Hello from Missouri

[Nevada_MO_Guy]

Hello from Missouri.

Very interested in the monolithic dome as my future retirement home. The efficiency, strength and low maintenance are very appealing.

Talking my dad into getting him one also.

Going to swing down to Italy, TX at the end of the month to check out the domes up close. Just an 8 hour drive....ouch.

I emailed the folks down there asking if they had completed domes to look at and my email was quickly answered with 'yes'.

[jim & christine spurg]

Welcome,
We live in TX about an hour and a half from MD Headquarters. If you are interseted in viewing ours while you are in TX let me know. We would be happy to show it to you even though it is not done yet.
Happy Easter,
Christine
www.thinkroundhomes.com

[Mountain View]

Ever swing thorough Colorado know that you are welcome here also!
Ray

[Nevada_MO_Guy]

Thanks guys for the invite.

Christine, nice website you have. Is that one of those Orion domes I've read about?

Our schedule is pretty tight, will be heading down on the 27th....look around and head back on the 28th.

I have to get dad back so he can catch a flight to Anchorage, AK.

Anyone from the Anchorage area have a dome?

[Ula Oh]

Welcome!

[jim & christine spurg]

I am so sorry that I missed your post. I do not know how I didn't notice it, I try to check a couple times a week.
Our dome is not an Orion, but it does have an eight foot stem wall to give more space downstairs.
I am hoping that we did not miss your coming to TX. Was it in April? If so, I am sorry. If you haven't made it to TX yet, the invite is still open if you have the time to come by. We would meet you in Italy but the dome will be too hard to bring with us. LOL.
Take care,
Christine
www.thinkroundhomes.com

[Nevada_MO_Guy]

Yes, we went down last month.

Interesting and educational. I would recommend that if anyone is interested in making a trip they that they email or call and ask how many domes will be available for viewing.

We got there and the visitor dome and the new cabin dome were available to check out.

It was very nice to go through "Charca Casa" as it showed two different styles for the domes.

The North dome was very open with many windows and an open kitchen, were as the South Dome is more partitioned like in a normal house.

Out of the two styles I was drawn to the open floor plan.

Thanks to the owners for allowing the walk-thru.

Another bit I learned is that I didn't understand the pricing structure...I thought a square foot was a square foot. The square footage of the interior dome goes for $35/sf and usually is twice the floor square footage, so a fella could get a rough idea on price by looking at the square footage of a floor plan and figuring $70/sf for it...just for the dome.
For a finished dome the square footage of the floor area is $120/sf.

[Cloud Hidden]

I thought a square foot was a square foot.

A quick explanation. A sq ft is a sq ft. The trick when relating costs to sf is to clearly define what you are measuring. For example, if you take two houses with an identical footprint (footer and slab), will they cost the same $/sf? No, of course not, because one might have cheap carpeting and the other might have marble tile. One might have vinyl windows and the other aluminum clad windows. One might have generic faucets and the other might have Grohe. So the $/sf of one could be double the other for the same size and configuration of house.

But the shell of a dome is essentially the same for a plain house as for a fancy house. They use the same foam, concrete thickness, and rebar. So we can do a pretty good job of estimating shell costs without regard to the fanciness of the house. But even better than that, we can measure the exact amt of materials the shell will require. Most people think in terms of the sf of living space, as in, "My house is 2500 sf." But a builder doesn't measure that way. They'll measure that way for the slab, but for the shell, we can measure that precisely. For example, a 2000 sf floor, covered by a half dome, will require an air form (shell) that's about 4000 sf. (Depending on the design it might be a little more or a little less than double the floor, but double is close enough for today.) We call that "sq ft of surface area" or "surface sq ft" and that's how we measure materials. Each sq ft of air form (or shell) surface needs about 1/3 cu ft of concrete and 3 or 4 board feet of foam and 2# of rebar. So if we know the size of the shell (I provide that to the builder on my designs, for example), it's easy to calculate the total material requirements with great precision.

Therefore, while most of the public speaks in terms of cost per sq ft of floor area, a dome builder will focus on the cost per sq ft of shell surface area.

Similarly, roofers for frame houses don't care at all about the sf of the house. For the same floor plan, a steeply pitched roof will require more materials than a shallow pitched roof. They care about surface area of the roof itself--how many "squares" it is. That's what tells them how many shingles to order--not the sf of the floor.

Hope that helps explain the different ways to look at the numbers, and why one might use one or the other.

[Nevada_MO_Guy]

Thanks for the analogy of the roofers...it makes sense

It is just a different concept for me to think of the inner dome square footage.

Looking at the Dome Calculator just making small changes can result in a significant square footage change of the interior dome surface, but still cover the same square footage of floor space.