So you’ve decided to move to a yurt, found the ideal building
site and ordered your kit from a reputable manufacturer. But you are far from ready. What about power, heat, water, and waste?
Most often, power is not an issue. Good quality wind turbines that will generate
1-3 kilowatts cost less than $1,000.
Solar panels can be purchased with price tags that are lower than $4 per
watt output. Battery storage options are
varied, with an array of deep cycle marine batteries the most common
option. Good, used electric forklift
batteries offer tons of storage at low cost.
Power inverters (use two) cost $150-300, with modified sine wave being
the cheapest and pure sine wave, necessary for sophisticated and delicate electronic
equipment such as televisions and computers, being the more expensive choice.
Heat, too, is relatively simple. We use a combination of heat sources,
including radiant propane, kerosene (biodiesel) heaters and outdoor wood
furnace. The outdoor wood furnace is a
simple design, using a steel 45-gallon barrel filled with water over an
enclosed wood-fired heat source. The enclosure is cinder block filled with
sand. Steel piping leads from the
barrel, underground to the yurt, where it is fed through three small truck
radiators spaced around the room. Heat
is circulated using 12 volt fans on the radiators. While it was not required, we use a small RV
water pump to circulate the water. The
design is such that the force of expanding hot
water in the pipes moves the water sufficiently up the slope to the
yurt, while the cooled water returns to the system via gravity. A one-way valve ensures that it flows
properly.
Using just the propane radiant heaters, with spring &
fall average temperatures at night averaging -5 C, and daytime highs at 10C, twenty pounds of propane lasts 10-12 days.
Heat for cooking comes from a recycled RV propane stove. We cook two to three months on less than 20
pounds of propane.
Water and waste are more complex issues.
Rather than spend upwards of $8,000 to $10,000 for a well
that would have limited use (we consume less than 30 litres (7.5 gallons) of
water daily) and would require lots of energy for the pressure pump, we haul
our water weekly from a nearby artesian well and store it in a 100-gallon PVC
tank. It is pumped by a 12 volt RV water
pump, through pex line, to a propane-powered tankless water heater. Our total cost for hot water over a four
month period was twenty pounds of propane!
Water consumption should be minimal. Typically, two people can get by on 20-30
liters per shower, five litres for drinking, three litres for cooking and seven
litres per day for dish washing. Total
consumption: 35 litres per day.
Waste is broken into two components: grey water and black
water (sewage). We ran our shower, bath sink
and kitchen sink into one waste pipe that feeds into a 45-gallon storage
tank. The water collected there is
pumped each week onto our gardens and fruit trees (trickle pipes, to minimize
e-coli contamination). The toilet feeds into another 45-gallon tank. That tank is pumped regularly, using a
mascerator, into other tanks, where the waste is composted using solar heat
blankets and a 12 volt fan to vent it.
After a year, the compost is used to feed the naturally occurring bush
and trees on the property.
Ingenuity is required,
if you intend to live off the grid, live in an eco-friendly manner, and live
cost-effectively. But the efforts are
well worth the results achieved.
