PLEASE NOTE: The process of permitting a yurt will take time so it’s best to start as soon as you are thinking about a purchase. Please consult with your local municipality regarding building codes, laws, and permit fees before committing. For assistance with this process you may wish to seek the services of a qualified engineer or planner.
By Laura McLeod and Meredith Rush-Inglis
We are part owners of a 300 square foot Super Ger along with an insulated platform from Groovy Yurts, which we purchased and assembled with a group of childhood friends. At the time, we were unaware that our municipality treats yurts as buildings and so we didn’t apply for a permit. As a result, our municipality issued to us an Order to Comply with the building code. We began working with our municipal staff and council to find a fair and reasonable way to permit our alternative structure. In all, it took us 2 years to take this yurt from the seed of an idea to a built structure that is legitimate in the eyes of the local government. Our hope is that, by telling the story of this journey, we might help future yurt-owners to reach this end state quicker and easier than was our experience.
Our Yurt From Seed to Fruit
We are two adult children of a rural cooperative community in eastern Ontario, Canada. In the fall of 2015, the members of this community, now in their seventies, invited their children, the 2nd generation, to discuss the community’s future. At that first meeting, several of us agreed that we needed a space on the property where we could be away from our parents’ homes. This would allow us to develop our own relationships with the land, the community, and with each other as distinct from our family experience.
The members agreed with our proposal and offered to contribute financially to make it happen. Our choice of structure was a yurt. The traditional Mongolian yurt is full of symbolism, from the threshold that holds the spirit to the serpentine rope to bring fertility to the domed skylight that connects us to the universe. Yurts are the homes of nomadic herders who pack up every few months to take their herds to new land. Our yurt was made by a Mongolian family and imported by a Canadian company, Groovy Yurts.
We loved everything about this perfect structure, not least of all its impermanence and the tiny footprint it leaves on the land. The co-op already has 6 permanent homes and we didn’t want to unnecessarily add to the infrastructure we would eventually be responsible for. The yurt and insulated platform (made by Groovy Yurts) arrived in the summer of 2016. Its assembly was the occasion for a big reunion and celebration for the 2nd generation, and a sign of hope for a continued legacy for the co-op members.
We quickly furnished and fine-tuned the yurt’s setup and made regular use of the space during its first season. The project was an incredible success which quickly led to a new proposal, one that would remove obstacles in the co-op’s membership application process and allow the 2nd generation to become full members in our own right. Through the yurt we found each other and our connection to this place. Now we’re preparing to succeed our parents and take up the stewardship role they’ve sustained for 45 years.
Order to Comply
In December 2016, just 5 months after raising our yurt, the co-op received a letter in the mail from the municipality detailing an Order to Comply, i.e., comply with the Ontario Building Code by obtaining a building permit for our yurt. This came as a complete surprise, as we’d been operating under the false assumption that yurts, being impermanent, would be considered tents and not subject to the Building Code. We quickly contacted the local Building Inspector and met with him in person. He told us that, under the municipal Building By-law, we required a permit with a “seasonal dwelling” classification, the cost of which was $1875 plus a fine of $300 for building without a permit. He also required an engineer’s certification of the structural integrity of the platform and substructure.
We reluctantly filled out the permit application and submitted it ahead of the first order deadline in early January 2017. We began obtaining estimates for the engineering work and were granted an extension of the Order to Comply until May to allow time for the engineer’s analysis. We used this time to become experts in Building Code and By-law deficiencies and to prepare a case for policy change at the municipal level. We sent a letter to the Building Inspector outlining our arguments to which he responded that he had no power to approve policy change. We requested to make a presentation at a council meeting and did so in late April with the following goals:
- Exemption from the $300 fine for building without a permit.
- Relief from the $1875 building permit fee based on our limited usage.
- Creation of a new building category based on a yurt’s unique features
Yurt-Gate
There was debate among the councillors and a motion was carried to request a staff report on yurts before making a decision regarding our permit. The report was prepared by the Chief Building Official who strongly recommended at the next council meeting that the original fee should stand per the existing building by-law. The mayor, who was sympathetic to our situation, moved to defer a decision on our request and to instruct the Building Department, County Planning Department and Township Planning Department to meet to look at different applications of yurts.
