I work with a company (RVC Outdoor Destinations) that has created & branded the concept of Outdoor Destinations. These are basically outdoor resorts for luxurious camping with upscale amenities and accommodations mixed with beautiful natural environments. I’d like to tell you a little bit about their unique lodging options…

Cottages
RVC worked with Athens Park Homes to create their own customized RVC Resort Cottages. They come fully furnished with lofts, flat screen TVs, washers/dryers, bathrooms, fully appointed kitchens, and fresh bed linens & towels. They also include a BBQ grill, picnic table, and fire ring for outdoor cooking and gathering. While RVC Resort Cottages are small, they can sleep up to four adults and two children with the bedroom, loft and fold-out sofa.

Yurts
RVC has yurts at two of their resort properties (GA and AR). They are located in a semi-private area enclosed by trees and come with circular decks, fire rings, and picnic tables. All are furnished with comfy beds and have climate controls included.

RV Sites
For the open-road travelers, RVC has modern RV sites with full hookups, 50/100 amp service, cable, and free Wi-Fi. Most are waterfront or water-view sites.

RVC has Outdoor Destinations in Hot Springs, AR; Pine Mountain, GA; Carrabelle, FL; South Walton County, FL; and Asheville, NC. Please enjoy the photos.

Thanks for allowing me to share!
Katie Breyer
www.rvcoutdoors.com

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The Mongolians invented yurts as a portable structure. Laurel Nest Yurts invented the Yurtle TM as a portable yurt structure on wheels. Our Yurtle is a mobile home that is affordable, elegant, and sustainable. Our smallest model uses less than 50 yards of fabric, 30 2x4s, 2 sheets of plywood, and 35 decking boards. The Yurtle is a tiny house with tiny materials, totaling about 110 square feet plus a small porch.

Our Yurtle is a yurt on top of a customized double axle utility trailer with a collapsible round deck made from cedar decking boards. They are lovely spaces that can be used as a small home on the road. Drive out to a nice camp spot, sleep in the turtle shell overnight, and keep on going. If you decide to stay a few days, spend an hour and set up your cozy home away from home. The yurt sets up easily on the deck, and offers a comfortable and safe shelter.

If you would like to learn more about Asia’s products please visit Laurel Nest Yurts at laurelnest.com or call 1-877-Eco-Yurt. Thanks Asia for letting me know about your cool product.

Come and stay in our romantic Mongolian style yurt, nestled in the mountains of central Portugal, about one hour inland from the ancient university town of Coimbra. Its self-contained and fully furnished, set in our smallholding of terraced land, which we manage organically. Olives, vines and fruit trees surround the yurt; our own spring provides the water; and energy is solar powered. Whether you’re looking for a lazy rural retreat, or an active holiday in the hills, there’s no better way to get back to nature without foregoing any creature comforts.

So if you are traveling in Europe and want to explore what it would be like to live in a yurt, spend a couple of nights at this great holiday location.

• The yurt sleeps two with enough space to add two children’s beds if required alternatively we have a very spacious bell tent for hire which comfortably sleeps two, perfect for older children.
• There’s plenty of space to hang your clothes, rugs on the floor and a chaise longue for relaxing.
• A welcoming bottle of wine is on chill for you on your arrival and a selection of cooled drinks are always available in the yurt. Derek mixes a fantastic Caiparinha (a delicious Brazilian rum cocktail).
• Outside the yurt is your own private bathroom, with hot shower, sink, and ecological loo.
• The yurt has reading lights and a power point sufficient for a laptop.
• The yurt stands on a wooden platform beside a chestnut tree, providing all-day shade (hammocks and loungers provided).
• We live just a few minutes walk away if you need us for anything. We have lived in Portugal since 2001 and enjoy our hectare of terraced land with our two children, Theo 9 and Ella 6, the chickens, the dog and the cat.
• A substantial continental breakfast is included, using local produce wherever possible. It’s served next to your yurt under a chestnut tree. Packed lunches and home-cooked evening meals are also available, with advance notice.

