8 ms·

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

by 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?
  - pamqzl 9y ago
    I can buy a metal garden shed for a couple of hundred bucks, assemble it myself, and it'll stand for decades without needing much if any maintenance. I could get one with a window, and a door that locks. It wouldn't give me any Whole Foods cred like a dome or a yurt, but aside from that issue it seems more practical than either of those, if I wanted to live in one small and poorly insulated room without plumbing. I've just looked at the Better Shelter page and it seems that their idea is the same as mine -- a metal shed.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      There's looks like a good shed, extendible, more insulated than sheet metal. The metal shed you get now, is likely to be designed to break and be hard to repair, 10 years ago its predecessor was probably much better. At least their shed is designed with repairability in mind.
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      > I could get one with a window, and a door that locks. For a couple hundred bucks?
      - pamqzl 9y ago
        Well, okay, closest I could find was this $279 one with a lockable door but no window, but I haven't looked all that hard.
    - AlotOfReading 9y ago
      Gers/Yurts aren't poorly insulated. They're actually a bit over-insulated for most places. You could easily add locking doors or plumbing (I've seen both in Mongolian gers), but the real design advantages are the portability and wind load factors.
amelius 9y ago
Also, you can't put straight furniture against the walls. And it's difficult to stand near the walls.
- hookshot 9y ago
  If you build the dome tall enough it isn't really an issue. My dome is a 20' diameter 5/8 dome and my head will only touch if I am standing 4" away from the wall. Each of the 15 sides is around 4' long on a 20' dome so you can put square furniture against the side if it isn't over 4' long. It is a problem with long furniture. I have an 8' long counter and I drop stuff behind it all the time.
mmjaa 9y ago
On the other hand, you'd be surprised with how little you actually need in order to survive and live a peaceful, happy life. Building regulations are fine - if you wanna be a normal, living a normal life, in a normal society. But the world is a pretty big place. We don't all need these norms. You might have a morally authoritative view on just what basic needs a human has, and certainly can justify these requirements with a human ideal forged in your own social context, but the real honest truth is, most of those ideals are arbitrary. A lot of people can live without windows, especially if they're surrounded by nature 100% of the time, anyway. Plumbing? Who needs it if the rest of your property is set up for it - not everyone needs to live a decadent western lifestyle where running water is on demand within a few feet of your sleeping area, etc. A lot of the world survives just fine without all of these requirements, and from that perspective this "romanticism" is less of a fantasy, and more of a "what if .. we could live simpler lives, instead of more complex ones" - and that is the real merit of articles like this. To push us outside the "glass-half-empty/-full" norms that, ultimately, a lot of us are trapped in. ("Normal people use the word 'love'": Please tell me, what is normal. Because I don't believe you have a large enough sample size, honestly, based on your professed view...)
- jankotek 9y ago
  This 'hut' uses quite a few resources. I would not like to pay electricity bill in summer/winter. > It has electricity and is heated with a single electric radiator and is cooled with an exhaust fan and small window sized air conditioner
  - ehnto 9y ago
    It doesn't have to be though, depending on where you build. In my current climate, I could do all needed temperature moderation with clothing or blankets.
- icebraining 9y ago
  There's nothing simple about a dome made of plastic, though. It demands an extremely complex and polluting network of oil rigs, refineries, transformation, transport, etc.
jakobegger 9y ago
I think the author was very clear in his post that this isn‘t an alternative to a real house, he explicitely called it an „ephemeral“ structure, and he compared it to teepees and yurts. I think this was a great article, and it feels like you are more complaining about a genre of articles instead of this article in particular.
