Wanted: 32 Yards Hexayurt Tape Shipped to Canada

[Jared]

I have an idea for a mini hexayurt that I'd like to build and bring down from in Victoria, BC, Canada. The design only needs 32 yards of 6" tape. The problem is that 6" bi-directional filament tape is very hard to get in Canada (findtape.com is the only supplier that explicitly ships to Canada, and they charge $35 shipping for a single roll). Given that many big hexayurt builders order by the case, I was wondering if anybody can spare 32+ yards of tape? I'm happy to pay for the cost of the tape and shipping.

Thanks,
Jared

[jkisha]

You'd be better off in a tent. What is the point of building such a small enclosure that actually looks like it will be an uncomfortable, confining oven? I would definitely rethink this if I were you.

[Bob]

If all he uses it for is dirt naps, and it has some sort of vents, what's the diff? Same size as a traditional pup tent, looks like, but possibly quieter.

[Canoe]

... findtape.com is the only supplier that explicitly ships to Canada, and they charge $35 shipping for a single roll...

Perhaps you could find one that will ship by USPS, not the 'name' couriers.

Also, some of these suppliers will do more than what their web-site says - if you phone them and ask nicely.

With http://www.goodbuyguys.com/catalog/inde ... ath/22_200
3" & 6" bi-filament, and 3" foil (although 3" 2.7mil should be available at a plumbing supply shop - not the consumer box stores)
I had issues using a Canadian credit card to pay online. They sorted it out over the phone. Maybe they'll ship USPS instead of their usual UPS.

p.s.
r.e. the hexayurt design
Mixed results reported with furnace filters. Don't leave it open all the time the size of furnace filter. You want to be able to close it off too, as the fine playa dust will blow right through a filter, and way more so in a heavy wind.
For the swamp cooler, remember you only need (but do need) a small exhaust hear the top to let the warm/moist air be forced out as your fan brings cool/moist air in from the swamp cooler. Consider that it should be the same size as the duct? While the fan is running, it will create a positive pressure within your shelter, helping to keep dust out too.
I assume you'll be using a tape hinge to join the two sheets. Perhaps a nylon strap, all the way around the two sheets and across the ground to the other side (make the triangle shape), one at the front, one at the back and one at the middle, would stop the bottom of the sheet from spreading apart, and hold the structure together. You may even be able to have a scrap of nylon strap sewn to the strap at the ground at each side with a grommet for a tent peg of your choice. All you'd need would be a way to prevent the wind from blowing the bottoms of the sheets inward. If you weren't shy of space/weight, you could table-saw an 8' 2x3" with a grove for the bottom of the sheet to sit in...

[Rice]

3M sells the above mentioned tape in Canada.

10 minutes with Mz Google found the following:

Scotch® Bi-Directional Filament Tape 8959
High performance. Polypropylene backing reinforced with bi-directional continuous glass yarn across length and width. Typical 150 lb/inch width tensile strength in longitudinal direction; medium strength in cross direction.



http://products3.3m.com/catalog/ca/en00 ... utput_html

-=-=--=-==-=-=-=-=-=--=-==-=-=-=-=-=-==--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Scotch® Bi-Directional Filament Tape 8959 Clear, 75 mm x 50 m
Scotch® Bi-Directional Filament Tape 8959 is a clear polypropylene backing reinforced in both directions with glass yarn filaments with a synthetic rubber resin adhesive.
3M Id : 70-0061-3909-4

Additional Information

Scotch® Bi-Directional Filament Tape 8959 provides 150 lbs./in. width tensile strength ideal for heavy duty box closure, strapping, bundling and reinforcing applications.

http://products3.3m.com/catalog/ca/en00 ... utput_html

=-=-=-==--=-=-=-==-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=

http://www3.3m.com/catalog/ca/en001/man ... utput_html

Case Lot

[Canoe]

He's after six inch.
The bi-filament at good-guys is 220 lbs, both directions.