You’re looking at a disaster that used to be a livable house. Besides the wood, doors and windows, you also see curtains, beddings and other fabrics poking out. Where many people see only a trash pile, I see enormous potential. Why? Because even if the wood is singed and the fabrics have rips, I know that with just a few simple tools, a way to cut the wood and wash the materials, we have the makings for a little temporary house I call gertee.

scraps used for first 16' gertee, spring 2007

Gertees are basically standard yurts made from raw or salvaged materials. Unlike the Mongolian and Western versions (exquisitely crafted and covered in gorgeous fabrics), gertee is the budget variety. It utilizes many items that would otherwise go to the dump.

first 16' gertee, Mercantile campground, May 2007

A 16 foot wide gertee needs about 80 wall slats. If there are at least 20 2x4s in your mix (or fifteen 2x6s or eight 2x12s), these can be cut down into 1/4 inch slats. Even broken boards will work as your walls can be made as short as 5 feet. Pipe or other metals can also be used although not as easily as the wood. Short thin trees and bamboo work too.

first attempt at making walls, spring 2007

The walls slats are laid out like lattice on the ground and tied together at each cross. It takes 320 ties if you have four crosses on each board. The ties can be cut from scraps of string or fabrics. If at all possible, I recommend buying 400 8 inch plastic zip ties. Once tied together the walls slide together like an accordian and roll up for easy carrying.

first test of the 9' burnt spruce roof poles, spring 2007

A 16 foot gertee can be made with as few as 8 roof poles, more is better but not absolutely necessary. Poles need to be at least 9 feet long and can be as slim as a 2×2.

recycled construction plastic covers most of the 16'

The roof ring is by far the hardest piece to make. It may take more imagination than the rest of the parts, unless there is a carpenter handy who can fashion one out of leftover wood pieces and has a drill to make the holes. I’ve made one roof ring (my first) from a piece of metal screen that I curved into a circle, and I think teepee roof poles tied together might also work, although I haven’t tried it yet. I also think a square roof ring may be okay. The roof rings we make for the gertees we live in now are 2′ wide octagon shape.

recycled plastic roofcover before trimming

The door frame can be made of 4 boards screwed together to form a rectangle or a standard door with a frame can be used, even if the walls are shorter than the door.

plastic roofcover after trimming

The roof cover can be made from anything waterproof. I have used a combination of tent bottoms scraps, airplane covers and one time I used a slghtly ripped up sheet of construction plastic. Some sort of weatherproof glue is necessary if you don’t have one piece large enough to cover the entire roof. Square tarps work perfectly.

24x24' recycled billboard cover before trim, 2009

Today I cover all my gertees in recycled 24×24′ billboards, which are already fire, mold and UV treated.

stapling up interior wall covers, 2007

The exterior walls can be covered in pieces of fabric or plastic/tarps/canvas. The interior walls can be covered in screens, sheets, blankets and bolts of fabric.

upgraded scraps on walls, summer 2009

We’ve been living in our homemade gertees in interior Alaska for three years. While we’ve definitely improved on the materials we use to cover our roof and walls, we still keep a sharp lookout for useful throwaway items. The first 16′ frame endured six moves and rebuilds. Our initial concern that the zip ties would slip too much was unfounded.

16' gertee pods, winter 2009

As for staying warm in a gertee… well, I’m in one right now (written on 1/24/10). It’s a brisk 40 below zero outside and I’m sitting at my desk in a thin sleeveless dress, wool socks and my slippers.

recycled dollmaker fabrics over RadiantGUARD, fall 2009

I have RadiantGUARD foil insulation on all the walls and the ceilings plus an extra layer of R19 in the new addition. I have one long strip of canvas on the outside walls and this year I used the same canvas on the inside walls. I still use old blankets and scrap materials too.

exterior 16' bridal gertee, summer 2009

We have two gertees attached together this winter. The main gertee is now the kitchen with a wood stove in the center. The new room is the bedroom and bath and it has its own woodstove with the stack going out through the wall. With both fires going steady neither one has to burn too hot to keep it at around 68 degrees. Of course smaller fires means more work feeding them constantly, and a thermostat heater is on our wish list, for sure.

Cooking space out of recycled shelves and Granny's Oven made by the Amish

I just took a nice hot shower. My gertees have no plumbing so my winter shower is a 2 gal solar bag filled with hot water from big metal pots kept on our woodstove 24/7. I stand in a 2′ metal wash bucket with a plastic shower curtain tucked inside it. Works beautifully.

summer shower gertee, 2009

While the gertee lifestyle is certainly not for everyone, we believe it has changed our lives for the better. The ability to eliminate many of the costs that come along with renting someone’s four square walls has been a boost to our spirits and our creativity.

first gertee interior, June 2007

There is something very nurturing about living in a round room, once you get the hang of how to arrange the furniture. We now think in circles and “pies” and not squares and rectangles.

