top of the lattice have to match the number of mortises in the tono since one rafter pole is attached to each lattice intersection and each rafter has to have a mortise of its own.

13.

A wall section collapsed.  Where poles intersect they are joined with a piece of rawhide.  

14.

The door and its door frame all in one piece.  You can see how an adult has to duck to enter the yurt. Also plainly visible are the knobs on the top of the door frame to which the rafter poles are lashed.

All the stuff in the background needs to go on the truck along with the frame components and the coverings.  Before there were trucks, all this stuff would have gone on the backs of yaks or other beasts of burden.

Yurt Deconstruction Mostly in Order, with Comments, Part 1

This series of posts will be all about yurt features that become apparent when a yurt is taken apart. There are of course many different ways of building yurts, even within the same region, but this particulare series of photos was taken by Steph Carlisle in Mongolia in 2006.  You can find her at her blog on blogspot where I found my way to these photos.  The photos are hers, the comments are mind.
1.

This is a view of the yurt's exterior, The exterior cover, apparently a layer of white canvas is laid over the yurt, covering the felt underneath and extending over both the roof and the walls.  The stove pipe is still in place and the smoke hole cover as well.  Ropes holding the cover to the wall are also still in place.

2.

This photo probably precedes the previous one in the deconstruction series. The person in the foreground is removing a layer of reed matting that protects the bottom perimeter of the yurt.  Also note that there are a lot more ropes still holding the canvas cover in place.  The stove on the inside of the yurt is apparently still chugging away.

3.

Here we've pulled the outer cover off the yurt.  The yurt in the background is still covered by the felt layer under which is another layer which we will see shortly.

4.

Oh yeah, another out of sequence shot.  Before you can take off the smoke hole cover, you have to pull the stove pipe off the stove.  The stove pipe goes through the small hole in the cover.  That small hole is rimmed with metal to keep the cover from charring.

5.

Just for reference, here's the stove in the center of the yurt slightly off to one side of the the two poles that support the tono or center ring that all the rafters go into.  The stove pipe rises vertically toward the smoke hole cover. In the old days before stoves, people used to build their fires in a hearth right in the center of the yurt.  But that was a lot more smokey than making fire in a stove.

6.

Once the top layer of canvas is removed, the layer of felt is exposed. Felt adds insulation but is not particularly strong like woven cloth, one of the reasons that there is a wooden structure supporting the canvas and the felt.  The felt cannot just be stretched over a few poles like tent cloth.

7.

This photo shows how layers of felt are kept in place.  The edge of a piece of felt has a braided rope sewn to it so the tension of the ropes attaching the felt to the framework and other pieces of felt is carried by the ropes rather than the felt itself.

8.

A piece of roofing felt is off the roof.  The roof is conical and so the felts that cover the roof are sections of a full circle.  The half circle in the center is where the felt buts up against the smoke hole.  

9.

Piles of felt from both the roof and the wall piled up next to the truck which will haul the yurt to its next destination. Note that this yurt is not a backpacking tent.  

10.

The outer canvas cover also gets folded up.

11.

Under the wall felts is a layer of reed matting.  The reed matting provides a smoother surface for the felt to lay against than the wall lattice would provide by itself.

12.

While someone is rolling up the reed matting on the wall someone else is pulling the bottom layer of canvas off the roof.

13.

A view of the reed matting adjacent to the door from the inside of the yurt.

14.

Another inside view of the yurt while the reed wall and the canvas roof cover are still in place.  Also note the band over the rafters.

And that's it for today.  All the outer coverings are off the yurt.  Still left standing is the wooden structure of the yurt, walls, door and roof.  The next segment will deal with their de-construction.

Short Intro

For the last few years I've been building yurts.  More recently, I've started experimenting with black tents that were used by North African nomads.  I figured I had enough material here to start a blog on various topics related to these nomadic structures.
I hoped to pick a cool blog address but it seems like all the reasonable blogspot names like nomadicarchitecture were already taken.  People seem to have parked on various names back in 2003, written a few blogs and then abandoned the enterprise.
And that is why this blog is at wolfgangnomadic.blogspot.com.  That name is not clever but it was available.