It Would Have Been A Long Fall With A Yurt Rope

Oh, the pun we have.

This Autumn would have been interminable, if we'd not fixed the yurt ropes. The ones that hold on the all-weather flap that covers the top wheel are always stretched tight. In a wind, they thrum like halyards aboard ship -- and if you've never sailed, they thrum like the strings of a really big guitar. Continually. That can become relaxing, actually, but they are close enough to the yurt roof that they also slap, rapidly, against it. That is a bit less relaxing, a bit more techno.

The solution is... take the all-weather flap off? In the middle of the biggest rain-borne floods in English history? Hmmm. Strap the straps with more tightly-strung straps? Makes it a lot harder to open the skylight when we've got sun...

The solution is pipe lagging! Or, if you're American, pipe insulation foam. String the ropes through that, and it lies lightly against the yurt roof. Not only does its porous surface dissipate wind energy through small-scale turbulence (or so I imagine), but it also transmits all oscillations very gently to the roof surface. The ropes haven't thrummed once. And now they're easier to maneuver, due to the fact that the width of the insulation makes them less able to catch on other ropes or the edges of the top wheel.

Go us.