Gerteeville at Camp Redington, fall 2009

We’re set up in a year round campground, have electric and phone (usually) and the rest we do for ourselves. It’s been amazing to see what kinds of things we need and how hard it is to find some of them. Sometimes it hits us how we could be making things we’ve always bought, like rope, and now we make our own. Gertee has caused me to try things I never imagined I wanted to learn, like my chainsaw, which I started using to cut firewood but now have made 2 doors and all kinds of structural changes with it.

Me sawing logs, fall 2008

I have to say the best part of my gertee experience is the satisfaction of knowing I live in my own house I built with my own two hands. I own it free and clear and can change it anytime I choose (which is often because I’m an American middle aged woman).

original 16' foot frame, summer 2009

The best part for everyone else like me who needs a home is, Gertee is an affordable, livable option that can be modified to adapt to any climate. Green by natural design, yurts have a low carbon footprint and are a proven sustainable house; the Mongolians have been living in them for more than 3000 years without it destroying their environment.

gertee today, February 8, 2010

Our Gertee book is under development and will be available in April 2010.

By Niki Raapana

This winter has proved to be a cold one as well, but we had a better handle on our wood harvesting this year and are in good shape. We estimate that we will use between 3 and 4 cord this year… only one more really cold month to go.

Our PV system is small and has a generator plug in to supplement power when needed. We have not used a generator yet however ~ we choose to reduce our usage instead. We only use our microwave and toaster on very sunny days and supplement our lighting with a propane light and candles if necessary. We save a lot of energy by cooking on the wood stove.

This past year we have made a couple of low tec improvements to the yurt. Earlier last fall we finally got our mulch pit (for gray water) in place, that has been a very big help in getting water out of the yurt, and that enabled us to get an operable shower in the yurt. It may just be a bucket with a bulkhead, but it’s strangely empowering. We continue to heat our water in small batches on the wood stove. (In the summer we heat it in black shower bags and we shower outside.)

This year we are going to try to tackle a passive solar hot water heater and maybe a solar oven.

We continue to have the time of our lives living the way we do, and hope that others will realize the joy that comes with living a smaller, simpler way of life.

Our loft design was inspired by pictures we saw online. We worked with our carpenters and decided to build a wall across the back third of the yurt. We added a three foot overhang to the center just wide enough to accommodate a mattress above. This allowed us plenty of sleeping room and put our heads nearly under the dome, a real treat.

For kitchen cupboards we use antique fruit crates and our old clothes dresser.

The loft overhang above the kitchen serves the added purpose of defining our kitchen area below and storing canned goods in the underside.

Notice the heat shield behind the wood stove.

The hearth under the wood stove. A creative touch that meshes style and functionality in the yurt.

Two interior doors, our sink and faucet, and kitchen table support came from an architectural salvage shop.

Our switch to a composting toilet was inspired by reading The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins, (http://www.joseph-jenkins.com and www.humanurehandbook.com).

The wall supporting the loft creates a large storage room behind it with our bathroom tucked into one end.

wood opening and well

We installed the wood pass through at floor level near our wood rack. The nine inch opening is the perfect size and there’s no need to cut the lattice. We cover the inside opening with the piece cut from the wall insulation and the outside is covered with the velcro trimmed canvas provided. This has greatly reduced the mess, keeping snow, mud, moisture and most of the wood debris outside where it belongs.

It has no running water or working toilet, but this Mongolian-style tent, called a yurt, in the remote town of Seldovia, Alaska, is home to Erin McKittrick and Bretwood Higman, and their son, 11-month-old Katmai.

Read the complete New York Times article “Broadband, Yes. Toilet, No.”

©2010 Stuart Isett/www.isett.com

Doug Kirk from Solargon Homes contacted me to let me know that they are having a special Stimulus Sale with big savings on their 20′ and 30′ models. He wanted me to share with you this information. To get all the information visit their site.

Doug also mentioned that they are happy to say that Bob Sutherland of Sutherland Lumber is the proud owner of a 30’ Solargon with 10’ walls just west of Loveland, Colorado. There are over 60 Sutherland Lumber stores; so Bob could have built any number of buildings for his private mountain family retreat home. So when he decided to assemble a Solargon we asked him why.

His response was “” I liked the design, the pre-engineering and the fact that it goes up in just three days. I didn’t want to bother with an architect and like the passive solar design and high R-Value of the polyurethane SIP’s panels. We are delighted with the the buildings performance.”

This is the Sutherland home pictured in this post. To learn more about Solargon and see more pictures of their homes visit their blog.

