9 ms·

A Frameless Geodesic Dome (2013)

183 points by karim 9y ago

manmal 9y ago
Great idea and execution. I did not find any mentions of a toilet in there, did I overlook something? How is this going to work?
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  Given the portable nature of it, a toilet is not more than a bucket. Otherwise it would require one of those expensive permanent installations for waste and water. You do not want such a bucket inside if you can avoid it.
- hossbeast 9y ago
  I also found myself wondering about running water
- saagarjha 9y ago
  I’d expect that you’d go outside for such needs.
surething 9y ago
This reminds me of Dome of Visions, which has now come out in 3 iterations. http://domeofvisions.com http://domeofvisions.com
bfu 9y ago
I have few questions: - Is it livable in temperate zone (-20°C in winter)? - Is that single sheet plastic window? How does it insulate in winter? - Is it dark inside? - Can plants survive inside? - Building codes usually have minimal volume for bedrooms, does it meet those standards/recommendations? - What's 2x4? - What's blueboard? - Post some closeup pictures of doors, windows, top and base from the outside - How do doors open? - Why the working table have so massive bottom? Is it just "art"? Seems like it's unnecessarily heavy. - Wouldn't mass-produced triangles be simpler/cheaper? Also I just noticed article is from September 2013! Also previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6355488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6355488
- saagarjha 9y ago
  A 2x4 is a piece of lumber that measures around 2” by 4” in depth and breadth (in reality, it’s slightly smaller) and is often used for structural work.
  - jonsen 9y ago
    (it’s slightly smaller if it is planed)
    - chrsstrm 9y ago
      I genuinely hate that I'm going to say this, but... A 2x4 is 1.5" X 3.5" It's not _approximately_ 2x4 or _slightly_ smaller than 2x4. Not that this adds critical information regarding the article, but if you set out to work with 2x4s and assume they are 2" by 4", you'll be sorry. And yes, I have made that mistake before, but it's a mistake you only make once.
      - c22 9y ago
        The lumber is cut to 2" x 4", but then it is dried causing it to shrink to "about" 1.5" x 3.5"
        unwind 9y ago
        Wikipedia's page on lumber[1] is a bit more rigid: Today, a "2×4" board starts out as something smaller than 2 inches by 4 inches and not specified by standards, and after drying and planing is reliably 1 1⁄2 by 3 1⁄2 inches (38 mm × 89 mm). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#North_American_softwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#North_American_softwood...
        birken 9y ago
        This is not correct. The standard construction 2x4 you buy at any lumber yard/home improvement store is specifically cut to 1.5" x 3.5". Of course wood naturally expands/contracts depending on the environment so it will never be exactly those dimensions, but quite close (+/- 1/32" I'd wager). Likewise with plywood, most (but not all) plywood sold in the US is actually slightly undersized. 3/4" is normally 23/32" thick, 1/2" is normally 15/32" thick, etc. This isn't because the wood shrunk (though again plywood will slightly expand/contract depending on the moisture of the environment), it's because the manufacturers meant it to be a little thinner. There are still manufacturing tolerances for both types of products, but the lumber mills know what they are doing, they know what their customers require and provide tolerances that match those. Just imagine one very common usage: a deck. You think deck builders would be happy if the dimensional lumber wasn't a) very consistently the same thickness and b) very consistently the same width? Otherwise you'd have a very bumpy deck that looked pretty irregular.
yborg 9y ago
As an exercise in low-cost structure construction this is interesting, but this is not a practical home. It apparently lacks any kind of sanitary facilities or kitchen. As noted in the blog itself, it's comparable to a tent in terms of applications.
davedx 9y ago
From what I gather, it's made from plastic, foam and wood, and uses electrical heating. I didn't see any mention of fire risks, which is something people have brought up before with these structures. I hope there's at least a fire extinguisher in there.
goelakash 9y ago
I did not understand how it is completely waterproof. What if there is rough weather? And how does it prevent water from entering in case there is standing water around the base?
- inciampati 9y ago
  There is a platform under the dome to prevent standing water from entering it. Further I would expect it would be best to build on a slight rise to mitigate this issue. As for the waterproofness of the shell, as long as the higher panels overlap those below them by a sufficient amount (maybe 10cm) then the dome will shed water in even heavy storms.
rebuilder 9y ago
I'm left wondering about moisture. Ventilation seems pretty minimal and, inside the walls, nonexistent, so how long until this has mold all over it?
roel_v 9y ago