- roel_v 9y ago
  Indeed my whining is about the genre, but I feel the author is making some broad claims about wider applicability, for example: "The difference in the ability of these different structures to shelter and provide a nice place to live is dramatic." (notice the words 'place to live') "The frameless dome pictured above is the culmination of my experience with these structures. Three and a half years after building it I am ready to advocate it as an excellent alternative lightweight structure." ('advocating an alternative structure' - one doesn't do that about tents) "I think this frameless dome balances many of the trade-offs of lightweight structures and arrives at an optimal structure that drastically minimizes construction complexity, time and price while maximizing livability." (again, the reference to 'livability', and wording that suggests something more permanent than a tent, like 'structure') These are just 3 sentences, but the entire first half makes claims that go beyond 'hey this is nice to go camping in' or 'you can sleep in your backyards for a few nights in summer in this'.
  - xelxebar 9y ago
    It's more robust than a tent, but not so much as a brick and mortar house. I'm not sure what you want him to call it, but for what it's worth, I certainly didn't read the article like a zealous advocacy piece. It seems to me like this guy is just excited about domes, so I'm curious what background you may have that causes the article to poke your annoyance buttons.
    - roel_v 9y ago
      OK I think reasonable people can disagree on what they take away from this piece. So maybe he meant this as a mere build log, and not to stimulate others to do this for anything but fun. In which case - great. Where I'm coming from (the following is navel gazing, but hey, you asked :) ) is the plethora of people who 'advocate' things that they have only rudimentary experience with, and of which they fail to see the broader context if it were adopted on a larger scale. I especially experience this in 'modern back to nature' movement, but I guess it happens equally in software. For example: - like here, people advocating flimsy alternatives to houses for permanent residence (simplistic car tire or rammed earth houses for example; not the real engineered type, but the 'let me get a few buddies and a crate of beer and I'll build a house over a long weekend' type) because they as a single male engineer with family who owns some land have managed to 'live' (read: sleep and code) in it for a few seasons; - the rocket stove zealot, proposing that people use those for everyday cooking without making it part of their identify or self-worth; - the 'self sufficiency' crowd, thinking they'll go 'live off the land' on half an acre growing some zucchinis and 5 chickens. Or in a log house in Alaska - which they have to build with 50 tonnes excavators and for hunting they need a rifle with a scope for which the lenses need to be cut in a vacuum lab for sufficient clarity; but hey I pulled the trigger so I'm self-sufficient amirite? - part of the 'organic food'/'farmers market' cheerleaders. Look, I buy organic as much as I can; and I love farmers markets. But these are luxuries, they're not part of the solution for a 'sustainable' future. We can't feed that many people on inefficient agricultural techniques. - the 'urban farmers' and related folk. I have a garden in an urban area myself; again, I'm not complaining about the principle. But thinking that this is something that can be upscaled as an alternative to 'traditional' agriculture is just silly; and sometimes dangerous when it takes away from real alternatives. In this category is my favorite idiot: the ones who go to town hall meetings to advocate for planting fruit trees all over town to feed the poor and the homeless. I have yet to meet a single one who has ever tended to a single tree, let alone one who has tackled the many problems with this on the surface great concept. But that doesn't stop them from pushing others to work on their braindead ideas, and thereby harming the efforts of others who have actually workable plans (which are less ambitious and nowhere near as flashy, but at least not doomed to failure). I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm annoyed at people who assume that everybody else is an idiot, and that they're Gods gift to mankind who has come to tell the unwashed masses how to achieve enlightenment (that's not what OP was doing, just talking in general). Instead, have some humility, try to understand why things are the way they are, check if your proposed solution has the same problems others have, and if they don't, show that you've done your homework by pointing out how your solution is better than the others by highlighting them.
