The History of the Yurt
This is an overview of the history of building the octagon. Some of these ideas have been written about in The True Foundation of Building; however, this article gives a greater description of the building process, along with more photographs.
I’ve been interested in the idea of throughput for over forty years and in the building of our octagon straw bale home (also referred to as the yurt) these ideas were front and center. Throughput is often hidden and the global culture overlooks its existence and importance. Thus we all end up paying a high cost for this hidden throughput. As throughput increases through time the cost in hours worked to pay for these hidden costs also increases, slowly at first then accelerating as time passes. The availability of resources to build or own a house is decreasing, especially for the poorer sector of our society and our young adults who are first starting out. One usually needs a loan to pay for the large amount of throughput needed to build a house, and then the new owner (actually the bank owns the house) is tied to the payments to the bank. If the economy fails or the owner loses their job and is unable to keep up with payments they can lose all that they have invested. The construction of our house utilized other methods; we followed another path so to speak. This path has downsides which become very evident throughout the article and is not for everyone. The more conventional path, using the regular mortgage system, involves banks and home centers that have the ready made supplies needed for building. The path we chose is more of a homemade lifestyle. No matter which path is chosen there is work involved and once the path is chosen it can be hard, but not impossible, to make the change to the other path. If a person follows the conventional path a certain income must be made to pay for the cost, leaving little time to make things by hand or think about how the operation of the household can be different. In the homemade lifestyle one may not have the income to enter into the system of debt, and even if you have the finances to obtain a loan the bank gives guidelines to how you can build based on the resale value. In moving from one direction to the other there can be back stepping and losses.
I feel the biggest downside to the homemade lifestyle is when one is starting out; the living standards can be quite low and life can be hard until the household infrastructure is set up. Because of this downside I decided to start out with photos of our house showing it more finished and where our standard of living has greatly increased in comparison to the beginning.
I’ve been interested in the idea of throughput for over forty years and in the building of our octagon straw bale home (also referred to as the yurt) these ideas were front and center. Throughput is often hidden and the global culture overlooks its existence and importance. Thus we all end up paying a high cost for this hidden throughput. As throughput increases through time the cost in hours worked to pay for these hidden costs also increases, slowly at first then accelerating as time passes. The availability of resources to build or own a house is decreasing, especially for the poorer sector of our society and our young adults who are first starting out. One usually needs a loan to pay for the large amount of throughput needed to build a house, and then the new owner (actually the bank owns the house) is tied to the payments to the bank. If the economy fails or the owner loses their job and is unable to keep up with payments they can lose all that they have invested. The construction of our house utilized other methods; we followed another path so to speak. This path has downsides which become very evident throughout the article and is not for everyone. The more conventional path, using the regular mortgage system, involves banks and home centers that have the ready made supplies needed for building. The path we chose is more of a homemade lifestyle. No matter which path is chosen there is work involved and once the path is chosen it can be hard, but not impossible, to make the change to the other path. If a person follows the conventional path a certain income must be made to pay for the cost, leaving little time to make things by hand or think about how the operation of the household can be different. In the homemade lifestyle one may not have the income to enter into the system of debt, and even if you have the finances to obtain a loan the bank gives guidelines to how you can build based on the resale value. In moving from one direction to the other there can be back stepping and losses.
I feel the biggest downside to the homemade lifestyle is when one is starting out; the living standards can be quite low and life can be hard until the household infrastructure is set up. Because of this downside I decided to start out with photos of our house showing it more finished and where our standard of living has greatly increased in comparison to the beginning.
Our yurt, which has clay plaster on the exterior and interior walls, is surrounded by gardens which supply a good portion of our food.
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A masonry stove heats our house and our water along with the added bonus of the ability to cook our food.
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