112 F degrees. Yup, that’s the high temperature that has been logged INSIDE the yurt this summer.
As the temperature has been rising, so has my anxiety. Being that it’s summer, we have been busy with outdoor playing, activities and visits with family and friends. However, I’ve been dreading coming back home because of the heat. The air isn’t moving in the yurt and it just gets hotter and hotter.
So I did what any good wife would do…. I took the kids on a road trip for 10 days and left my husband home to figure it out. Okay, not my finest moment.
But like any good husband, Damon figured out some of the heat issues we were having. First, we needed to add a screen door so that all four sides of the yurt could be open, breathe, and circulate. Dome needed to be covered to keep the sun/ heat out. However, the dome needs to be raised so that heat can escape out of the top. So we then needed a screen to keep out the bugs while the dome is open. And being that our home is a glorified tent, it’s not like I could go onto amazon and search for Yurt Dome Screen or Yurt Dome Sun Shade. Boy wouldn’t that have been nice.
So we dusted off the sewing machine. Even after careful measurement, we had to redo it 3 times. I’m not the best sewer by any means and sewing in a circle is even harder. We were pretty excited when it finally fit. We used shade cloth from the Army surplus store and sewed a ribbon of Velcro to it. Then we adhered the other side of the Velcro to the iron ring that houses the dome and voilà! A dome screen was born.
The sun shade is simply a piece of poly that sits onto of the dome to cover it. It’s fastened down like a tent rain cap. Pretty simple, pretty amazing.
All these adds have made the temperature drop significantly inside the yurt. I’m so thankful that God is keeping the outside temperatures so mild this summer. We have also added A/C to the yurt. Wow! It’s like a “normal” house. We have been leaving the air off during the day so the yurt can breath and with the kids going in and out of the door, all the cold air escapes rather quickly. But at night, we shut all the windows and turn on the air and it’s pretty darn dreamy. Being able to sleep in cool air and not being sticky has brought me an amazing amount of contentment. I feel like a normal person some nights.
Again most nights I hear Damon working on stuff in the garage over the hum of the air conditioner. My husband has lots of projects on the horizon for the next few months. Picnic table making, cleaning out our woods, cutting wood for next year, adding a deck and sidewalk to the yurt. I hope that my agenda of lazy summer days, playing with the kids, having lots of friends and family over, taking a few vacations, weekends away, camp fires, holding puppies doesn’t get in the way of his project schedule.
Stay with me, I may need a hand to hold.
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