This is cool to play with and all, but what rubs me the wrong way about posts like this is the delusional 'look I made something that is applicable as anything but a novelty! I'm solving major societal problems here!'. This thing doesn't have windows, it requires replacing panels on the outer shell every few years, you can't build up not even 1 level and has virtually no sound insulation so horrible in term of land use, doesn't have walls solid enough to put plumbing in let alone fix anything else to, doesn't meet any building regulation in terms of safety - not even if you take regulations from 30 years ago, ... I understand the draw and see the romanticism of living like a hermit in a forest; really I do. But for some reason people delude themselves into thinking that this can scale. When you're saying 'I love nature so much, I'm going to go live right in the middle of it!', it's like saying 'I love my horse so much, I'm going to eat it tonight'. Which is fine - I eat horse meat. But don't claim you're 'loving' it in the same way normal people use the word 'love'.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Don't forget that bugs would get inside, that you couldn't have any reasonable sort of climate control, etc. Domes are cool for camping, events, and as very temporary emergency shelters, but living in one like this is not very sustainable. The Better Shelter exists and is a good product: http://www.bettershelter.org http://www.bettershelter.org
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    FWIW it also says the "temporary shelter" produced by the organisation Better Shelter is intended to last 3 years (product page). The Yurt seems to have been doing well, it's close to a raised dome, has replaceable modular construction, is easy to erect and move, has been tested for centuries (millennia?) in some of the harshest climate on the planet, namely the Mongolian steppe. In UK a few people use them as permanent homes. They won't fit well in a rectangular road grid (unless you want to use the margins to provide outdoor space, eg for growing), but would pack in to a tri-/hex-grid. Of course bugs might get in, just like a house in a Western city, seems a strange objection? Do you live in a cleanroom?
King-Aaron 9y ago
Note: Do not use an open flame or heat source inside an enclosed space made from polyurethane/plastic/nylon See: Agonising death
- bonesss 9y ago
  Isn't there a pretty good chance that the horrible plastic smoke will make you pass out before the death kicks in, making it just terrifying and brutal but not agonizing?
  - King-Aaron 9y ago
    I've seen the results of tents catch on fire - I don't know about the panels in the dome in OP's link, but certain plastics etc can burn extremely quickly. A normal pop-up tent will burn to the ground in a matter of seconds, cocooning anything inside in molten plastic.
    - dvtv75 9y ago
      I can believe this. I used to work in "the Warehouse" (store name, rather than what it was). We were told that if there was a fire, particularly in the areas containing mostly plastic, we were to get out as fast as possible, no heroics, no trying to put the fire out: just scram. One of the larger buildings they owned caught fire a few years before I started, and had burned up by the time the fire department got there.
chromagnon 9y ago
The structure seems to be relying on bolts, plastic sheeting and foam for all of its strength. Even bolts are not usually considered structural elements, since the sheer strength of bolts is negligible - much less plastic or foam. The whole idea of geodesic domes is that the trianglular sides distribute load more efficiently. In this case, there's nothing that could be described as load bearing. It's a semi-rigid tent that will disintegrate in a strong breeze.
resurge 9y ago
This is Bruce Hauman's dome (creator of the Clojure library Figwheel) I watched a video of the talk where this dome is mentioned last week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kj2qwJa_E&t=9m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kj2qwJa_E&t=9m16s I was hoping there'd be some more info about the way he lives in general. Seeing from the outside picture he also seems to grow his own food.
0xbear 9y ago
Tax appraisal: cost of structure $2100, cost of land $100k. Tax bill: half the cost of structure per year plus school levies.
- jakobegger 9y ago
  Not sure why you‘d use expensive land for a structure like this. You could build this pretty much anywhere, so you could go for cheap land that‘s not suitable for normal homes.
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    Because you'd like to have access to public transportation or bike to work?
    - jakobegger 9y ago
      Right, but you could get a parcel of land that‘s very small, or steep, or otherwise unusable for normal homes. Depending on local regulation, you also might not need a building permit, or there might be a simplified procedure since it is very small and/or temporary. (For example we have a lot of „green land“ in Austria, where you are not allowed to build. For this reason it is very cheap. But you can of course erect a tent on „green land“.)
Tepix 9y ago
If you're having problems finding a suitable frame for your geodesic dome, consider bamboo. There's a guide prepared by Buckminster Fuller himself at http://www.desertdomes.com/bamboo.html http://www.desertdomes.com/bamboo.html and Mitra Ardron made a variant with continuous poles at http://www.mitra.biz/joomla/blog/2815-instructions-for-making-a-bamboo-geodesic-dome http://www.mitra.biz/joomla/blog/2815-instructions-for-makin... (are there metric versions?)
