A Solid Foundation

During the last week of April, Scott spent four solo days in Torrey. He was hard at work leveling the ground on the yurt site. This involved lots of shovel time removing pasture grass under the stands that would soon support the floor. He spent even more time pounding duck-billed tie downs into the VERY HARD and ROCKY ground in order to secure the whole structure in place. While Scott was shoveling and pounding away, the folks at the local building supply company, Loa Builders, delivered the beams for the floor joists as well as the 1 1/8 inch subflooring.

Because we have no power lines, the only real problem was getting electricity to the site. That was easily solved because Dad was able to lend us his generator. The next steps - positioning the joists and laying the subfloor - just needed muscles, time and persistence. The final part of this phase was to accurately cut the platform into a circle the same diameter as the yurt - 20 feet. Scott accomplished this by determining a center, marking it with a nail and attaching to that nail a length of string equal to the circle's radius - 10 feet. Pivoting the string around the nail, he carefully drew a circle on the platform. Finally he used a jigsaw to cut away the excess wood producing the circular floor we needed. Voilà! By the time Scott left Torrey, everything was set for the official yurt raising which would occur one week later.