Here is what Bruce has to say about his book: For yurt lovers everywhere, we’ve created the newest and best book about making an ultra simple, hand-made, yurt-home.

Ten years ago, at Spirit Hollow, a shamanic school tucked back in the Taconic Mountains of Vermont, I fell in love with yurts. I was bedazzled by an exotic tent, with a framed door, wooden floor, diamond latticed walls and rays of rafters, arching out from a central sky light. I was dumbstruck by the complex beauty and warmth of a tent in Green Mountain winter.

Later as I worked in Boston, seventy hours per week, at a Fortune 500 company, making more money than I had at any point in my life, I daydreamed of yurts. I sketched yurts set beside a roaring brook, in Arlington, in Vermont’s Kelly Stand. I made calculations of the cost of acreage, cost of a bridge to cross the river, cost of a floor and the cost of a Pacific Yurt sixteen feet in diameter. I would calculate the month of next year that I could afford to actualize my dreams.

In the next year, down-sized by life, aching for simplicity, living in an attic room and tending an organic garden belonging to friends, my head was still full of yurts. Purchasing land and a Pacific Yurt was now out of the question. I obtained books by Len Charney, Paul King and Dan Kuehn and down loaded a paper by Charles Lokey, works that would comprise the books of my yurt bible. I studied with religious fervor. Could I build a yurt, bit by bit, over the next several years?

How hard could it to build a yurt? Could I drill six holes in an eight foot stick? Could I drill six holes in sixty-six, eight foot sticks? Could I tie a knot at two ends of a cord after threading the cord through holes that I drilled? I knew I could do all of this and build a yurt wall, and from this place, I believed I could take on the rest of it. But could I really?

“A year and a half to complete everything”, I thought, but could I design and construct something that would fit and hold together, would actually work? To my amazement and joy, within two months, I moved into a new sixteen foot diameter yurt, my “ger” (Mongolian for “home”) all at a cost of less than $1000 or about one tenth of t he cost of a Pacific Yurt. Baku, a Japanese friend of mine said, “It wasn’t that God helped you build a yurt. It’s more like you helped God build it.”

How this all happen, step by step, the ideas, the calculations, designs, construction ideas that led to the simplest plan possible, the good fortune and blind luck that completed my yurt -home is the story that follows. Check out his book and website at For Love Of Yurts.

Mike one of our readers sent me a note about this yurt option that is both easy to assemble and affordable.

These fiberglass yurts range in size fron 15.4′ diameter (181 sq.ft.) to 51.3′ diameter (2011sq.ft.) pre-insulated. Pricing ranges from $15.00/ sq.ft to $20+/sq.ft.

Here is what Alternative Buildings says about their product: Alternative Buildings is your supplier for truly unique and innovative buildings, utilizing an insulated fiberglass panel system. Our new modern composite Yurt assembles fast, is easily customized, and best of all, the cost is very affordable. We have several sizes and options to choose from, making it possible to fit almost any budget.

Fiberglass Yurt Applications

• Residential: As a permanent equity building or money saving family home.
• Recreational: As a second home, hunting lodge, or campsite.
• Temporary Shelter: As an emergency and short term structure. (Assemble in 4 to 6 hours with hand tools even in remote locations.)
• Industrial/Commercial: As an equipment shelter, supply storage, retail shop, temporary office, etc.

Design Services Offered

• Custom Design: We offer custom design services to help personalize your Yurt.
• Customized Rent-To-Own Program: Custom tailored programs available for all fiberglass yurts.

So for pricing starting around $6,500 for the small yurt and going up to $31,200 for the largest yurt, you get a basic insulated shell to complete and finish as you like. For more details visit Alternative Buildings Fiberglass Yurts and see if this is the type of home you have been looking for.

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Craigslist is showing two wooden yurts for sale at a bargain price of $3,500 each. Here is the listing on Craigslist.

You can learn more about the company at Yurt People. The company is located in Talmage, California just outside of Ukiah. These are tiny yurts but I think they would make a great tiny house.

These yurts are on sale because they were built a few years ago and never set up. The prices includes all materials except the foundation and the interior siding.

Please call Miguel 707-799-8595 or email picaflor@earthlink.net

Below are some photos of a couple of the style yurt that is for sale that have been completely finished. The above appears to be just a basic shell that requires completion.

If you purchase one of these please let me know as I would enjoy posting your story of what you do with it and how it is completed. Thank you.

Completed Yurt Exterior

Baja Yurt Interior

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