Animats 9y ago
In order to shed rain and be fastened to each other, the plastic sheets overlap each other as shingles on a roof would. OK, that's good; a reasonable approach to leaks. It’s all held together with bolts that bolt through all the layers. The shell of the dome is about 2 1/2 inches thick. That's not so good. Many potential leak points. Stress concentration at the bolt holes. The plastic may tear. Nothing holding the edges together with a tight seal. Almost all the problems with geodesic domes are at the joints. The author is vague about how the joints work. Buckminster Fuller's concept for geodesic domes was that they were to be made from factory-built components and modern materials. They were to be products of the industrial age. In a factory, parts could be made to tight tolerances and be weathertight. With modern durable materials such as aluminum and Fiberglas, the domes could have long lives. During the 1950s, many such domes were built for radar stations. There are large radomes in the Canadian north abandoned decades ago, but still standing. Then came the era of hippie domes, which were built by hand from "natural materials". This did not end well. The author of Domebook I and II has repudiated his work, after a long history of failed structures. Trying to shingle a sphere does not work well. Nor does trying to fit a standard window into a dome. Nothing quite fits, and there are too many bad seams. All this gave geodesic domes a bad name. The domes in this article look like the ones from Dome Village in LA, but less rugged. [1] That was an attempt to house homeless people. The Fiberglas domes of Dome Village held up fine for 13 years; the project failed for other reasons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_Village
- jacobolus 9y ago
  > repudiated his work Link? Are you talking about Lloyd Kahn? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Kahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Kahn Personally I think the best thing that came out of the geodesic dome movement was Steve Baer’s Zome idea from Drop City, and more importantly the Zometool construction toys, which should IMO be a standard thinking tool available in every middle school and high school math classroom. http://www.zometool.com http://www.zometool.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zome
  - hookshot 9y ago
jlebrech 9y ago
could you lay the shape out flat first then pull it all in. i would have 3d printed (or laser cut) something first.
donquichotte 9y ago
The article mentions yurts and then goes on saying "at the same time the frameless dome provides a living area that is protected by a solid insulated waterproof shell. This is absent in these other lightweight structures." I beg to differ! Yurts as used in Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan often have several layers, at least one of them being water-proof. The innermost layer is often wool, which offers excellent insulation and can be dried quickly when it gets wet from prespiration, offering some sort of climate control. Mongolians experience ultra harsh continental climate, going from -40°C in winter to +40°C in the summer, and they have used yurts for centuries. Source: stayed in yurts in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan for a total of several weeks on a motorcycle tour, went to a yurt market to check out the building materials in Ulaan Baatar.
Applejinx 9y ago
You could spray this with layers of gunnite and build up a sealed concrete bubble. I think it'd be just as stable as an inflated form. Once you had an 'eggshell' layer of concrete, that would bear the weight of successive layers. Might require taping over the edges of the 'shingles'.
somberi 9y ago
A similar idea, but edible. http://www.marthastewart.com/913141/sugar-cage-jacques-torres http://www.marthastewart.com/913141/sugar-cage-jacques-torre... There was another with Jacques Pepin, that I am unable to find, where explains the concept better.
lozf 9y ago
Hexayurts[0] > Domes 0: http://hexayurt.com http://hexayurt.com (sorry, I don't have time for a more detailed post just now).
prawn 9y ago
Would you save much on materials by removing the lowest tier of sheets? You'd lose standing room near the walls. Would you lose strength?
tjic 9y ago
> The geodesic dome is brilliant in how it minimizes the amount of materials needed to enclose a given space. Except sheet material is sold in rectangles, so you end up with a huge pile of offcuts. As a child I was entranced by geodesic domes in the late 1970s (part of the hangover of the utopian back-to-the-land movement), and I read up on them extensively over the following decades. I've also done a bit of construction. Domes are wildly impractical for almost every purpose. Yes, the hold more volume per surface area. That's great for a liquified natural gas tank. It's not so good for humans who live on flat surfaces. They are very hard to plumb and wire. They generate tons of waste. They are hard to maintain. Roofs and walls have different purposes (structural support vs shedding preciptation) and different materials are best for each. The list goes on. I could write a 500 page book on why domes are almost always the wrong answer, but the shortest proof I have is: if they were so great, they would have caught on.