Advice Needed for yurt platform

Hello everyone! I'm Jeanne, and my wife and I are moving to just outside of Taos, New Mexico. We're currently trapped in middle Tennessee, but our goal is to get out there at least by the summer. We had good luck with money and several initial purchases, but our luck and money have run out. I'll try to make this brief.
We lack money
We lack crafting skills
We do have one acre of semi-arid mesa with no trees to spare...all sand, sage, and rock of various sizes with a few junipers that are there to stay
We do have building materials for the yurt from Coloradoyurt

However, we lack a platform for said yurt

There is a complex reason for why we bought what we did and when we did, but it's not important to this thread.
We absolutely cannot afford a SIPS deck or anything prefabbed. We definitely cannot afford to pay a craftsman to build a wood platform no matter how cheap the wood is. We are not craftsman ourselves. We cannot afford to pay a cement company to do all the work. So we'll have to prepare the site at the very least.
My wife found the plans for the earthbag yurt platform on this site, and it seems like a godsend. We actually can afford the bags, barbed wire, and fill materials, and up to the cement pouring, we can do the labor, however tedious and taxing it is. Apparently, there is a company that sells lavarock just over an hour north of us in Antonito, CO that seems to sell 3//4" - 1 1/2" scoria. According to the plans, scoria should work as a fine insulator under our floor.
I'm genuinely scared of the cement pouring part of this plan. We have no experience, and this yurt is 24ft in diameter. That's a huge circle to create a concrete form for. I've read and seen pictures of plywood forms, but bending plywood into a (good enough) perfect circle and bracing it well enough for the pour sounds incredibly hard to me.

1) Does anybody have any videos or step-by-step pictures (or really detailed and descriptive) of how to make a 24' plywood concrete form?
2) Does anybody have a cheap alternative to a really big plywood concrete form that doesn't take skilled labor?
3) Does anybody have an alternative to a concrete floor that we could actually afford or build? I see pictures of earthen floors, but I don't understand what I'm looking at really. We want to be able to walk barefoot in our home any day of the year and not worry about moisture wicking up into our home.

This dwelling is not permanent, but we will be spending five, maybe six months out of the year trying to live in this yurt. Our only major hurtle at this stage is the top of our yurt platform aka, the floor. We need all the help we can get. Thank you for reading!

Hi Jeanne,

Welcome to Permies.  I know little about Yurts, but there are a number of people here who should be able to help you.  

Use what's on your building site (sand, rock), and augment with locally purchased materials ... definitely do an adobe floor, as this continues the use of your (free) site materials, and avoids concrete (very labor intensive, plus materials cost).

A site plan, before any effort, is the best way to proceed. Roads, cut & fill planning, materials storage, and obviously, where the building(s) and other functions are going. Orientation, views. Get everything planned out in advance ... throw down rock outlines on the site to help visualize.

I'd go with the earthbag theme, with something like:

1. two concentric circles of earthbags ... inner circle is for yurt, outer circle is for a "deck" around the yurt; you can vary the outer circle of deck to fit your needs for patios, other spaces, etc.
 - Elevate both to be above natural grade & water flow on the site. Use standard earthbag process for these circle "walls" (rubble bags at initial layer(s), and proper earthbag mix above, and plan for drainage.
 - Add a top layer of lumber (2x or 4x) to provide yurt attachment; no bending of plywood needed, just plan the cuts to be very near a circle when done. You'll have to bolt (or otherwwise tie) these down into the earthbag layers, so look at various earthbag websites to see how a roof is attached to earthbag walls, and you'll get the idea.
 - EB's have to be protected from light, so use site rocks to build a rock wall around each earthbag wall; this can be dry-stacked or mortared, depending on what rock you've got; 6 mil black plastic will provide final protection in between rock and earthbags.

2. plan all final elevations (depths) when building up the EB foundation walls such that there is room for earthen floor on the inner circle, and "deck" material of site stone or pavers. You'll either step down or ramp down from inner circle to outer circle.
 - did I mention site drainage? You must know how the site drains, and you'll want to "swale" such that no water from drainage gets near the EB's.
 - rainfall will naturally drain away, and not cause grief, if it ultimately has a route to daylight, and/or ties in with the drainage swales.

3. finish the rock/paver portion of "decks" & patio areas; you've got a sturdy surface that drains well.

4a. assemble the yurt over the inner circle, and now you can finish the floor, as it's protected from the elements.

4b. the adobe floor websites have the details of how to finish out this kind of floor, and methods abound to keep moisture from rising up. Site drainage would keep most moisture away anyway. The way these adobe floors are sealed (linseed oil, turps), you should have a neat finish for the bare feet (plus rugs).

So, you're using sand & rocks from the site, at each stage of construction, all for free.

You might be bringing in road base for roads and pads, and possibly scoria for insulation layers. Each truck load will cost, but I find this to be minimal compared to other (trade-intensive) methods. If no clay on the site, then perhaps a load of EB mix; can also do this to save digging clay, and mixing with your sand.

Hope this helps ...

Jeanne Darling wrote:Hello everyone! I'm Jeanne, and my wife and I are moving to just outside of Taos, New Mexico. We're currently trapped in middle Tennessee, but our goal is to get out there at least by the summer. We had good luck with money and several initial purchases, but our luck and money have run out. I'll try to make this brief.
We lack money
We lack crafting skills
We do have one acre of semi-arid mesa with no trees to spare...all sand, sage, and rock of various sizes with a few junipers that are there to stay
We do have building materials for the yurt from Coloradoyurt
We need all the help we can get. Thank you for reading!
...

