On Apr 28, 2010, at 7:40 AM, Bob Gillis wrote:

On Apr 28, 2010, at 7:40 AM, Bob Gillis wrote:

Answers below:

Sincerely,

Bob Gillis

Hello!

I just received some samples from you and had a couple of questions.

I live up in Olympia, Washington – lots of rain and some snow each winter. My husband and I are under a large maple/alder canopy and our current tent is dying after many years. We have been doing tent life for the last eight years due to a lot of chemical sensitivities making it nearly impossible for us to be indoors someplace affordable yet. Looking at possibly replacing our tent this summer and I ran across your product.

The questions:

Under a tree canopy all year, the only real sun we see here is early spring and very late fall – maybe a few hours a day directly on our site. Approximately how long could we expect the exterior yurt fabric to last?

I would think you could expect a very long life. My family lived in a dome for 9 years in what sounds like a similar shady location in Santa Cruz CA: http://www.goodtimessantacruz.com/santa-cruz-news/good-times-cover-stories/986-from-here-to-haiti.html
This tent was then sold as used. I am not sure how long it lasted for the buyer. Also see: https://shelter-systems.com/yurt-dome-testimonials.html

I saw that bamboo poles can be used in place of the pvc pipe, are there other options too that will work or is it pretty much only bamboo and pvc?

You could use flexible branches. But by far the easiest is pvc as other poles are not of consistent diameter or stiffness.

I’ve read that you suggest not to use tarps over the top of the yurts, is this only because of the trapped heat or is there some other reason preventing this? Its very, very handy here to have some tarps coming out around the tent windows/doors as we tend to leave them open year round and rain/snow blow would be a problem without them. I’ve seen your small porches you sell, these don’t look like they’d work for our kind of weather – due to wind there really needs to be about four feet of shelter in front and to both sides of each window/door at a minimum and it looked like yours don’t really cover the sides very far.

It would be fine to have tarp vestibules over doors. Just do not drape tarps over the dome as they can if in direct sun soften and deform your poles. Tarps can also collect water and collapse the dome.

Be sure to read our snow and wind warnings.

I think this covers my initial questions. 🙂

Thank you very much for your time and I am looking forwards to your reply,

Lisa