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  The only success stories I have heard about with respect to dome construction do not use any sheet material at all. They use inflatable forms, flexible basalt fiber composite rebar or basalt reinforcement mesh, spray foam, and gunnite (sprayed concrete). As far as I am aware, even those still have moisture problems. As mentioned by parent, the article includes cutting patterns for rectangular sheets. All the edges and corners are waste. Every edge is a cut. If you make a dome shell out of panels, you have an incredibly high amount of joints and cracks for that volume, and every one of them could move water or air through the wall. The article itself mentioned that polypropylene breaks down in UV. Maintenance. So I guess the intrepid geodesic dome builder should sew a big balloon out of pentagonal and hexagonal nylon panels, inflate it with one of those bounce-castle blowers, and spray it with gunnite. Then saw through the top of the shell and add a stick-built cupola for ventilation control and roof pitch. You lose the portability, but if you really need that, most people make do with a tent. Those come in dome shapes, if you really need your living space to be round.
sushimako 9y ago
Show HN: Years ago, some friends and I designed & built a dome/hexayurt hybrid[0] for Burning Man. The walls are made of insulation sheets and the hinges are taped with 6" bi-directional filament tape (many here will know Hexayurts[1], I'm sure). Additionally it has connection-edges which feature a system of fabric-strips and 2" velcro to connect edges reliably. In total it consists of 3 separate, foldable pieces that can be set up in ~20 minutes by 2 people, even in windy situations. It has 2 "windows", the pointy things on the sides. The door is a bit small and definitely requires some flexibility getting in and out :) It survived the harsh desert conditions of 3 years at Burning Man so far, incl strong winds and rainstorms, only requiring a bit of tlc between each year. The "strap-down-spider" tightens the structure down against winds and keeps it firm enough that you can easily lean against it. To make it fully rain-proof, one needs to tape the floor-tarp up against the walls (visible in the pictures). Apart from the floor-taping the setup and tear-down is entirely zero-waste, due to the velcro system. Hexayurt enthusiast might notice the silver tape that covers the filament-tape seams, which helps protect the tape from deteriorating in the UV light (w/o the silver tape, the filament tape would go brittle after abt 1-2wks of direct sunlight). Here[3] is some very outdated documentation on the first version. We initially tried to connect the walls via bungees - didn't work out at all as you can imagine. The following year we added the velcro system after I found this amazing post [2] on a hexayurt mailing-list, describing someone's experiments with materials. Without that person's efforts and time spent on research I could have never finished this one! Of course there's already a bunch improvements lined up for a v2 - hopefully next year :) [0] http://imgur.com/a/8K1dR http://imgur.com/a/8K1dR [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexayurt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexayurt [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/hexayurt/2QRUl3txk-8/v_A0DDcSeCAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/hexayurt/2QRUl3txk-8/v_A0DDc... [3] http://flo.jottit.com/moonberry http://flo.jottit.com/moonberry
- tln 9y ago
  Neat! Nice work Does it stay livable in the Nevada desert sun? What's the interior temp in the afternoon
  - sushimako 9y ago
    Thanks! During peak-temperatures of the day it's definitely warm inside, yet cozy/cool enough to have a nap. Also kept the warmth inside at cold nights.
athenot 9y ago
A large-scale 2 dimension version of this was built for Terminal 2E and 2F at the Paris CDG airport. It yields the same feeling of airiness and I'm always happy to transit though that one. https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cdg%20terminal%202e https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cdg%20terminal%202e Note that this design requires impeccable material strength characteristics. Otherwise it will collapse, as 2E did in 2004: https://failures.wikispaces.com/Terminal+2E+at+Charles+de+Gaulle+Airport https://failures.wikispaces.com/Terminal+2E+at+Charles+de+Ga...
stcredzero 9y ago
This puts me to mind of a Bill Burr quote, about the real desire for guys to spend $250k on a house.
novaleaf 9y ago
one problem i've run into when making a shed is the flooring. unless you spend a huge amount of time+effort+materials on a foundation, water vapor tends to come up. This causes mold growth and eventually over the span of 5 to 10 years the floor will rot out of under you. (I'm in the Pacific Northwest) Does anyone have recommendations on a cheap moisture tolerant flooring? I am thinking of using Marine-Grade plywood as a subfloor on my current project.
DonHopkins 9y ago
Didn't Halliburton make a line of urban survival domes to go with their bubble suits and management leisure suits? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzSMjSxM5Vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzSMjSxM5Vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dg6V8pQGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dg6V8pQGo

