Mountain View Dome

[Mountain View]

Its amazing the interest that seems to be building in this type of construction!

Today Fox21 TV here on the front range of Colorado broadcast a show called Front Door TV that featured our home. They did a good job and even sought other domes in Colorado Springs to illustrate their various uses. The program will broadcast 3 more times on the Front Range. Sunday the 3/11 and 3/18 at 7am, Wed 3/14 8:30am. Guess you have to be an early bird to see it!

[Mountain View]

We are finally finishing off the moldings!
We have tried just about everything to finish off the floor to wall junction and little worked.
We found a flexible molding out of Canada that matches perfectly our existing molding profile and came in 3" height so we did have to rip off 1" but other than that it works great!
We even ripped out the little pieces we formed around a couple of inside curves and what a difference!
Sometimes progress takes small steps and far in between.

[etdeb]

Its all about the details Ray, thats what makes these homes so special.
have you added pictures of the molding yet, its hard for me to check the website with slide show, my temp connection is too slow.

[Mountain View]

We are way behind in updating the web site.
We are hosting a family reunion this next weekend so you can imagine how we are scrambling around trying to get thinks done around here.
Even the cows are not cooperating! We live on open range and they like camping out on our front lawn. Thats the next project - barbed wire fence around the house area.

[Mountain View]

Family reunion went well!
We did get our barbed wire fence up to fend off the cows!

Thought we would share the domes "thermal mass" feature and how its working for us.

Here in Colorado its been in the 90's almost every day and we live east of the mountains in a semi-desert area. The nights do cool of about 30 deg so we open up the place and let the nighly breeze cool us down. The house is staying at about 75 all day long. Turn on a ceiling fan and its extreemely comfortable! Walk in from outside and it feels cool!
We have no air conditioning or swamp cooling. We did add honeycomb blinds in the front room/dinning room dome and it does make a big difference! Open the blinds and you can feel the heat off the glass that would otherwise enter into the house. Glass is a terrable insulator!

Happy with our domes? YOU BET!

[Mountain View]

Insurance

Had a very good talk with our insurance agent yesterday here at the dome. First he was extremely impressed with the structure. We discussed all the structural advantages of domes and how the insurance industry does not have a fair appraisal of them - thus they are being insured as something different and available in their data tables. My guess would be they classify domes similar to Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs)

His eyes popped when I related a discussion I had with a neighbor about his ICF house. The neighbor indicated that his house was just as strong as our domes and that it could withstand a tornado. I agreed with him that after the tornado hit, his exterior walls would certainly be standing but the roof could be ripped off and the insides all scrambled up!

Our agent agreed to help get monolithic domes their fair rating if at all possible.
Since we are starting to build another dome, I agreed to produce a sample wall section if it was needed for the insurance company’s analysis and testing.

[ioda006]

For the insurance thing I would be somewhat worried about providing a small sample of the material. So much of the dome's strength comes from it being one solid piece with uniform weight distribution. I wouldn't want them to test it using methods that are designed for rectangular prism houses and come out flawed :/

That's really cool though that there's someone looking into it. Hope this leads to some real progress. The better domes look to insurance companies the better they look to lenders.

[Kevin Goebel]

Buy a 6 foot Omega ball. Cut it in half and replace the roof of an airform airlock with a sheet of plywood with a hole slightly smaller than the size of the airlock cut out of the center.

Build a base ring form on top of the plywood, (sort of like the eave on the top of an Orion wall), place your rebar and fill it with concrete.

When it is cured, fasten one half of the Omega ball to the outside of the plywood. Crank up the air compressor and inflate the Omega ball. Spray your foam, let it set up, then stick your rebar hangers and rebar on the foam and start pumping shotcrete.

When it is cured enough to remove from the airlock roof, drop it off at the insurance office. Make a small door buck for the other half of the Omega ball and construct a tornado-proof doghouse for Rover.

Kevin

[pheonixheart]

OMG That's BRILLIANT!!

BOTH ideas .

[BWARDEN]

The only problem with the Omega ball idea is that the resulting half dome will weigh around 2000 pounds assuming a 3 inch concrete thickness, and 1300 pounds assuming a 2 inch concrete thickness. Even 1 inch of concrete would be 650 pounds or so. The airlock better be built pretty sturdy. Then you have to move the half dome. At least I don't think you'd really need any rebar in that small a dome.

[Mountain View]

Well we found out one thing that can destroy a dome structure or at least mess it up!
Woodpeckers!
For some reason they decidded to peck a big hole in a corner of one of our porches. Right through the elastimeric coating, mesh and the hard stucco cement and into the foam. They haven't been back today so maybe the foam made them sick. Think they would lnow the difference from wood but apparently not.

[LongevityLodges]

Hey Ray,

It seems like the woodpecker could nest in any monolithic dome by burrowing into the foam. I bet the nest would be warm in winter. The insurance industry should build a dome to do tests on. It's not like they couldn't afford the cost.
What are you building the new dome for?

Bud

[Mountain View]

The punched a hole on our house! Not the (relatively) new dome. Guess I will take advantage of the warm weather and fill the hole and patch it befor winter really strikes.

I built the 8th dome a year ago for all the outside stuff we never knew we needed when we moved out here in the wilds of Colorado.

[angelofdodd]

I love woodpecker!It tastes just like chicken.Matt