I’ve decided that I absolutely have to have a hexayurt.
“Exactly what is a hexayurt?” you might ask.
Without putting too fine a point on it, a hexayurt is probably best described as a totally-pimped-out cardboard box. You can build one for under $100; the price goes up to $500 or so if you want something fancier, but your basic hexayurt resembles nothing so much as a landlubbing version of one of former SIUC Professor Richard Archer’s final exam projects.
According to this presentation by the inventors, a well-constructed model can actually last up to 20 years.
Laugh all you want, but I am seriously considering this as a viable alternative to conventional retirement programs. I could see myself living quite contentedly in a hexayurt somewhere in New Mexico.
Emily
September 11, 2007 at 4:38 am |
They don’t look very storm resistant to me. I would hate to look to that as my shelter if I’d been displaced by a hurricane or tornado. The guy said they could handle wind, but he didn’t say how.
September 11, 2007 at 10:51 am |
I doubt they’re any worse than a FEMA trailer. Personally, if I were afraid of storms, I’d be heading for Greater World in Taos … but I could sleep in a hexayurt while my Earthship was going up.
September 12, 2007 at 6:23 am |
Hi, I’m Vinay, the inventor of the hexayurt.
We’ve had them up in 70 mph winds at Burning Man, and *if you use the right tape* there are no problems.
The tape is the key. It has a breaking strength of 150 lbs an inch, and is 3 to 6 inches wide. There are 12 tie downs, so you wind up with something like 20,000 lbs of “tied to the ground.”
The tension ring that goes around the outside is what holds the panels together, and in a permanent unit you’d go around four or five times just to be sure.
We’re basing our longevity estimates on Dow Thermax Heavy Duty Plus, but nobody was building these 20 years ago, so until it’s been done, it’s our “best guess given the available data.”
So glad you like the project!
Vinay
September 12, 2007 at 9:24 am |
I wonder if there’s a translucent material — maybe something like those corrugated plastic mail crates are made out of — that I could use to make a hexayurt greenhouse?
September 14, 2007 at 5:27 am |
The stuff you’re thinking of is called “coroplast” – corrugated plastic. The stuff from mail crates will rot after a few years (like two) in the out doors. However, they do make polycarbonate coroplast specifically for greenhouses.
The thing is that it’s heavy, way too heavy to hold together with tape, so you’d wind up with something like aluminium flashing and pop rivets holding it together. Nobody that I know of has ever done it, so it’d be something of an engineering first