Category: Shelter

Urban Rancher: A City Boy Building a Homestead

Urban Rancher: A City Boy Building a Homestead

Posted on by Kbaumlier

I recently was able to get the inside scoop on what it is like to buy some land and build a small house off the grid – all by yourself, by checking the blog of the Urban Rancher (a.k.a. “E.”)  “Can a city boy build his dream homestead on a mountain, by himself and with no mortgage?” is the description for the website, which documents the challenges of a man who buys some land on a mountain, and works to build a small home that is off the grid, and is 4000 feet above the “California sprawl.”

Past updates on the site, which has been called a construction blog,  include E.’s experience of lifting a heavy framed wall into place by himself and the challenges working as a professional in California for 20 years (and watching the work leave California and head to other areas.)

You can see pictures of the small house that he built on the site, and also see past progress on the project.  The last post asked readers to send suggestions about how to create a mobile recording studio.. but with a grand piano as part of the design.  With talk of tiny houses on the rise, this is a great site to learn more about the process of building your own tiny house, as well as the challenges of having woodpeckers, and buying a parcel of land.

Image Source:
urbanrancher.wordpress.com/

Links:

urbanrancher.wordpress.com/

 

The Hexayurt Sauna @ Camp Pixelache

The Hexayurt Sauna @ Camp Pixelache

Posted on by Kbaumlier

One of the kick-off activities at Camp Pixelache in Helsinki, Finland was a group activity to build a hexayurt structure that would later in the evening become a sauna.

A hexayurt is a 6 sided structure that can be built out of any materials including plywood, has little waste in its construction.

To make the simplest hexayurt, you make a wall by putting six sheets of plywood on their sides in a hexagon. Nex, cut six more sheets in half diagonally, and screw them together into a shallow cone.   Finally, you lift the roof on to the wall with a large group of people, then fasten it down with more screws.   You can seal and paint it for durability – and the hexyurt is done.

For the sauna design, Justin Tyler Tate and Ernest Truly were commissioned to build a mobile stove (kiuas in Finnish) for the Hexayurt Sauna.  They built the stove in a shopping cart,  and created a chimney from  a long box like metal piece that came from a local factory.  The outside of the hexayurt was a local material, also from a local factory.  The stove design was made by putting ghte chimney structure in the center of the cart, and then putting rocks around this.  The fire was made in the chimney, which then lit up the rocks.

It was rainy when the stove was lit, but we all stood around getting warm near the stove, and also took turns checking out the hexayurt structure.  I did not wait for the stove to make it into the hexayurt  since my feet were wet, but I heard the rocks did get warm – and people stayed up til 3 am in the sauna hexayurt structure.

The hexayurt shelter is meant to be an easy to build shelter, and is inspired by the Buckydome geodesic dome structure.  The designs of the hexayurt are online and are open source.  Since the design was put on the web 10 years ago, there are now more variations on the designs, one of which has expanded headroom and a full-height doorway.

The hexyurt design has no copyright or patent, and anyone can build it for free.  It is meant to enable areas to create shelter, and in a crisis these could be made quickly and efficiently when shelter is needed.

A Hexayurt has been built in Haiti, were used at Occupy in Pittsburgh, and many hexayurt structures popped up at Burning Man this year (over 500!)

They goal is to get hexayurts all over the world – and I plan to see if we can build one where I work – maybe to use as another classroom, mediation room, clubhouse, or a sauna?

Links:

hexayurt.com/

Video about the Mobile Stove for the hexayurt at Camp Pixelache

Build a Hexayurt Shelter

Build a Hexayurt Shelter

Posted on by Kbaumlier

On Friday May 11th at the Pixelache Festival in Helsinki, volunteers will be building a hexayurt shelter.  What is a hexayurt?  It is a structure that costs less a relief tent, can be built anywhere in the world at various sizes, and can be made from local materials.  The hexayurt can be used as a emergency or relief structure or as a cheap easy structure for other uses.

The hexayurt that we are building at the Camp Pixelache Festival will be used as a sauna later this night (note: The Finns love saunas, and most households and hotels have saunas.)   A the event will be Vinay Gupta, the developer of the free/open source emergency shelter Hexayurt who is participating in Camp Pixelache.

To make the simple version of the hexayurt, you build a wall by putting six sheets of plywood on their sides in a hexagon shape.  Six more sheets of plywood are cut in  in half diagonally, and these are screwed together into a shallow cone shape. The roof is lifted onto the wall by a large group of people, then it is  fastened down with screws. The structure can be sealed, painted, or if you are in the desert covered with reflective materials.

The basic hexayurt design is a  166 square foot (15 sq meter) structure.  The design can last for years and costs approximately $100 to make. The basic design can be improved with proper windows, doors, room partitions, stove fittings and other architectural features.  Hexayurts have been built on the beach, at Occupy Pittsburgh, and at Burning Man.

Image Source:
http://hexayurt.com/

Links:

http://hexayurt.com/

Hexayurt @ Camp Pixelache in Helsinki

Hexayurt Designs