dalbasal 9y ago
Lets not hang anyone for wanting their work to “save the world” or be important in some other way, even if it is naive. What he does have is a cool temporary structure. Maybe it can be made into a commercial product for residential outbuildings or durable camps. Maybe other people can take this design and make it their own. Maybe it’s just a concept build, without a practical application but some hobbyist potential. Either way, it’s a pretty cool thing to build or read about someone building. The “frameless” feature that he discusses is interesting. The simplicity is interesting.
nl 9y ago
This is true. BUT that doesn't make this a terrible idea. I believe the famous Ikea flat-pack shilter[1] is the current state of the art in "emergency" (think refugee camp) shelter. This is certainly comparable. [1] http://www.bettershelter.org/better-shelters-house-iraqi-returnee-families-in-the-anbar-province/ http://www.bettershelter.org/better-shelters-house-iraqi-ret...
ehnto 9y ago
I'm confused by your last paragraph. Living in nature, especially if you're trying to do it with a small footprint, is nothing like eating your horse. To suggest that wanting to live in nature is to want to destroy it is a bit extreme. If you buy a massive piece of land, and build a house on it, you haven't ruined all of nature in your land. If you farm it, sure. Back to the article though, I hear you in regards to "I've solved the world with this one idea" sentiment. I will suggest though, that missing from your first paragraph is any notion that people can live differently to the standard house or apartment. Some people live permanently in large rugged tents in mild climates that don't need much in the way of heating. Their showering done in creeks or lakes, their cooking done outside. Some people live permanently and happily in the back of vans, even utility vehicles. Your complaints about the dome aren't unfounded, surely that's what most people would want so to suggest that the dome could solve the world's housing desires is obviously not correct. But it would be a more than whole and total solution for many people, even if it may be transiently. I think the domes would make a great temporary structure for someone building a homestead though. Some people live in an RV on the property while they build up their home, which I assume is to skirt some housing regulations while they live on site.
- roel_v 9y ago
  "To suggest that wanting to live in nature is to want to destroy it is a bit extreme." Well no, they don't want to, but they do it anyway - in the aggregate. Look, a single person living in a forest isn't damaging it; it's when many people want to do so, and actually do it, and the infrastructure required to live such a low-density lifestyle. The equilibrium is that almost all inhabitable land had people scattered all across it, along with a few high density cities for those who rather live close to people than have lots of room. But even those want to go to resorts in 'nature' on the weekends, so they still disturb and on the larger scale destroy natural habitats. If you really care about nature, you go live in a city, and you stay away from nature as much as possible (with the exception of some reserves that could be designated 'nature recreation' areas; I'm not saying nobody should ever be in a forest). Of course from the individual choice point of view it's more complicated; prisoners dilemma and all. My point is - if you live in a forest, you don't like nature (or at least, you're not doing your best to protect it); you like living in nature, which is different. And it's fine, I understand - but don't pretend you're protecting natural areas by living in them because you're the only one on your 10 acres. You're contributing to the destruction of habitats, biodiversity and most other measures of 'health of natural systems'.