[Bob]

Bet you could make an actual coffin with a single sheet of that crap. Plus, it's a *hexagon*.



OTOH, you might get mistaken for the beer cooler.

[Canoe]

OTOH, you might get mistaken for the beer cooler.

I was considering making a "cooler shed" out of three sheets. A simple box. Keeps the coolers out of the sun and hot air, with the air inside the "shed" cooler than outside air due to the ground heat sink. Still need to keep the coolers off the ground though.

[Canoe]

...OTOH, you might get mistaken for the beer cooler...

Wait a minute. People put beer INTO a cooler too...

[jkisha]

If all he uses it for is dirt naps, and it has some sort of vents, what's the diff? Same size as a traditional pup tent, looks like, but possibly quieter.

Yes, but the difference is that there is no give in it at all, like with a pup tent. And it's so small the air circulation won't be good at all, even with windows. And if he uses windows that defeats one of the main features of being relatively dust free. We built our second and subsequent rooms with 6' walls because the 4' walls were restrictive and I got tired of hitting my head on the ceiling when near the sides of the yurt and bending over to get through a 3'6" door got old fast too.

Maybe it's just my old man perspective, but if the choice for me was between that yurt or a pup tent, I'd prefer the pup tent and I HATE tent camping.

[Jared]

Great suggestions Canoe, thank you. I'll try talking to the suppliers one-on-one. I'm also trying to track down 3" tape domestically, because this design has less strain that a full hexayurt.

r.e. the hexayurt design
Mixed results reported with furnace filters. Don't leave it open all the time the size of furnace filter. You want to be able to close it off too, as the fine playa dust will blow right through a filter, and way more so in a heavy wind.
For the swamp cooler, remember you only need (but do need) a small exhaust hear the top to let the warm/moist air be forced out as your fan brings cool/moist air in from the swamp cooler. Consider that it should be the same size as the duct? While the fan is running, it will create a positive pressure within your shelter, helping to keep dust out too.

So do I need any filter on the in vent or will the swamp cooler pads catch all the dust? And then definitely a filter for the out vent that can be closed when the cooler is off.

I assume you'll be using a tape hinge to join the two sheets. Perhaps a nylon strap, all the way around the two sheets and across the ground to the other side (make the triangle shape), one at the front, one at the back and one at the middle, would stop the bottom of the sheet from spreading apart, and hold the structure together. You may even be able to have a scrap of nylon strap sewn to the strap at the ground at each side with a grommet for a tent peg of your choice. All you'd need would be a way to prevent the wind from blowing the bottoms of the sheets inward. If you weren't shy of space/weight, you could table-saw an 8' 2x3" with a grove for the bottom of the sheet to sit in...

How about combine these two ideas and fasten the nylon strap to the walls so they hold the walls both open and closed?

[Canoe]

So do I need any filter on the in vent or will the swamp cooler pads catch all the dust? And then definitely a filter for the out vent that can be closed when the cooler is off.

If you're using Figjam's type of filter, it's dust tolerant and the dust gets washed down and collects in the bottom. So, filter on intake not required.

...Perhaps a nylon strap, all the way around the two sheets and across the ground to the other side (make the triangle shape), one at the front, one at the back and one at the middle, would stop the bottom of the sheet from spreading apart, and hold the structure together. You may even be able to have a scrap of nylon strap sewn to the strap at the ground at each side with a grommet for a tent peg of your choice. All you'd need would be a way to prevent the wind from blowing the bottoms of the sheets inward. If you weren't shy of space/weight, you could table-saw an 8' 2x3" with a grove for the bottom of the sheet to sit in...

How about combine these two ideas and fasten the nylon strap to the walls so they hold the walls both open and closed?