Local media was present at these meetings and our story became front page news with a newly-coined term: Yurt-gate! We kept in contact with municipal staff as they met to prepare their comprehensive report to council. At its June meeting Council decided to reduce our permit fee by using the classification of a freestanding deck at a total cost of $624 including the fine for building without a permit.
In September 2017 the Chief Building Official inspected the yurt and requested confirmation from the supplier, Groovy Yurts, on a small variance from the substructure designs. After this was provided, a final inspection was completed in November—just shy of 1 year from receipt of the Order to Comply, and 2 years from the yurt’s conception. The permit was closed. We were ecstatic to remove that bright red building permit card from the side of our dear yurt, which now sits firmly planted and completely legitimate.
Policy Change in the Wind
The municipality continued to work on updates to their building by-law fees to be fair with small and unique projects such as yurts, and to provide incentive to apply for building permits. In June 2018 building permit fees were reduced with a minimum charge of $80. Presenting the changes at a public meeting, the same Chief Building Official who had, a year earlier, argued against reducing our fee used yurts as a justification. “Yurts have been around for thousands of years but they’re completely different than a 1,500 square foot house with radiant heating and a two-car garage,” he said.
We’re very proud that our persistence in this journey toward permitting our yurt resulted in policy change and we hope that others will use our example to do the same in other jurisdictions.
How to Get There
Our journey to get to a place of celebration was not easy and not without bureaucratic mazes to navigate. By taking a calm and professional approach, we built new relationships with municipal staff, had fruitful discussions and opened some eyes to alternative ways of living. However, it was very important in all our interactions that we remained respectful of our municipality’s policies while presenting our case for change. Change can be difficult when it requires you to think in a different way —we became change-makers. Staff and elected officials (not to mention members of the public who read the local paper) learned about Mongolian culture and history and about how yurts have been beautifully designed, refined, and perfected over thousands of years of structural evolution. We’ve since been invited to showcase our yurt in a local ‘Homes & Garden’ tour and we continue to look for opportunities to share our love of this ancient structure.
You can be a change-maker too. In Ontario, the local municipality is the authority for enforcing the Building Code. Therefore, your first point of contact should be your local municipality. Get in touch with the municipal building department for information on the applicability of the Code and whether a building permit is required. If it is, prepare yourself to skillfully and calmly navigate the system.
Get to know the Code as well as your municipality’s by-laws. You may need to politely argue for common sense. When dealing with our municipality, we came across three main challenges:
- Municipalities are inconsistent in their handling of alternative structures. Some municipalities have categorized yurts as temporary or non-permanent structures that do not require building permits. However, some building officials take the position that a yurt fits the Ontario Building Code definition of a structure and requires a permit based on its size and usage.
- Yurts often do not fit neatly into any category under municipal building by-laws and can be subject to the same categories and fees as more expensive permanent structures.
- As in all areas of life, personalities can be challenging and pride can be an obstacle, especially with those in positions of authority. A building official may not appreciate having their authority challenged by citizens or elected officials.
Try not to get too fed up with the challenges of blending a nomadic culture’s style of living into a settler culture. There is still much work to be done around sharing what yurts are and what benefits they can provide for people seeking alternative lifestyles. As a fellow yurt-lover, your conviction and clarity of purpose will provide good fuel for inspired and considerate interactions with your municipality.
For the Truly Fuelled... More Tips and Fun Facts!
Become familiar with the definition of “yurt” vs. “building” vs. “tent” in your jurisdiction because you may need to politely argue for clarity of these terms.
The Ontario Building Code does not specifically mention the word “Yurt” but common definitions exist, for example:
The Code does, however, indicate what a building is:
A structure occupying an area greater than ten square meters consisting of a wall, roof and floor or any of them or a structural system serving the function hereof including all plumbing, works, fixtures and service systems appurtenant thereto, a structure occupying an area of ten square meters or less that contains plumbing, including the plumbing appurtenant thereto,
- plumbing not located in a structure,
- a sewage system, or
- structures designated in the building code
And it indicates when a permit is not required for a tent:
A tent or group of tents is exempt from the requirement to obtain a permit under section 8 of the Act and is exempt from compliance with the Code provided that the tent or group of tents are:
- not more than 60 m2 in aggregate ground area
- not attached to a building, and
- constructed more than 3m from other structures