Setting Up the Wall

Believe it or not, after all that work, you are finally ready to set up your wall for the first time. Pick a wind-free day to do so. Once you gain a bit of experience, you’ll be able to set up the ger during windy conditions too.

1.Prepare the layout. On the ground, trace a circle roughly 15 feet across in your mind’s eye. Lay the door with the bottom on the imaginary circle, facing out; lay the three (still-folded-up) walls out in a similar manner with the bottoms on the imaginary circle.

2.Raise the wall. At this point, lift one of the walls and unfold it, so it covers roughly a third of the circumference of the circle. You’ll find that curving the lattice wall to follow the circle allows it to stay upright by itself. Now, repeat the procedure with the second wall. Place it so that the first wall and the second wall overlap in such a way that the top joints (where the roof poles will lie) appear to be continuous. Join the sections of wall together with 2-yard pieces of webbing so any overlapping pieces of wall are joined together. Repeat for the third wall. Be sure to leave 4 feet or so where the door lies. When all is secured, you get to move things around a little, so the wall is nice and round with an even height, which should be the same as the door, roughly 5 feet. When you’re happy, raise the door, and place the lattice work of one section inside the corner where the plated tie rings are. Tie the lattice to the door using a 3-yard piece of webbing.

Repeat this for the other side of the door. You should now have one continuous circle with a doorway. It may at first be a little fiddly to set the walls and door up properly, but after a bit of experience, it’ll become second nature.

3.Attach the tension band. At this point, tie one end of an 18-yard rope or webbing strap to the top plated tie ring in the doorframe, and walk it around the top of your wall to the other side of your door. Tie it off there. You’ll want to make sure that this rope sits nice and level and fits the circle snugly as it will form the tension rope against which the entire weight of the roof will push. You can help keep it level by flipping the rope over one in every four or five diagonal slats.

Your walls should now enclose a space roughly 15 feet across. The flexibility of the ger means you can make it slightly larger (lower, with less roof pitch) or slightly smaller (higher, with a bigger roof pitch). This flexibility also allows you to put it up on less-than-flat ground, as you’ll be able to compensate by having parts of the wall slightly less expanded.

Making the Roof Ring

Now that the walls are raised, it’s time to build the roof of the ger. The central part of the roof, and the most important, is the roof ring, often referred to as the smoke hole. The official term is the “tono.” Again, there are hundreds of ways to build one. I will describe one in-depth, a wooden one anyone can make, and another one, made out of metal, more briefly for those of you with basic welding skills.

1.Count the roof poles needed. Some people lay one over every top joint in the wall as well as the notches we made in the top of the doorway, while others prefer to lose a little weight and use one pole for every two joints. I alternate between both, depending on what weather I am expecting. With that in mind, I count a potential for 52 roof poles for the roof of the ger being described here. The roof ring is going to have to be manufactured in such a way that it’ll support exactly the same number of roof poles.

2.Draw the roof rings onto wood. To start, organize yourself enough 1-inch-thick sheets of plywood to contain five 3-foot, circular shapes. Get a nail and a pen, and tie them together with a bit of string so there are 18 inches of string between the two. Hammer the nail into the board at the point where the center of the circle will be. To conserve wood, do it in such a way that the pen will just about reach the edges of the board. With the pen, draw a circle. Retie the string, leaving the nail in place, so instead of 18 inches, the string measures 12 inches between nail and pen. Draw a second circle inside the original one.

3.Saw out the roof rings. Drill a hole big enough to hold your electric saw blade on the inside of the inner circle. Using a saw capable of rounding corners, follow both circles. You should now hold a ring in your hand which has an overall diameter of 3 feet, and an inner diameter of 2 feet. Place this ring on another part of the sheet of plywood, and trace both edges again before sawing it out so you have two identical circles. Repeat this process 3 more times to create five identical circles.

4.Glue the circles together. You should use a strong wood glue that can withstand damp or wet conditions. Clamp the rings down as tight as you can or place a heavy weight on top. When the drying time indicated on the glue bottle has elapsed, remove the roof ring from under the weight.

5.Shape the roof ring and mark the holes. Use a surform tool to shape the roof ring as round as possible, both the outside and inside. Next, measure the circumference, which should be around 113 inches, and divide this by the number of roof poles you intend to use. In my case, with 52 roof poles, the figure is slightly above 2 inches. Decide which side of the roof-ring you’d like to face inside the ger and make marks representing each roof pole along the outer rim of the roof ring approximately 1-1/2 inches above the bottom.

6.Drill the holes. The next step involves using a chisel-style drill bit to drill the 52 holes through the wall of the roof ring where you marked them in step 5. As the poles will be sitting at somewhat of an angle to the surface of the roof ring, you’ll need to drill into the surface at an angle. It’s not critical if it’s a bit off here and there, so holding the drill at roughly 25 degrees from the horizontal, pointing downward works well enough. If you wish to be a bit more precise, you could lean the ring against the wall at the desired angle and drill straight down instead. You can help accuracy and preserve the sharpness of the more expensive chisel-like drill bits by pre-drilling the holes with a smaller-diameter drill bit. Drill all the holes to a depth of no more than 3 inches, which should be more than enough to hold the roof poles securely.