Yup.
One way is to have the nylon strap run both sides of the sheet, so the sheet is enclosed in a "loop". But, you will need the extra nylon strap to peg down to the playa to hold them during a stiff wind any way, so with the strap running up one side and over the top and down the other, with both ends secure to the playa - would likely do the same job? Bottoms can't move towards each other unless the strap stretches or the pegs lift up.
The tape is strong enough to do the job up and over the top, it's just a matter of how to secure it to something at the ends for pegging to the playa. The trick for the guylines may work somehow, but I can't picture how right now. A nylon strap is reusable and easy to add a grommet to for pegging. I guess you could have the tape loop with the plastic tube for securing a guyline so the tube ends up a foot or two above the playa, with the sheet resting against the tent peg and the guyline tightened to hold it secure?
The tape doesn't last for too many burns. The nylon strap should be good pretty much indefinitely as it's only exposed to UV on playa for a week each year.
Thinking about it, nylon strapping could be used for hinges, except it's not water proof so you'd need tape over it anyway. Perhaps a rubber coating for water-proofing, but then you're moving away from the playa-tested materials, perhaps too much.

Have you done the calculation how how many feet of 3" you need?

[Canoe]

Too complicated.
It's two sheets, edges taped with 3" foil tape (moop, skin, breathing), taped/hinged along the top.
Nylon strap (don't need tubular; 3" flat readily available), 8' for the sides plus the distance you want the bottoms to be apart (4' ?), plus 3" to 4" for overlap for sewing it into a loop. Make two.
When the sheets are unfolded/opened within the loop, they'll only open so far.
Nylon strap Tabs with grommets, sewn to loop on each side (use a 3" to 4" overlap), close to but not quite at ground, so when they're pegged to the playa they tension the loop to the ground.
The pegged loop over the top prevents it from closing.

The closed end could be angled to shed wind better?

I'm seeing one roll of 3" foil and one roll of 3" bi-direction filament?

[Jared]

Too complicated.
It's two sheets, edges taped with 3" foil tape (moop, skin, breathing), taped/hinged along the top.
Nylon strap (don't need tubular; 3" flat readily available), 8' for the sides plus the distance you want the bottoms to be apart (4' ?), plus 3" to 4" for overlap for sewing it into a loop. Make two.
When the sheets are unfolded/opened within the loop, they'll only open so far.
Nylon strap Tabs with grommets, sewn to loop on each side (use a 3" to 4" overlap), close to but not quite at ground, so when they're pegged to the playa they tension the loop to the ground.
The pegged loop over the top prevents it from closing.

Okay, so if the strap runs all the way around, how is it attached to the walls to hold them out. Tape? It could be sewn to the tarp on the bottom, but that's a pain and only solves that side.

I'm seeing one roll of 3" foil and one roll of 3" bi-direction filament?

The foil just for fire protection? I haven't looked into the details of tape hinges yet, will 3" work for building them?
Any advice on finding those tapes locally? I've heard someone on here say plumbing supply stores.

[Canoe]

The foil tape is to go all around the edge to seal in the fibres before you start taping your structure together. You don't want them getting loose on the playa as moop, nor do you want them on your skin or breathing them in. You do this before you reach the playa.

No need to attach the loop to the sides.
If the strap is over the top and pegged to the ground and stays pegged to the ground, the bottom of the sides cannot fold together unless they break or you dig a hole.
Lets say you keep it simple with the sides 4'. That's 4' up, 4' down, and lets say 4' feet apart at the bottom. They're enclosed by a 12' strap/loop, running up the outside over the top, and across the ground at the bottom. You've got an equilateral triangle.
Attach a 1 foot strap to the loop, using 3" of overlap for sewing, high enough on each side so the grommet on the strap ends up six inches from the ground and can have a rope reach the ground/tent-peg right where the sides meet the ground. One each side and the tension on them holds the loop tight over the two sides. You can't fold the sides together.

Try and fold one side toward the other, and it'd have to go through the ground, or raise the peak, which it can't because it's held down by the loop.

a frame.jpg

All you need to do is seal the edges with foil tape, use the bi-filament tape to build a hinge along the top and attach whatever you're doing for the ends, make your loop and sew the tabs on and add the grommets.
The only trick is you want the loop held to the ground with tension with the pegs right at the ground immediately beside/tight-to the sides pulling the loop tight over the top.