183 points by karim 9y ago

Great idea and execution. I did not find any mentions of a toilet in there, did I overlook something? How is this going to work?

hvidgaard 9y ago
Given the portable nature of it, a toilet is not more than a bucket. Otherwise it would require one of those expensive permanent installations for waste and water. You do not want such a bucket inside if you can avoid it.
hossbeast 9y ago
I also found myself wondering about running water
saagarjha 9y ago
I’d expect that you’d go outside for such needs.

surething 9y ago

This reminds me of Dome of Visions, which has now come out in 3 iterations. http://domeofvisions.com http://domeofvisions.com

bfu 9y ago

I have few questions: - Is it livable in temperate zone (-20°C in winter)? - Is that single sheet plastic window? How does it insulate in winter? - Is it dark inside? - Can plants survive inside? - Building codes usually have minimal volume for bedrooms, does it meet those standards/recommendations? - What's 2x4? - What's blueboard? - Post some closeup pictures of doors, windows, top and base from the outside - How do doors open? - Why the working table have so massive bottom? Is it just "art"? Seems like it's unnecessarily heavy. - Wouldn't mass-produced triangles be simpler/cheaper? Also I just noticed article is from September 2013! Also previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6355488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6355488

saagarjha 9y ago
A 2x4 is a piece of lumber that measures around 2” by 4” in depth and breadth (in reality, it’s slightly smaller) and is often used for structural work.
- jonsen 9y ago
  (it’s slightly smaller if it is planed)
  - chrsstrm 9y ago
    I genuinely hate that I'm going to say this, but... A 2x4 is 1.5" X 3.5" It's not _approximately_ 2x4 or _slightly_ smaller than 2x4. Not that this adds critical information regarding the article, but if you set out to work with 2x4s and assume they are 2" by 4", you'll be sorry. And yes, I have made that mistake before, but it's a mistake you only make once.
    - c22 9y ago
      The lumber is cut to 2" x 4", but then it is dried causing it to shrink to "about" 1.5" x 3.5"
      - unwind 9y ago
        Wikipedia's page on lumber[1] is a bit more rigid: Today, a "2×4" board starts out as something smaller than 2 inches by 4 inches and not specified by standards, and after drying and planing is reliably 1 1⁄2 by 3 1⁄2 inches (38 mm × 89 mm). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#North_American_softwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#North_American_softwood...
      - birken 9y ago
        This is not correct. The standard construction 2x4 you buy at any lumber yard/home improvement store is specifically cut to 1.5" x 3.5". Of course wood naturally expands/contracts depending on the environment so it will never be exactly those dimensions, but quite close (+/- 1/32" I'd wager). Likewise with plywood, most (but not all) plywood sold in the US is actually slightly undersized. 3/4" is normally 23/32" thick, 1/2" is normally 15/32" thick, etc. This isn't because the wood shrunk (though again plywood will slightly expand/contract depending on the moisture of the environment), it's because the manufacturers meant it to be a little thinner. There are still manufacturing tolerances for both types of products, but the lumber mills know what they are doing, they know what their customers require and provide tolerances that match those. Just imagine one very common usage: a deck. You think deck builders would be happy if the dimensional lumber wasn't a) very consistently the same thickness and b) very consistently the same width? Otherwise you'd have a very bumpy deck that looked pretty irregular.

yborg 9y ago

As an exercise in low-cost structure construction this is interesting, but this is not a practical home. It apparently lacks any kind of sanitary facilities or kitchen. As noted in the blog itself, it's comparable to a tent in terms of applications.

davedx 9y ago

From what I gather, it's made from plastic, foam and wood, and uses electrical heating. I didn't see any mention of fire risks, which is something people have brought up before with these structures. I hope there's at least a fire extinguisher in there.

goelakash 9y ago

I did not understand how it is completely waterproof. What if there is rough weather? And how does it prevent water from entering in case there is standing water around the base?

inciampati 9y ago
There is a platform under the dome to prevent standing water from entering it. Further I would expect it would be best to build on a slight rise to mitigate this issue. As for the waterproofness of the shell, as long as the higher panels overlap those below them by a sufficient amount (maybe 10cm) then the dome will shed water in even heavy storms.

rebuilder 9y ago

I'm left wondering about moisture. Ventilation seems pretty minimal and, inside the walls, nonexistent, so how long until this has mold all over it?