Darlings...  I realize your project is now a number of months old so you may already have completed (or at least committed to) this project.

In any case, I live just a way down the river (Rio Grande) and have a 16' yurt also manufactured by Colorado Yurt Company, but 22 years ago!    My platform is a conventional wooden one which I build *very* simply from tongue-and-groove 2x6...  I may be over-estimating your ability to learn by doing, but this is not an out-of-reach project for anyone but the most all-thumbs DIY person.   The cost of the wood may be prohibitive in this market , I think I may have spent up to $1000 on mine 20 years ago!  But the Yurt itself was only $4000 then and I think yours must have cost well over $10K?

All that said, I second the suggestion to try an earth-bag or similar method.   I have considered building a *second* platform for my yurt for wintertime... my wood-decked location is in the shade of a big tree which makes it great in summer but as you know (by now) Northern NM winters can be quite cold and lots of sun only makes up for that if your aren't shaded from it!   My winter location would be in the center of a 60' circular garden and would be earth/stone works.   But I still haven't gotten a 'round tuit!

I don't know your *precise* location or soil makeup but I am betting that you have pretty good adobe-soil and maybe some stone to work with?  Definitely good enough for earth-bag with or without cement (superadobe) amendment.  Check out the Green Dream project and the Tiny Shiny Home project, both in southern AZ which has a similar environment, though not as cold of winters.

 I built a sunroom with a complete adobe floor with a walnut-oil/citrus finish which in fact is nearly as indestructable/waterproof as linoleum (look into the history of lin-oleum).   I used (mostly) local soil but then used some commercial clay (waste from ceramics-clay company in ABQ) .   I am *very* happy with the results.    

Regarding floor-insulation (scoria/cinders), I more strongly recommend  (in this climate) a *perimeter insulation* with an earth-thermal-coupled floor.     I also recommend designing/building a rocket-mass stove into your floor/platform.  More on that in a purple moosage.

- Steve

http://greendreamproject.org/
An interesting site

I second the comment that this post is a few months old and the project is probably already done or on its way. I know very little about yurts, but I have a couple suggestions of the base.

Related to concrete, the form doesn't have to be round. It could be an octagon, or hexagon, or just a square really. Whatever makes the forms easier to build. A thought on not having to build forms, but still use concrete... Could you just dig a circle down about a foot. Then put a layer of sandbags around the edge to avoid crumbling. Put down a few inches of something for drainage, maybe some insulation and vapor barrier and then pour the concrete. Use the ground itself for your forms. You don't need it to be perfect, just solid.

Another cheap option for temporary accommodations would be some sort of tarp or tyvek like material laid on the ground. Put up the yurt, lay down the tarps, and cover with throw rugs. It might be a little noisy walking, but it would be way cheaper than a whole platform, and would help keep the moisture at bay. We do this for camping and re-enacting.

Jeanne Darling wrote:Hello everyone! I'm Jeanne, and my wife and I are moving to just outside of Taos, New Mexico. We're currently trapped in middle Tennessee, but our goal is to get out there at least by the summer. We had good luck with money and several initial purchases, but our luck and money have run out. I'll try to make this brief.
We lack money
We lack crafting skills
We do have one acre of semi-arid mesa with no trees to spare...all sand, sage, and rock of various sizes with a few junipers that are there to stay
We do have building materials for the yurt from Coloradoyurt

However, we lack a platform for said yurt

There is a complex reason for why we bought what we did and when we did, but it's not important to this thread.
We absolutely cannot afford a SIPS deck or anything prefabbed. We definitely cannot afford to pay a craftsman to build a wood platform no matter how cheap the wood is. We are not craftsman ourselves. We cannot afford to pay a cement company to do all the work. So we'll have to prepare the site at the very least.
My wife found the plans for the earthbag yurt platform on this site, and it seems like a godsend. We actually can afford the bags, barbed wire, and fill materials, and up to the cement pouring, we can do the labor, however tedious and taxing it is. Apparently, there is a company that sells lavarock just over an hour north of us in Antonito, CO that seems to sell 3//4" - 1 1/2" scoria. According to the plans, scoria should work as a fine insulator under our floor.
I'm genuinely scared of the cement pouring part of this plan. We have no experience, and this yurt is 24ft in diameter. That's a huge circle to create a concrete form for. I've read and seen pictures of plywood forms, but bending plywood into a (good enough) perfect circle and bracing it well enough for the pour sounds incredibly hard to me.

1) Does anybody have any videos or step-by-step pictures (or really detailed and descriptive) of how to make a 24' plywood concrete form?
2) Does anybody have a cheap alternative to a really big plywood concrete form that doesn't take skilled labor?
3) Does anybody have an alternative to a concrete floor that we could actually afford or build? I see pictures of earthen floors, but I don't understand what I'm looking at really. We want to be able to walk barefoot in our home any day of the year and not worry about moisture wicking up into our home.

This dwelling is not permanent, but we will be spending five, maybe six months out of the year trying to live in this yurt. Our only major hurtle at this stage is the top of our yurt platform aka, the floor. We need all the help we can get. Thank you for reading!

Our house floor will be 4" scoria for drainage/insulation, landscape fabric to keep dirt from silting in the drainage layer, 4" compacted road base, 2" Adobe clay surface, oiled & finished (or clay tile in high-traffic areas).

If you want something quicker, far less labor intensive and possibly less finished for a temporary/ future guest structure, maybe you could do scoria/landscape fabric and then dirtcrete / soilcrete for top layer?

I won't apologize for giving this info so late because if you are anything like us, you haven't started yet! 😂

But if you have, please send us an update! It would be great to hear how your project is going.