Take a piece of card board, fold it to work as your hinge. Open it in a loop of string.

[Canoe]

Easier to make a hinge using the 6", but easy enough to do using 3" with an overlap.

[hexayurt]

So the point of the Hexayurt family of designs for burning man is [b]it's an easy way to build with high quality insulation boards.[/b]

The silver on the outside rejects something like 70% of the incoming solar energy, and then there's R6.5 of insulating foam to get through.

It's a totally different proposition, thermally speaking, from a sheet of nylon and a sheet of cotton with an airgap. Now, we don't know [b]exactly[/b] how Jared's H2 will perform under these conditions, but here's my guess. It's got a *crazy* surface-to-volume ratio: big slabs which will absorb tons of heat. It's also got a huge amount of floor, which provides a lot of thermal sink. So I think it's going to be pretty cool most of the time, but in the noon of the day, the thermal sink will be overpowered by the thermal gain, and it'll warm very rapidly, but cool down again fast after noon.

That's a guess, based on experience, but not on thermal modeling or actual data. But compare performance to a tent, which gets unbearably hot around 8AM and stays that way

Nice work, Jared, and enjoy!

V>

[Jared]

Alright, thanks to Vinay and hexayurttape.com the tape is on its way!

Any thoughts on the material for the tarp floor? I'm thinking some sort of polyethylene, either sheet, tarp or Tyvek.

[Canoe]

How'd your mini-hexayurt work out? Good, bad or otherwise?
Did everything arrive in time?
Photos?

[Jared]

Thanks for asking, Canoe. It worked fairly well. My write-up is here: http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_H2

[Canoe]

Jared It used 2" polyiso panels painted white.
I discovered that one person's body heat was sufficient to heat a closed H2 to an uncomfortable level. The swamp cooler I had was insufficient for cooling the H2 in the middle of the afternoon and the furnace filter duct didn't seem to increase airflow very much. My typical use was to prop the door vertical while sleeping at night to provide airflow and open the door all the way once the sun rose in the morning. I was able to sleep comfortably until approximately 10:30AM. I wasn't inside the H2 during any dust storms, but wind never blew the door in and very little dust ended up inside.

Clever. Cutting the triangles off the ends let you have a lower wind profile and keep material use down to two sheets.

Very interesting. Thank you!

White paint absorbs a lot more heat than the shiny foil. Why paint the shiny foil that reflects sunlight and heat away?

I can see your swamp cooler in one of the photos. Given the much larger spaces that swamp coolers cool, and you reporting it wasn't up to the job, I'm very curious to know how your swamp cooler was constructed?

[Jared]

White paint absorbs a lot more heat than the shiny foil. Why paint the shiny foil that reflects sunlight and heat away?

I couldn't find the foil polyiso panels in my mid-sized Canadian town. Apparently they're not used very much as a building product outside the US. The only ones I could find were primed with a thin layer of white paint and I figured painting them was easier than gluing foil to them, although I may have been wrong. The research I've done suggests that the different between white and foil is not as big as you suggest?

I can see your swamp cooler in one of the photos. Given the much larger spaces that swamp coolers cool, and you reporting it wasn't up to the job, I'm very curious to know how your swamp cooler was constructed?

It was basically a hybrid between Figjam's bucket and box designs. It turns out that there is a lot of nuance in Figjam's designs that you lose when you fuck with them. Next year I'll just make a bucket.

[Canoe]

I couldn't find the foil polyiso panels in my mid-sized Canadian town. Apparently they're not used very much as a building product outside the US. The only ones I could find were primed with a thin layer of white paint and I figured painting them was easier than gluing foil to them, although I may have been wrong. The research I've done suggests that the different between white and foil is not as big as you suggest?