roel_v 9y ago

This is cool to play with and all, but what rubs me the wrong way about posts like this is the delusional 'look I made something that is applicable as anything but a novelty! I'm solving major societal problems here!'. This thing doesn't have windows, it requires replacing panels on the outer shell every few years, you can't build up not even 1 level and has virtually no sound insulation so horrible in term of land use, doesn't have walls solid enough to put plumbing in let alone fix anything else to, doesn't meet any building regulation in terms of safety - not even if you take regulations from 30 years ago, ... I understand the draw and see the romanticism of living like a hermit in a forest; really I do. But for some reason people delude themselves into thinking that this can scale. When you're saying 'I love nature so much, I'm going to go live right in the middle of it!', it's like saying 'I love my horse so much, I'm going to eat it tonight'. Which is fine - I eat horse meat. But don't claim you're 'loving' it in the same way normal people use the word 'love'.

seanp2k2 9y ago
Don't forget that bugs would get inside, that you couldn't have any reasonable sort of climate control, etc. Domes are cool for camping, events, and as very temporary emergency shelters, but living in one like this is not very sustainable. The Better Shelter exists and is a good product: http://www.bettershelter.org http://www.bettershelter.org
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  FWIW it also says the "temporary shelter" produced by the organisation Better Shelter is intended to last 3 years (product page). The Yurt seems to have been doing well, it's close to a raised dome, has replaceable modular construction, is easy to erect and move, has been tested for centuries (millennia?) in some of the harshest climate on the planet, namely the Mongolian steppe. In UK a few people use them as permanent homes. They won't fit well in a rectangular road grid (unless you want to use the margins to provide outdoor space, eg for growing), but would pack in to a tri-/hex-grid. Of course bugs might get in, just like a house in a Western city, seems a strange objection? Do you live in a cleanroom?

King-Aaron 9y ago

Note: Do not use an open flame or heat source inside an enclosed space made from polyurethane/plastic/nylon See: Agonising death

bonesss 9y ago
Isn't there a pretty good chance that the horrible plastic smoke will make you pass out before the death kicks in, making it just terrifying and brutal but not agonizing?
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  I've seen the results of tents catch on fire - I don't know about the panels in the dome in OP's link, but certain plastics etc can burn extremely quickly. A normal pop-up tent will burn to the ground in a matter of seconds, cocooning anything inside in molten plastic.
  - dvtv75 9y ago
    I can believe this. I used to work in "the Warehouse" (store name, rather than what it was). We were told that if there was a fire, particularly in the areas containing mostly plastic, we were to get out as fast as possible, no heroics, no trying to put the fire out: just scram. One of the larger buildings they owned caught fire a few years before I started, and had burned up by the time the fire department got there.

chromagnon 9y ago

The structure seems to be relying on bolts, plastic sheeting and foam for all of its strength. Even bolts are not usually considered structural elements, since the sheer strength of bolts is negligible - much less plastic or foam. The whole idea of geodesic domes is that the trianglular sides distribute load more efficiently. In this case, there's nothing that could be described as load bearing. It's a semi-rigid tent that will disintegrate in a strong breeze.

resurge 9y ago

This is Bruce Hauman's dome (creator of the Clojure library Figwheel) I watched a video of the talk where this dome is mentioned last week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kj2qwJa_E&t=9m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kj2qwJa_E&t=9m16s I was hoping there'd be some more info about the way he lives in general. Seeing from the outside picture he also seems to grow his own food.

0xbear 9y ago

Tax appraisal: cost of structure $2100, cost of land $100k. Tax bill: half the cost of structure per year plus school levies.

jakobegger 9y ago
Not sure why you‘d use expensive land for a structure like this. You could build this pretty much anywhere, so you could go for cheap land that‘s not suitable for normal homes.
- 0xbear 9y ago
  Because you'd like to have access to public transportation or bike to work?
  - jakobegger 9y ago
    Right, but you could get a parcel of land that‘s very small, or steep, or otherwise unusable for normal homes. Depending on local regulation, you also might not need a building permit, or there might be a simplified procedure since it is very small and/or temporary. (For example we have a lot of „green land“ in Austria, where you are not allowed to build. For this reason it is very cheap. But you can of course erect a tent on „green land“.)

Tepix 9y ago

If you're having problems finding a suitable frame for your geodesic dome, consider bamboo. There's a guide prepared by Buckminster Fuller himself at http://www.desertdomes.com/bamboo.html http://www.desertdomes.com/bamboo.html and Mitra Ardron made a variant with continuous poles at http://www.mitra.biz/joomla/blog/2815-instructions-for-making-a-bamboo-geodesic-dome http://www.mitra.biz/joomla/blog/2815-instructions-for-makin... (are there metric versions?)

