Sugar Shack, A 20th Century Yurt

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PLANNING OUR HOME

We decided to start our project (as our teacher had) by constructing an outbuilding, so we could learn from the mistakes we were quite likely to make. Some playing with pencil and paper-and a bit of elementary geometry-told us that we could enclose about 500 square feet of space in a ten sided building. That would be enough, we figured, for temporary living quarters and-later-a garage-workshop.

We "computed" by hit-or-miss drawing (more precise folks may want to use trigonometry) that a structure with a 13-foot radius would have a perimeter of ten 8-foot sides. This was the radius to the "corners" (where the sides would meet). The distance from the center point of the building to the middle of each panel would be about 12-112 feet. Therefore, our floor plan "pie" would consist of ten triangular sections, each 12-1/2 feet in height and 8 feet at the base ... or 50 square feet apiece.

Our property is close to the mountains and is blessed (cursed?) with talus ... rocks eroded from (and generally piled at the bottom of) cliffs. We decided to take advantage of this abundant-and free-supply by building stone walls halfway up, and then using standard 4' X 8' panels for the upper portions. We also figured we'd berm the lower half of the exterior (to keep our house cool) ... insulate the top half with fiber glass ... and add a roof with a wide over hang for protection from the sweltering desert sun.

INSTALLING FOOTINGS AND WALLS

To save money, we dug the trenches for our home's foundation footings by hand, gathered rocks for the side walls ourselves, and toted the stone to the site by truck. It was heavy, tiresome, hard work.

Next, we brought in a series of 3/4-yard loads of concrete and poured the footings. One batch was enough to complete less than two sides, because our footings were 18" wide and (since our building site is on a slight knoll) ranged from 14" to 24" below grade. (We soon learned that we had to work fast with our bantam-sized rental trailers full of prepared concrete, because such devices don't have a mixer ... just a small hole with a gate, and a hydraulic jack to tilt the little cart for pouring.)

We spent the next eight months laying rocks, directly on top of the footings, for nine of the walls. For the tenth-front--panel, we installed a used patio door. And, since we intended to berm the house, we built low rock-and-mortar wings that extended from each side of the entries to hold back the earth. Putting up the rock walls was definitely the slowest, most back-breaking part of the house-building project.

Part of our problem, of course, was that rocks just don't behave like blocks or bricks ... each is a different size and shape. Consequently, we first had to lay the stones dry to make sure they'd fit, and then take them down ... wash them with water ... and—finally-set them in with mortar (a mixture of three parts sand, two parts lime, and one part cement). We tried premixed mortar, but found it too sandy ... we had to add both lime and cement to obtain the right consistency.

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