Just saying howdy - Yurts, Little Houses, and Living Right

Source_to_Sea · March 26, 2009, 03:30:19 PM

Long time lurker, first time caller here.

Just wanted to say hello. Love the site and forum. My wife and I lived in a strawbale yurt I built during grad school (http://sourcetosea.net/living-in-a-straw-bale-yurt-near-ohio-university/ and http://sourcetosea.net/straw-bale-yurt-photos/ ) We're planning on planning on getting our homestead together in the next couple of years once things calm down a little on our end.

Yurt

Here's a shot of "The Little House". It was the first building my grandparents put on their property around 1940, built mortgage-free of course. We're going down that same road, building close to the same dimensions (about 14 x 28) using straw bales, then building the main place and outbuildings. I helped build a couple of SB houses, and think they're the bee's knees. This will be pay-as-we-go, so small, efficient, and cheap is the name of the game.

Little House

Small spaces don't bother us much. We paddled the Mississippi River a few years ago, and figure if we can share an 18 foot canoe without killing each other, we can survive anything!

Later,

-John Pugh

MaineRhino · March 26, 2009, 06:29:14 PM

Will you be building in Ohio?

March 26, 2009, 07:29:08 PM

Probably not. Most likely either in central or western NC, or possibly southern Pennsylvania depending on what jobs we end up with. Like I said, things are way too much in the air right now.

The upshot is that we have some time play with floorplans, and our apartment has two adjoining rooms that are exactly 14x26' combined. It's so much easier to visualize how things are going to be layed out that way, and we can set up chairs/boxes/etc as dummy furniture.

When I built the yurt, it really helped to just go out to a big parking lot with some sidewalk chalk and start drawing out plans in actual size. I ended up with about a 16 foot interior diameter. Also had little 10' diameter "yurtlette" for extra storage.

Sassy · March 26, 2009, 10:46:15 PM

The yurt looked real cozy! I liked your snapping turtle story

glenn kangiser · March 26, 2009, 10:51:32 PM

Sounds like fun.

to the forum.

March 27, 2009, 10:16:01 AM

Thanks! Lotsa good stuff going on in here. Love your place too!

glenn kangiser · March 27, 2009, 09:59:51 PM

Thanks.

tesa · April 03, 2009, 08:41:46 AM

i've been having a very hard time seeing the floorplan to size in my mind, it all looks so TINY on graph paper LOL

i forgot the idea of using chaulk in a big parkinglot area!! great idea

i've done something similiar with flags in a big grassy area at the park, but if i could actually draw the thing
in human sizes, it might help me see the floorplan a bit better

my kid has a ton of chaulk in many colors, now all i need is a parking lot, i wonder how crazy the local
folks would think if i was at the school tomorrow morning, drawing my house

and how funny, when the teachers come to work monday morning, to see a lifesize floorplan on thier
sidewalk

LOL

we could start a whole underground movement, sort of like those people who sneek onto your property,
and put up a bunch of pink flamingos??

we could sneek around in the night, and draw floorplans on peoples driveways

tesa

WoodSprite · April 03, 2009, 08:57:41 AM

Quote from: tesa on April 03, 2009, 08:41:46 AM
i've been having a very hard time seeing the floorplan to size in my mind, it all looks so TINY on graph paper LOL

we could start a whole underground movement, sort of like those people who sneek onto your property,
and put up a bunch of pink flamingos??

we could sneek around in the night, and draw floorplans on peoples driveways

Hey, Tesa - much as I love the idea of a nocturnal People's Guerilla Floorplan Visualization Front (where do I sign up?), I'd also recommend the free gizmo at Project Dragonfly, which lets you draw your design in two dimensions - and then hit the handy dandy little "3D" button and see just how crowded it's going to be filled with your furniture. It's not perfect, but it's easy, and it's free. Beats the heck out of laying the whole thing out with fallen branches, which was what we did. http://dragonfly.autodesk.com/

I'm all for alarming the natives with mysterious chalk drawings, though.

April 03, 2009, 12:29:02 PM

woodsprite, thats too funny NPGFVF!! i like it

i told daniel i was gonna do it tomorrow when the school parking lot is empty

should be fun!

tesa

MountainDon · April 03, 2009, 12:40:00 PM

That is a cool program.

Source_to_Sea · April 03, 2009, 02:21:32 PM

I liked it too. Anyway to change the default sizes for furniture, etc?

kyounge1956 · April 03, 2009, 02:31:07 PM

Quote from: tesa on April 03, 2009, 08:41:46 AM
(snip)
we could start a whole underground movement, sort of like those people who sneek onto your property,
and put up a bunch of pink flamingos??

we could sneek around in the night, and draw floorplans on peoples driveways

tesa

Or crop circles

WoodSprite · April 03, 2009, 04:31:02 PM

Quote from: Source_to_Sea on April 03, 2009, 02:21:32 PM
I liked it too. Anyway to change the default sizes for furniture, etc?

Unfortunately, no. I wrote to them (since they invited such behavior on their front page) and suggested that, staircases (duh!), a woodstove in addition to the gigantic hearths they have, and a few other things. This software was clearly not aimed at the likes of me...the only fridge is nearly twice the size of our servel propane fridge. Still, it's a really useful tool for visualization, and the price is right.

[oops...thread drift...sorry. We're talking about Project Dragonfly software]