Green Domes Green Buildings

[DBS]

Green Domes is not the title we have been using. Why -- We have been revolted by Green Wash. And we should not have been. What is Green Wash -- It is to claim green for all kinds of things that are dubious at best. So we have been reluctant to scream Green.

The fact is the Monolithic Dome is as green as can be made. Consider:
1) The life span of the MD building is many times longer than any other structure. Any building made of wood has a finite life of 30 to 100 years. Few will last longer than that. They either rot or burn or simply molder. So take the cost of the building in any language -- money, energy to build, energy to heat and cool, energy to maintain, etc and divide it by the useful life and the number will be less costly by ten to a hundred times. Take energy alone. The energy to heat or cool a Monolithic Dome is at least 50% less on a daily basis and a huge number less if you use the life of the buildings.

2) Our world good wood is being killed. Why burn it up to build homes. Recently we had a visitor from an island of the coast of Africa. He was absolutely flabbergasted at our "waste of wood" to build our homes here. He said rock and save the wood for doors and cabinets. Certainly concrete is a modified rock but the life is almost the same as a rock.

Before anybody gets excited consider there is Concrete and there is concrete. The Monolithic Dome is made of engineered concrete. What does that mean. The MD uses a fraction as much concrete to build a wall as our conventional square buildings do for the same space. To build an all concrete building 20' x 40' rectangular by 10' high all concrete building using conventional concrete more than double the amount of concrete will be used as to build a 32' diameter MD of equal 800 sf. And in an earthquake the MD will be totally safe where the "conventional" very well may not be. The chemical of the concrete is the same for each building but the shape allows the use of less than half as much of this valuable resource. That is green.

3) For large buildings the numbers get even more impressive. It is normal to save up to 75% of energy costs for heating and cooling. Most of the schools and churches that keep track of costs show a 20 year savings of an amount equal to the original cost of the structures. One school recently told me they expect it to take 13 years for the energy savings over there previous school (which burned) to pay for the school in total. This forecast is after 10 years in their new building.

4) We fully expect to see these building changed and remodeled for other used on into the future literally forever. Some will go from a grade school to part of a high school, to a jr college to a church, to a manufacturing facility to on an on. But they will most often be changed rather than hauled off.

You will have ideas as well. Help me enumerate them. DBS

[Cloud Hidden]

They won't contribute to the debris pile when a storm blows apart traditional structures.

They won't suffer from toxic building syndrome, whether from mold, asbestos, carcinogens from treated wood, or other.

They are wonderfully compatible with earth sheltering techniques, without components that will rot in an extended time in that environ.

[Kevin Goebel]

There are no interior structural support walls in a Monolithic Dome, which makes remodeling or retasking the use of the building less expensive to do.

If your objective is to stand out from the crowd to advertise your business a dome is a cost-effective method of doing so. No need to put up odd-angled walls which are less efficient in volume-per-surface area, or vast tracts of windows, or vast areas of walls devoid of windows to make your box look different than the neighbors:
http://tinyurl.com/azy4q9
http://tinyurl.com/cesq2z

If I say "think of an arch structure", what percentage of people will first think of the St. Louis arch?

If I say "think of a retangular skyscraper", what percentage of people will think of the Empire State Building, what percentage of people will think of the Sears Tower, what percentage of people will think of the Petronas Twin Towers, etc.

A business dome will do it's own advertising by being a unique landmark.

[DBS]

Thank you all: It will take a life time to get new good ideas into the market place. Most patents run out long before they reach real sales. I am encouraged by you in helping make this a better planet.

I keep telling my staff that as slow as people adopt our "vastly better idea for a building", we must guard against the same attitude by ourselves as we look at other ideas being promoted. My understanding is that Thomas Edison said something like: "we would all have a much better life if we could just let go of the old ways." I know some are good but we do need to be looking for better at all times.

[disfrontman]

DBS, you didn't even mention that if you use high fly ash content cement you're using an industrial byproduct that would otherwise end up in a landfill. You'd be using a waste product that requires no additional mining or processing energy to create (unlike mining and baking limestone to produce Portland cement does).

That's certainly "green" in my book.

[angelofdodd]

The potential lifespan,and the heating and cooling savings alone make a Monolithic structure,what I would consider a green product.If I ever get my property issues settled,I plan on going a couple of steps further.I'm going to build it old school,using an earth form ,instead of an airform to build an eco shell,then I'll chainshell the outside with a fibered pumicecrete,and then a final poly urea coat(vapor barrier)to seal it after the crete has cured enough.Then the dirt used to form it will be used for earth sheltering about 2/3 of the 30'x50'barrel vault.There are those here who are biased against this,but I'm doing this after much study and thought on cost,safety,long term maintinance,and material availability.I've also got my blueprints almost finished so I can submit them to an engineer.A nice example of an earth formed structure is at http://www.Ketchum.org/shellpix .klick on shell structures,and its in the fourth gallery,the sixth pic down .Matt