It was basically a hybrid between Figjam's bucket and box designs. It turns out that there is a lot of nuance in Figjam's designs that you lose when you fuck with them. Next year I'll just make a bucket.

I've been doing a lot of looking into heat reflection for on-playa use. There's a meaningful difference between foil and white heat-reflective paint, and a huge difference between those and white paint, even if gloss (which has a slight edge over flat). White paint will reflect sunlight away, but not much of the infra-red in the sunlight or radiating from heated ground. The foil sided sheets are between 70% and 90% reflectance, depending on how shiny the foil is. If you go with gluing the "space/survival blanket" (aluminized mylar) to the sides of your existing structure, it rates from 94% down to 70%, and lower if it gets crumpled. The over-all winner seems to be: foil-sided bubble-wrap, comes in near 94% before it gets crinkled a bit (which lowers the reflectance slightly), and if you manage to crinkle it a lot it's usually limited to a low end of 70%, as the bubble wrap limits how much it can get crinkled.

Keep in mind that 70% does a lot of heat reflectance, and of light that would get turned into heat. So, for hexayurts on-playa, the foil-sized polyiso at 70% to 90% is the choice - good to great reflectance, and the foil is already attached and likely to stay there. Given you've already used paint on the sides of yours, you might have issues getting foil to glue to it or stay there. Your best bang for the buck with what you already have might be a paint with lots of shiny aluminum pigment, the more shiny aluminum the better as it will reflect heat away more. There is a rattle-can paint with aluminum in it; it's been posted on eplaya.

Rustoleum HD Aluminum is 50% aluminum.
You can burnish it to a fairly reflective sheen, even after it is dirty. I use a paper towel for that.I brush it on, but it can be sprayed.

You're at some disadvantage with such a small structure. Anywhere inside is close to a wall where heat can duct from the sun-heated ground right on the other side. With larger hexayurts, this doesn't seem to be a factor, balanced with the larger floor area that is shaded and will sink heat away into the ground, which is around 62F. I have no idea how much of a factor this may be.
And your tarp edge can absorb heat. But your stuff seemed to provide shade on the sun-side of the structure. If you have a heat problem with your structure with a shiny coating on it, you could get one of the space-blanket/tarps:

Available lined. With a stronger backing (typically orange). Also available with a heavier reenforcing lining/backing, which is typically a cheap plastic tarp or ground sheet (commonly red, blue, green or camo), often with grommets.

And stake that out on the ground to keep the ground right next to your structure protected from heat. Such a tarp could be installed over your structure, but that's a pain and has to be secured against wind.

But, with a shiny heat-reflective surface on your structure, or even exactly as you are right now, I'd expect a working swamp cooler to more than do the job you need.

Figjam's bucket cooler is the tried & true, but for your size of shelter, note that he reports that in the middle of the day he has to wear a sweater in his size of shelter.
You might be better off trouble shooting your smaller design. Looks like you've already got the correct battery. Post images and we'll see what we can do.

[FIGJAM]

Slight correction.

The cooler in the playapod is a little bigger than the bucket cooler and blows right across my bed, so I nap under a fleece.

The bucket cooler should work just right for your space.

[Canoe]

Really?
Having that much cool air flow over him won't give him the chills or pneumonia?

[Jared]

Thanks for the tips guys, but I won't be bringing the H2 back this year. First, I tried shipping it wrapped in a tarp with no plywood on the sides (the ratio of plywood to actual structure would have been ludicrously high!) so it got fairly dinged up. It'd still work, but I'd have to ship it more carefully this year. Second, I'm hopefully bringing a partner.

I think I'll be moving my evaporative cooler hardware into a Figjam approved design so hopefully I get less leakage and better performance.

[FIGJAM]

Let me know how large the space is and I'll steer you in the right direction.

[Canoe]

Take him up on that.
You'll save yourself a lot of time and grief, and you and your partner will be comfortable on-playa.
If your shelter doesn't perform the best for heat, you'll be able to trump the heat with the swamp-cooler...