Keeping Mongolian gers warm during frigid winters

Capstone Engineering students at BYU have been working to find a way to better insulate gers (traditional Mongolian houses, also known as yurts), replacing dangerous coal heaters with electric heaters. In the winter months, the pollution in Mongolia’s capital of Ulaanbaatar is three times worse than Beijing. The toxic air is responsible for roughly 3,300 deaths annually, most of those being children. “It’s the leading cause of death for children under five, and it’s very preventable,” says BYU student Ivy Running, who visited Mongolia as part of an engineering team from BYU’s Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering.

The students devised two solutions to combat this pollution problem: retrofit existing gers with an insulation system and create a newly designed, energy-efficient ger structure. Both were designed to require about 1/5 the heating energy of a traditional ger.

After two semesters of building prototypes in Provo, Utah, 15 students from Brigham Young University and their faculty advisors were ready to travel to Ulaanbaatar and test their solutions. They worked hand in hand with Mongolian crews to retrofit and build the gers so local contractors could continue producing the same designs once the team left. “I worked multiple days with a builder, using maybe three English words in the English language, and we worked seamlessly together,” says manufacturing engineering student Austin Boyce.

The results were miraculous. The morning after their first retrofit, the anxious team was overjoyed to watch the homeowner exit his ger looking quite comfortable, wearing a T-shirt. While temperatures that night dipped below 7 degrees Fahrenheit, measurements showed the interior of the ger stayed consistently above 80 degrees all night. “It worked, and I kind of teared up a little bit,” Running says. “It was really a miracle. This thing that we’ve been working so hard on for so long actually works the way that we thought it would.”

At the end of their trip, students and faculty met with Mongolia’s prime minister, who commended them for their work and expressed interest in moving these efforts along. The retrofit effort has evolved to include DIY kits for Mongolian families. Trainings are held on Saturdays to demonstrate how to install them. It is anticipated that the project will insulate between 5,000 and 10,000 gers annually. “The students realized that this is real,” says faculty advisor Brian Mazzeo. “Seeing how the design decisions you made thousands of miles away are actually being implemented in the field is a fantastic experience.” By using their skills to help others, BYU students and graduates internalize lessons of lifelong service and problem-solving for the benefit of the world.