Engineers Without Borders Sheffield
Plywood Hexayurt How-to Video
Having 6 sides it's hard to get a sense of how big the hexayurt is.
Our eyes are used to 4-sided buildings.
Could I ask you a favour? Could you walk around the hexayurt? ... Thank you!
We have some camping mats inside to give a sense of scale.
How is that with 5 occupants? Very big!
Very big for camping, not for living.
With possessions.
Fairly standard for 4 1/2 persons. One person for each wall.
Central shared space. For cooking.
Stove in the center with the smoke going up.
In cold climates you'd put a layer of insulation on the inside. Stapled, probably.
Parts List
All you'll need for $100 USD
12 sheets of OSB or Plywood
6 for the walls, 6 for the roof
Check that the boards are 1.2 by 2.4, because sometimes they are 1.2 by 2.5.
Mark the diagonal.
(5) pieces of 2x4 8' lumber
for (24) 120º and (12) 120º blocks
Template for the 150º block, using a pair of cutters as a compass.
150º = 60º + 60º + half of 60º.
Accurate enough. If there's some error it will be smaller than the error when using the saw.
(200) 2" deck screws
self-taping if possible
Walls first. I'm liking your door, looks like two eyes and a nose.
That was not the plan; port-holes was the idea.
We love the arch. No meassuring, just using a piece of string and a pen.
This is the profile of a block. Takes more cutting but uses less wood.
This is the sholanken corner I mentioned before. 6" by 6" and cut the triangle off.
So that the wall radius comes inside of the roof radius.
One block at the top and one block at the bottom.
A pile of spare blocks to hold the roof on.
These are the roof triangles.
You screw one block on the inside of each one.
They overlap by the thickness of one block. If the block is 2" by 4", it's 1.75 inches [?].
They all have to be oriented in the same way in terms of left over right or right over left.
Once you have the roofs done we're going to do an awkward bit of cutting.
Trimming fo the roof triangles
(an awkward little detail)
We need the boards to overlap on each other at the very top of the hexayurt.
So the narrowest angle of each half-panel piece has to be cut twice:
- First at the very end, to make it shorter.
- Then parallel to the edge of the other board, to make it narrower.
How the roof works (and the awkward detail explained)
This is how the roof pieces will go.
Actually this is over like that. See how they catch?
You tack those corners in.
Screw the wooden blocks on the inside.
That's the overlap of the pieces, where each roof piece rests in the one besides it.
That's what forms your roof strength. Each on over the one before.
Placing the 150º roof blocks
Roughly at half height, you measure the thickness of the block,
and then you can screw it in a position like this.
So the other piece of the roof wedges right into that corner.
Screw from the outside, this edge parallel to that edge.
And then the other board will slide up against that and into place.
About to finish the roof
It's clearly not quite a house, but it's definitly better than a tent.
If it was four times the price of a tent it really wouldn't be worth doing it.
But at a quarter of the price of a tent it's actually quite a technology.
Did I hear somebody just discovered the problem of the end?
Someone's got to go inside, that is correct.
Actually for safety reasons it's best for about 4 or 5 people inside
so the roof can not fall on them.
Placing the last two roof blocks
The surface of the block aligns up smoothly with the roof.
On one side you inset on the other side you outset.
The surface of the block is aligned with this surface smoothly
so the roof pieces fit right over them and you can screw from the outside.
The tricky last roof triangle
and lifting the roof on to the walls!
Let's drop this solar light in here.
Solar panels on the back, light on the front.
Now you can see what you're doing.
Does it have a disco mode?
So we want to slide it on those blocks that come right under the other side.
Final piece: you have to slide it in on one side, gently.
It's a job for hand power, not for leg power. A precision operation.
Slide it in! There you go, easy.
Now you need to move it up, push it up some.
(That side will go over rather than under, but don't worry about that side yet.)
Close enough!
Who's going to do the screws?
There's someone pressing on the other side?
Solid, nicely done!
Who's going to take a shot at the one up here?
You're pretty light.
More people, more people!
Can you guys inside lift the roof up a tiny bit, a few inches? Right!
Now we do the same thing again.
(holding the person who is tightning the screw by the waist
so he can work without leaning on the roof)
Beautiful!
Now the magic:
3 people on every wall.
Each lifting 10-15 pounds of weight because there are so many. Very gentle lift.
Everybody inside gets ready too.
We're going to lift it up and then we are going to hold it right where we are.
Lift it to full height but we're not going to move around any.
Ready? Lift slowly and gently.
Lift further so it's easier. Once you're at shoulder height it weighs less.
Everybody who is free go inside.
Very slowly begin to walk towards the hexayurt.
Pass the weight to the people inside.
Run to the other side of the building to take it when it comes at the back.
Now we need more people on the outside.
Lower very gently.
Keep it aligned with the corners, mind your fingers.
Add more screws to hold down the roof properly.
Placing the mid-wall roof-blocks
This is a 120º block and it goes right under the section --
where the two pieces of the roof cross.
Hold the block from below so that it's screwed tight.
Then from the inside you put in another screw --
and that locks it onto the roof.
First footing!
(it's a Scottish thing)
I can even put my hands up! Quite spacious. Thanks very much!
20 people inside and
some additional notes
For Burning Man people typically have so much equipment with them --
that they have to gang-carry stuff on a truck.
How many people do we have in here now?
17 and we have some space in the middle ... 19.
Come on in, it's a hexayurt, not a clown-car.
A tonne of shelter for not much money.
You don't have to build them out of wood.
You can use corrugated plastic and tape and then it can be folding.
Hexayurt experience.
Half the price of a relief tent, lasts 3 times as long, about the same size.
5 years, maybe 10?
It's on every continent, now -- test units only, though.
Antartica? If you use a nice thick structural insulated panel, why not?
Mongolian yurts. Every culture has a shack or a hut which is about this size.
The English had benders.
Gang carrying the finished hexayurt
and the relocatable building idea
We need 18 folks all the way around.
Don't lift before we have 3 on each side.
Focus your lift right at the corners where the hexayurt is screwed down to the wall.
Put your hand close to the corners.
For the people who are at the corners, hold by the corners --
everybody else hold by the middle.
We're going to go to that no-fire sign, see it? That's 5 feet.
So at the count of 3, lift very slowly - 1, 2, 3 - and walk.
So this is the relocatable building thing.
And stop, and down. Clap! Good!
What you do is you screw some aditional bits of wood to it --
to make it a frame to carry it by.
Then you get 20 people to carry it on their shoulders --
and you just walk somebody's house to where they are going to live in next.
That means you can build semipermanent structures --
that you can still relocate if you've got to move your camps.
For example in Haiti you could build hexayurts --
and if you have to relocate 5 miles to a new centre, you can do it.
It's a slow process but you have time and lots of manual labour on hand.
Thank you!
Back to parts
This is just running it backwards. Nice work folks. Nice!