Animats 9y ago

In order to shed rain and be fastened to each other, the plastic sheets overlap each other as shingles on a roof would. OK, that's good; a reasonable approach to leaks. It’s all held together with bolts that bolt through all the layers. The shell of the dome is about 2 1/2 inches thick. That's not so good. Many potential leak points. Stress concentration at the bolt holes. The plastic may tear. Nothing holding the edges together with a tight seal. Almost all the problems with geodesic domes are at the joints. The author is vague about how the joints work. Buckminster Fuller's concept for geodesic domes was that they were to be made from factory-built components and modern materials. They were to be products of the industrial age. In a factory, parts could be made to tight tolerances and be weathertight. With modern durable materials such as aluminum and Fiberglas, the domes could have long lives. During the 1950s, many such domes were built for radar stations. There are large radomes in the Canadian north abandoned decades ago, but still standing. Then came the era of hippie domes, which were built by hand from "natural materials". This did not end well. The author of Domebook I and II has repudiated his work, after a long history of failed structures. Trying to shingle a sphere does not work well. Nor does trying to fit a standard window into a dome. Nothing quite fits, and there are too many bad seams. All this gave geodesic domes a bad name. The domes in this article look like the ones from Dome Village in LA, but less rugged. [1] That was an attempt to house homeless people. The Fiberglas domes of Dome Village held up fine for 13 years; the project failed for other reasons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_Village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_Village

jacobolus 9y ago
> repudiated his work Link? Are you talking about Lloyd Kahn? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Kahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Kahn Personally I think the best thing that came out of the geodesic dome movement was Steve Baer’s Zome idea from Drop City, and more importantly the Zometool construction toys, which should IMO be a standard thinking tool available in every middle school and high school math classroom. http://www.zometool.com http://www.zometool.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zome
- hookshot 9y ago

jlebrech 9y ago

could you lay the shape out flat first then pull it all in. i would have 3d printed (or laser cut) something first.

donquichotte 9y ago

The article mentions yurts and then goes on saying "at the same time the frameless dome provides a living area that is protected by a solid insulated waterproof shell. This is absent in these other lightweight structures." I beg to differ! Yurts as used in Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan often have several layers, at least one of them being water-proof. The innermost layer is often wool, which offers excellent insulation and can be dried quickly when it gets wet from prespiration, offering some sort of climate control. Mongolians experience ultra harsh continental climate, going from -40°C in winter to +40°C in the summer, and they have used yurts for centuries. Source: stayed in yurts in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan for a total of several weeks on a motorcycle tour, went to a yurt market to check out the building materials in Ulaan Baatar.

Applejinx 9y ago

You could spray this with layers of gunnite and build up a sealed concrete bubble. I think it'd be just as stable as an inflated form. Once you had an 'eggshell' layer of concrete, that would bear the weight of successive layers. Might require taping over the edges of the 'shingles'.

somberi 9y ago

A similar idea, but edible. http://www.marthastewart.com/913141/sugar-cage-jacques-torres http://www.marthastewart.com/913141/sugar-cage-jacques-torre... There was another with Jacques Pepin, that I am unable to find, where explains the concept better.

lozf 9y ago

Hexayurts[0] > Domes 0: http://hexayurt.com http://hexayurt.com (sorry, I don't have time for a more detailed post just now).

prawn 9y ago

Would you save much on materials by removing the lowest tier of sheets? You'd lose standing room near the walls. Would you lose strength?

tjic 9y ago

> The geodesic dome is brilliant in how it minimizes the amount of materials needed to enclose a given space. Except sheet material is sold in rectangles, so you end up with a huge pile of offcuts. As a child I was entranced by geodesic domes in the late 1970s (part of the hangover of the utopian back-to-the-land movement), and I read up on them extensively over the following decades. I've also done a bit of construction. Domes are wildly impractical for almost every purpose. Yes, the hold more volume per surface area. That's great for a liquified natural gas tank. It's not so good for humans who live on flat surfaces. They are very hard to plumb and wire. They generate tons of waste. They are hard to maintain. Roofs and walls have different purposes (structural support vs shedding preciptation) and different materials are best for each. The list goes on. I could write a 500 page book on why domes are almost always the wrong answer, but the shortest proof I have is: if they were so great, they would have caught on.

