OT: Can Somebody Post a Pic of My Dome for Me?

J

Josh Feltman

Joined
Feb 12, 2001
Messages
4,501
Kismet was asking to see a picture of my dome. I have one scanned and saved as a .jpg, but have no way to post it. If anyone can post it for me, let me know.

Thanks,
--Josh
 
Let's see if this works:

dome.jpg


--Josh
 
That's a pretty cozy place, Josh.

Please fill us in with the details.

(wishing I could see a floor plan....):(
 
Well, the scan makes it look really dark, but it's actually a bright, cheery place. We are in the Sierra Nevada foothills about 2 hrs northeast of Sacramento, near Chico, about 2400 ft elevation. The dome is 45' in diameter with a 4' riser, just under 2200 sq ft, and looks a lot larger on the inside than it does from the outside. If you walk in the front door, there's a large living room/dining room with a bar and 1/2 bath to the left. Further in on the left is the kitchen. You can't really see it in the pic, but there is a door from the kitchen coming out onto the deck on the left. There is a master bedroom with another bathroom in the back of the dome on the 1st floor. Upstairs there is a loft sort of area about 1/2 way across the dome, with two bedrooms joined by a bathroom behind the open loft area. One of the bedrooms upstairs has been converted to a library. If you are standing in the loft area, you can look out through the triangular skylight in the front part of the dome. There is a 2 car garage off to the right of the dome, but you can't really see it in the crappy picture.
--Josh
 
Interesting design. Is it round inside? Is the garage a dome too?

How do you hang pictures?
 
Bruise, yes, it's round on the inside, too. When you are in the living room, it feels like you are inside a gigantic egg, or maybe a big round cave.:) Alas, the garage is just a standard barn-looking thing. I'd like to get it replaced with a dome garage, but we don't park the cars in it anyway, so it's not that big a priority. As for pictures, the 4 foot riser gives ample vertical wall space for hanging pictures downstairs, and the interior walls upstairs are vertical as well.
--Josh
 
That's cool Josh.

What were the advantages that convinced you to build a dome?

More space? Sturdier structure? Lower heating costs? More ergonomic interior?
 
Very cool! I love Chico too. Went there for a graduation, and wanted to stay. So close to the Sierra's, yet also close to the MANY bars in town:D
 
How cool !!! I just love it! Bucky Fuller is smiling down (or up) at you every day.

It's just about perfect. Are heating/cooling costs comparable/reduced? Have you a wood stove or fireplace? What's it like with snow on the roof?

What a delightful dwelling. Thank you again.

(It would be a perfect place for the Swedish Women's Bikini Team to hang out.)
 
Originally posted by Kismet
(It would be a perfect place for the Swedish Women's Bikini Team to hang out.)
Click to expand...

That's what I keep telling my wife, but so far she isn't buying it :rolleyes:

The dome has central heat and air, as well as a woodstove. We use the woodstove almost exclusively, and usually go through about 2-2.5 cords of hardwood per winter, which is about average for the area. That's partly because I like to keep things very warm-- we could probably get by with less. Air circulation is great, which helps with cooling costs, although elevation keeps us a bit cooler than the valley floor also. We get those nice evening foothill breezes as well. Domes are stronger than conventional structures, particulary in terms of their load-bearing abilility. We don't get a lot of snow where we live, but it does snow probably five or six times a year, and when we bought the dome, there was 2+ feet of snow on the roof-- it looked like a gigantic snowcone. I actually have a picture of the dome with about 6 inches of snow. I'll try to get it scanned and posted.

Sundsvall-- we didn't build the dome, but all of the things you mention are advantages of the dome structure-- stronger, more cost efficient, more ergonomic (in my opinion), etc. When my wife and I build our own home, it will be a dome for sure. Cost per square foot is equivalent to a conventional home, but because of the efficiency of the sphere, or in this case hemisphere as a space-enclosing structure, you can enclose more square footage with less material.
--Josh
 
Josh, that looks very nice. Do you have any problems with leaks? I have heard (albeit only from the pro-dome but anti-wood Monolithic Dome boards) that the geodesics are prone to leak because of all the seams in the roof.

With the Monolithic Dome (concrete domes) headquarters just a little south of me in Italy, TX, I've been inside many of their domes but never a geodesic.
 
mPisi-- no leaks. My father was convinced that all domes leak. We've had no problems, and actually had the house inspector come by when the roof was covered with snow to check specifically for leaks. The interior ceiling has a few cosmetic cracks at some of the seams from expansion/contraction of the dome structure, but the house inspector said they were merely cosmetic. So far they haven't caused any problems. The dome has a 20 year roof on it, and was built in '87, so we will be looking at getting it re-roofed one of these days. My wife's uncle is a roofer, so he should be able to do the job, or at least recommend someone who can. Somehow I don't think roofing a dome is a do-it-yourself project. I guess that's one advantage of the monolithic dome-- no roofing worries.

--Josh
 
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