I live abroad and recently have acquired 25 acres of land. I'm exceptionally interested in alternative building materials. Primarily because the only thing they used to build here is cinder blocks (or rather they're poor third world stand in).
I have to deal with typhoon winds twice a year and earthquakes. I have been exploring dome construction. I was very interested in monolithic domes. However the cost of acquiring skilled people to actually help do a build is limited.
I was just surveying the land, and remember geodesic domes. I am almost completely sold on using them as a greenhouse for my seedlings.
But that got me thinking about building a geodesic dome home. In steel frame construction. As I can have the pieces milled for very fair rate here.
Wondering if any of you have experience with this or general feedback.
I had a friend that had a Dome Home business back in the '90s. His method was to cut the triangles out of 3/4" plywood, mill the edges at an angle to create the curvature, then attached 2x4s on all three edges. The 2x4s were drilled and bolted together. It made for a strong dome as he built one in CA and before he had it bolted to the foundation an earthquake happened. The dome went rolling down the street for two blocks with no damage whatsoever. He just picked it up with a crane and put it back on the cement foundation.
Here’s a modest DIY domehome in thailand that this dude build with cement block and brick in the smaller corners. Its really cute and it shows the construction. http://steveareen.com/domehome.html
Edit I don’t know how safe this would be in an earthquake though!
I spray foam insulated a wood construction, dome shaped youth hostel a few years back. A local university designed it for a load baring test. It was 3 stories and about 60ft wide at the base, and they stacked sand bags on a sort of crown shaped deck built around the top. It was Oval and not totally round, but they engineered it for 30,000lb safe rating, and got to 47,000 lb before stress criteria targets (compression) were met. We sprayed 3” solid polyurethane spray foam to the entire interior, and the engineers rated it for “X” amount of compression at 65,000 lb. it had a 24” steel ring inside under the 3rd story floor with 5 or 6 cables spanning straight out to hold its guts in. They ended up doing a follow up test on our spray foam cause they got to 82,000 lb with no observable compression before shitting their pants and calling it. They thought our foam must have been something special, but that little 3 story egg could have brushed off a pair of nukes.
Oh it was definitely the foam. I mean, just the framing had exceeded their calculations.
Either way it was a massive success, but they didn’t know how to even project its failure point cause it wouldn’t even start to show stress. I think they just assumed it was actually far more tensile in nature then they thought, and that it could just go right to complete failure.
Wish I took pictures, it looked like a cartoon mule carrying a house.
A well engineered dome can be insanely durable. Damn it, I forget his name completely, but there was an American architect who was designing them, and got a tank run over one that was not installed yet to demonstrate ti the public how durable they were. Idunno, I'm kind of sober still,so I can't brain right and I forget specifics.
That brick one? Probably not quite that amazingly stable, but still.
It's probably best to build something that is similar to your neighbors for both resale and practicality. I spent years fantasizing about a octogonal house; when i finally saw one in real life it was a retarded idea.
It only makes sense if you blow a gigantic balloon up and spray foam the inside.
Make it bigger than you think you want because the walls inside become unusable to put furniture and shit against it. Mirrors impossible to hang. Conduits for electrical and plumbing are exposed. Which could be cool but just something to think about - the less concave the better.
If you piece it together like a greenhouse in steel frame then you might as well stick to traditional rectangular shapes and skip the dome shape which has nothing to offer.
The whole geodesic dome is only cool because it goes up in a day and saves a fortune. But if you take that away then you're just making stupid buildings for no reason.
Now that I think about it. I don't know why they didn't blow up squareish balloons and solve 75% of the problems out of the gate.
If you go through with a dome then I would vote to excavate a basement first. Look into inflating a balloon and spraying. All other methods of geodesic dome building are mentally retarded
If you're interested in building monolithic domes I'd suggest aircrete. If the monolithic part isn't quite as essential I'd suggest superadobe or hyperadobe. It's basically earthbag construction in sausage form. Kinda like building with sandbags except there's ~15% portland cement in with the clay/sand mix and the whole thing gets rammed solid after each course is laid. Once it's all done the whole thing gets covered with a cement plaster. The result is fireproof, earthquake proof and possibly bombproof.
The upside is that it's one of the cheapest building methods out there. The downside is that there are size restrictions and it's somewhat labour intensive.
A small family can build one in a few weeks. Hiring a JCB speeds up the work.
Could be cool. I think I’d rather go with a Yurt design before dome shaped. To much wasted space in domes and A-frames imo. And You can overbuild a huge Yurt pretty cheap. Steel or timber framed, and steel or plywood siding.
A recent episode of "Building off the grid" did just that. S12E09 if you want to watch it.
Probably a lot of non-reality type material in the show, but the couple ordered a "kit" from Europe for not too much money.
Seems to have used aluminum type tubes in triangles for support, and looked a little flimsy to me, and also just had a canvas tarp over the whole thing - didn't seem practical. There was no insulation - that they showed - making it almost unbearable to live in year round.
The math is sound for overall frame strength - given the right materials and construction. Making full use of the space would just need the right interior design.