logfromblammo 9y ago
The only success stories I have heard about with respect to dome construction do not use any sheet material at all. They use inflatable forms, flexible basalt fiber composite rebar or basalt reinforcement mesh, spray foam, and gunnite (sprayed concrete). As far as I am aware, even those still have moisture problems. As mentioned by parent, the article includes cutting patterns for rectangular sheets. All the edges and corners are waste. Every edge is a cut. If you make a dome shell out of panels, you have an incredibly high amount of joints and cracks for that volume, and every one of them could move water or air through the wall. The article itself mentioned that polypropylene breaks down in UV. Maintenance. So I guess the intrepid geodesic dome builder should sew a big balloon out of pentagonal and hexagonal nylon panels, inflate it with one of those bounce-castle blowers, and spray it with gunnite. Then saw through the top of the shell and add a stick-built cupola for ventilation control and roof pitch. You lose the portability, but if you really need that, most people make do with a tent. Those come in dome shapes, if you really need your living space to be round.

sushimako 9y ago

Show HN: Years ago, some friends and I designed & built a dome/hexayurt hybrid[0] for Burning Man. The walls are made of insulation sheets and the hinges are taped with 6" bi-directional filament tape (many here will know Hexayurts[1], I'm sure). Additionally it has connection-edges which feature a system of fabric-strips and 2" velcro to connect edges reliably. In total it consists of 3 separate, foldable pieces that can be set up in ~20 minutes by 2 people, even in windy situations. It has 2 "windows", the pointy things on the sides. The door is a bit small and definitely requires some flexibility getting in and out :) It survived the harsh desert conditions of 3 years at Burning Man so far, incl strong winds and rainstorms, only requiring a bit of tlc between each year. The "strap-down-spider" tightens the structure down against winds and keeps it firm enough that you can easily lean against it. To make it fully rain-proof, one needs to tape the floor-tarp up against the walls (visible in the pictures). Apart from the floor-taping the setup and tear-down is entirely zero-waste, due to the velcro system. Hexayurt enthusiast might notice the silver tape that covers the filament-tape seams, which helps protect the tape from deteriorating in the UV light (w/o the silver tape, the filament tape would go brittle after abt 1-2wks of direct sunlight). Here[3] is some very outdated documentation on the first version. We initially tried to connect the walls via bungees - didn't work out at all as you can imagine. The following year we added the velcro system after I found this amazing post [2] on a hexayurt mailing-list, describing someone's experiments with materials. Without that person's efforts and time spent on research I could have never finished this one! Of course there's already a bunch improvements lined up for a v2 - hopefully next year :) [0] http://imgur.com/a/8K1dR http://imgur.com/a/8K1dR [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexayurt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexayurt [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/hexayurt/2QRUl3txk-8/v_A0DDcSeCAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/hexayurt/2QRUl3txk-8/v_A0DDc... [3] http://flo.jottit.com/moonberry http://flo.jottit.com/moonberry

tln 9y ago
Neat! Nice work Does it stay livable in the Nevada desert sun? What's the interior temp in the afternoon
- sushimako 9y ago
  Thanks! During peak-temperatures of the day it's definitely warm inside, yet cozy/cool enough to have a nap. Also kept the warmth inside at cold nights.

athenot 9y ago

A large-scale 2 dimension version of this was built for Terminal 2E and 2F at the Paris CDG airport. It yields the same feeling of airiness and I'm always happy to transit though that one. https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cdg%20terminal%202e https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cdg%20terminal%202e Note that this design requires impeccable material strength characteristics. Otherwise it will collapse, as 2E did in 2004: https://failures.wikispaces.com/Terminal+2E+at+Charles+de+Gaulle+Airport https://failures.wikispaces.com/Terminal+2E+at+Charles+de+Ga...

stcredzero 9y ago

This puts me to mind of a Bill Burr quote, about the real desire for guys to spend $250k on a house.

novaleaf 9y ago

one problem i've run into when making a shed is the flooring. unless you spend a huge amount of time+effort+materials on a foundation, water vapor tends to come up. This causes mold growth and eventually over the span of 5 to 10 years the floor will rot out of under you. (I'm in the Pacific Northwest) Does anyone have recommendations on a cheap moisture tolerant flooring? I am thinking of using Marine-Grade plywood as a subfloor on my current project.

DonHopkins 9y ago

Didn't Halliburton make a line of urban survival domes to go with their bubble suits and management leisure suits? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzSMjSxM5Vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzSMjSxM5Vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dg6V8pQGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_dg6V8pQGo