Went for a walk this morning, at the local community college there was a geodesic dome as a storage shelter for the salt for snow cleanup. I think they are totally cool, but my friends think I’m a bit nutty, like living in a pod.
What do you think of the dome?
Replies
I think the biggest problem in building it would be framing the interior walls. Imagine cutting the top plates. I'd love to hear how it is done so I could let a freind know. He's building one as soon as permits come through.
I'm just finishing a 50' geodesic...it's discussed in thread 21141.1.
Pretty easy building to erect and exceptionally strong. I'll email you any info you want that is too lengthy to post here.
Edited 3/22/2003 2:41:00 PM ET by Notchman
Hey Notch, where's that update?
ok. Just saw the other post.
Edited 3/22/2003 3:30:30 PM ET by rez
stayed in a 40 or 50 foot dome for several weeks maybe 15 years ago. As best I can remember , none of the interior walls interesected with the dome (exterior) walls. It was sort of like a freestanding room was built in the middle. In it was the bathroom and a bedroom. kind of a funky floorplan.
what I will never forget was how sound carried in the dome. you could whisper on one side of the dome and easily be heard on the other side. don't know if the sound was amplified , but it sure wasn't diminished over distance. weird
About 25 years ago I was involved in building what was at that time the largest wood geo dome in the country. PB Scotts in Blowing Rock NC. What a time! The accustics were terrible but I saw the live Bonnie Ratte, Doc Watson, Arlo Guthrie, BB King, and many others. Met my wife there on Haloween.
hence the term 'arcwood'?
I know what you mean about the accoustics! Before we got the interior walls in, the sound was so bad that it was actually hard for two people to have a conversation if two others were visiting on the other side of the shell. Interior walls and insulation pretty well took care of all that.
I remember there was one spot slightly off the center that would carry a tinny echo sound.
I was in a dome gymnasium in TX that focused sound on the very center, as a true sphere will. When you bounced a basketball, it seemed to bounce about 20 times in your ears. Really strange.
What I've learned from the various projects is that there are two aspects to noise: loudness and echo. Most domes are built with a more open floorplan. The openness leads to a general increase in noise be/c there are fewer walls and other barriers to absorb it. I've been in a dome that was cut into little rooms, and it had no noise issues. Likewise, I spent time in a frame house with an open floorplan, and it was just as noisy as most domes I've been in. But the type of noise was different. In a dome, the curves focus sound to the center, so the noise can echo. In a non-sphere, there's seldom an echo, but there's more discord. The sound isn't focused, as with an echo, but it's just as loud.
Not a scientific analysis; just what I've observed.
Cloud- Have you ever seen a small ferro-cement dome structure built by a DIY by hand? It seems I recall reading various articles dealing with the subject somewhere.
Reason I was asking is I'm going to put up a small 18ft dia hent/pent panel configuration and was wondering about the validity of placing a wire/ferrocent surface covering the outside of the osb panels.
Does this sound plausible?
I've seen a bunch of pictures, rez. Look up "flying cement" in Google for a bunch of nice, free form work. Will yours work? I imagine it can. Success might depend on purposes. Any provisions for separating the concrete and osb structurally? We use airforms, coatings, and polyurethane for weather protection, and the ferro-cement buildings don't have this. I've only seen ferro-cement for a residence in a tropical climate. Haven't paid them too much attention otherwise because the methods I use provide all the structure I need, but I do look forward to using some of their techniques for artistic embellishments to one of my projects.
Actually I was just thinking of putting felt down on the osb, then the standard wire and ferrocement mixture. Figured if it worked freeform then the osb as a base would do nothing but help the structure.
OK Rez, ( and arcwood and Cloudhidden, etal ) here you go!
There's a bit of dome info you might find interesting here. If you use the search function at the bottom of the screen and type in dome a number of different threads will come up.