[ + ] SturmUndTrinker
[ - ] SturmUndTrinker 0 points 1.9 yearsJun 28, 2022 12:57:11 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 3 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 20:47:06 ago (+3/-0)*
Edit I don’t know how safe this would be in an earthquake though!
[ + ] 3Whuurs
[ - ] 3Whuurs 2 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 22:24:37 ago (+2/-0)
It was Oval and not totally round, but they engineered it for 30,000lb safe rating, and got to 47,000 lb before stress criteria targets (compression) were met.
We sprayed 3” solid polyurethane spray foam to the entire interior, and the engineers rated it for “X” amount of compression at 65,000 lb. it had a 24” steel ring inside under the 3rd story floor with 5 or 6 cables spanning straight out to hold its guts in.
They ended up doing a follow up test on our spray foam cause they got to 82,000 lb with no observable compression before shitting their pants and calling it. They thought our foam must have been something special, but that little 3 story egg could have brushed off a pair of nukes.
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 1 point 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 23:08:26 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] 3Whuurs
[ - ] 3Whuurs 3 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 23:23:39 ago (+3/-0)
I mean, just the framing had exceeded their calculations.
Either way it was a massive success, but they didn’t know how to even project its failure point cause it wouldn’t even start to show stress.
I think they just assumed it was actually far more tensile in nature then they thought, and that it could just go right to complete failure.
Wish I took pictures, it looked like a cartoon mule carrying a house.
[ + ] lord_nougat
[ - ] lord_nougat 1 point 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 21:16:54 ago (+1/-0)
That brick one? Probably not quite that amazingly stable, but still.
[ + ] deleted
[ - ] deleted 4 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 21:51:20 ago (+4/-0)
[ + ] NeoNazirite
[ - ] NeoNazirite 2 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 22:59:16 ago (+2/-0)
Do you want to build the most energy efficient home ever?
Also, check out the home built by the hippie survivalist that was on Dual Survivor. He had a kind of dome house built into the earth.
Edit: holy shit, I don't remember it being this gay but here it is ... https://youtu.be/WWpSVNrt0LU
[ + ] StealthNinjaTaliban
[ - ] StealthNinjaTaliban 2 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 20:32:38 ago (+2/-0)
[ + ] bosunmoon
[ - ] bosunmoon 2 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 20:08:57 ago (+2/-0)
[ + ] observation1
[ - ] observation1 1 point 2.5 yearsNov 18, 2021 00:04:24 ago (+1/-0)*
Make it bigger than you think you want because the walls inside become unusable to put furniture and shit against it. Mirrors impossible to hang. Conduits for electrical and plumbing are exposed. Which could be cool but just something to think about - the less concave the better.
If you piece it together like a greenhouse in steel frame then you might as well stick to traditional rectangular shapes and skip the dome shape which has nothing to offer.
The whole geodesic dome is only cool because it goes up in a day and saves a fortune. But if you take that away then you're just making stupid buildings for no reason.
Now that I think about it. I don't know why they didn't blow up squareish balloons and solve 75% of the problems out of the gate.
If you go through with a dome then I would vote to excavate a basement first. Look into inflating a balloon and spraying. All other methods of geodesic dome building are mentally retarded
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 1 point 2.5 yearsNov 18, 2021 08:55:40 ago (+1/-0)
You know that is not a bad idea.....
[ + ] ButtToucha9000
[ - ] ButtToucha9000 1 point 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 20:00:36 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 1 point 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 19:52:09 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] Broc_Liath
[ - ] Broc_Liath 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 18, 2021 16:09:41 ago (+0/-0)
The upside is that it's one of the cheapest building methods out there. The downside is that there are size restrictions and it's somewhat labour intensive.
A small family can build one in a few weeks. Hiring a JCB speeds up the work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PL22SHKwEw
[ + ] Hadza
[ - ] Hadza 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 18, 2021 12:44:16 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 18, 2021 08:02:28 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] observation1
[ - ] observation1 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 18, 2021 00:59:00 ago (+0/-0)
https://www.mortarsprayer.com/monolithic-dome-haiti/
[ + ] rhy
[ - ] rhy 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 23:57:18 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] thebearfromstartrack4
[ - ] thebearfromstartrack4 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 22:57:32 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] Broc_Liath
[ - ] Broc_Liath 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 19, 2021 19:07:37 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] Empire_of_the_Mind
[ - ] Empire_of_the_Mind 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 22:53:23 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] 3Whuurs
[ - ] 3Whuurs 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 21:32:47 ago (+0/-0)
And You can overbuild a huge Yurt pretty cheap. Steel or timber framed, and steel or plywood siding.
[ + ] localsal
[ - ] localsal 0 points 2.5 yearsNov 17, 2021 20:09:13 ago (+0/-0)
Probably a lot of non-reality type material in the show, but the couple ordered a "kit" from Europe for not too much money.
Seems to have used aluminum type tubes in triangles for support, and looked a little flimsy to me, and also just had a canvas tarp over the whole thing - didn't seem practical. There was no insulation - that they showed - making it almost unbearable to live in year round.
The math is sound for overall frame strength - given the right materials and construction. Making full use of the space would just need the right interior design.