by roel_v 9y ago

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?
- pamqzl 9y ago
  I can buy a metal garden shed for a couple of hundred bucks, assemble it myself, and it'll stand for decades without needing much if any maintenance. I could get one with a window, and a door that locks. It wouldn't give me any Whole Foods cred like a dome or a yurt, but aside from that issue it seems more practical than either of those, if I wanted to live in one small and poorly insulated room without plumbing. I've just looked at the Better Shelter page and it seems that their idea is the same as mine -- a metal shed.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    There's looks like a good shed, extendible, more insulated than sheet metal. The metal shed you get now, is likely to be designed to break and be hard to repair, 10 years ago its predecessor was probably much better. At least their shed is designed with repairability in mind.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    > I could get one with a window, and a door that locks. For a couple hundred bucks?
    - pamqzl 9y ago
      Well, okay, closest I could find was this $279 one with a lockable door but no window, but I haven't looked all that hard.
  - AlotOfReading 9y ago
    Gers/Yurts aren't poorly insulated. They're actually a bit over-insulated for most places. You could easily add locking doors or plumbing (I've seen both in Mongolian gers), but the real design advantages are the portability and wind load factors.

amelius 9y ago

Also, you can't put straight furniture against the walls. And it's difficult to stand near the walls.

hookshot 9y ago
If you build the dome tall enough it isn't really an issue. My dome is a 20' diameter 5/8 dome and my head will only touch if I am standing 4" away from the wall. Each of the 15 sides is around 4' long on a 20' dome so you can put square furniture against the side if it isn't over 4' long. It is a problem with long furniture. I have an 8' long counter and I drop stuff behind it all the time.

mmjaa 9y ago

On the other hand, you'd be surprised with how little you actually need in order to survive and live a peaceful, happy life. Building regulations are fine - if you wanna be a normal, living a normal life, in a normal society. But the world is a pretty big place. We don't all need these norms. You might have a morally authoritative view on just what basic needs a human has, and certainly can justify these requirements with a human ideal forged in your own social context, but the real honest truth is, most of those ideals are arbitrary. A lot of people can live without windows, especially if they're surrounded by nature 100% of the time, anyway. Plumbing? Who needs it if the rest of your property is set up for it - not everyone needs to live a decadent western lifestyle where running water is on demand within a few feet of your sleeping area, etc. A lot of the world survives just fine without all of these requirements, and from that perspective this "romanticism" is less of a fantasy, and more of a "what if .. we could live simpler lives, instead of more complex ones" - and that is the real merit of articles like this. To push us outside the "glass-half-empty/-full" norms that, ultimately, a lot of us are trapped in. ("Normal people use the word 'love'": Please tell me, what is normal. Because I don't believe you have a large enough sample size, honestly, based on your professed view...)

jankotek 9y ago
This 'hut' uses quite a few resources. I would not like to pay electricity bill in summer/winter. > It has electricity and is heated with a single electric radiator and is cooled with an exhaust fan and small window sized air conditioner
- ehnto 9y ago
  It doesn't have to be though, depending on where you build. In my current climate, I could do all needed temperature moderation with clothing or blankets.
icebraining 9y ago
There's nothing simple about a dome made of plastic, though. It demands an extremely complex and polluting network of oil rigs, refineries, transformation, transport, etc.

jakobegger 9y ago

I think the author was very clear in his post that this isn‘t an alternative to a real house, he explicitely called it an „ephemeral“ structure, and he compared it to teepees and yurts. I think this was a great article, and it feels like you are more complaining about a genre of articles instead of this article in particular.

roel_v 9y ago
Indeed my whining is about the genre, but I feel the author is making some broad claims about wider applicability, for example: "The difference in the ability of these different structures to shelter and provide a nice place to live is dramatic." (notice the words 'place to live') "The frameless dome pictured above is the culmination of my experience with these structures. Three and a half years after building it I am ready to advocate it as an excellent alternative lightweight structure." ('advocating an alternative structure' - one doesn't do that about tents) "I think this frameless dome balances many of the trade-offs of lightweight structures and arrives at an optimal structure that drastically minimizes construction complexity, time and price while maximizing livability." (again, the reference to 'livability', and wording that suggests something more permanent than a tent, like 'structure') These are just 3 sentences, but the entire first half makes claims that go beyond 'hey this is nice to go camping in' or 'you can sleep in your backyards for a few nights in summer in this'.
- xelxebar 9y ago
  It's more robust than a tent, but not so much as a brick and mortar house. I'm not sure what you want him to call it, but for what it's worth, I certainly didn't read the article like a zealous advocacy piece. It seems to me like this guy is just excited about domes, so I'm curious what background you may have that causes the article to poke your annoyance buttons.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    OK I think reasonable people can disagree on what they take away from this piece. So maybe he meant this as a mere build log, and not to stimulate others to do this for anything but fun. In which case - great. Where I'm coming from (the following is navel gazing, but hey, you asked :) ) is the plethora of people who 'advocate' things that they have only rudimentary experience with, and of which they fail to see the broader context if it were adopted on a larger scale. I especially experience this in 'modern back to nature' movement, but I guess it happens equally in software. For example: - like here, people advocating flimsy alternatives to houses for permanent residence (simplistic car tire or rammed earth houses for example; not the real engineered type, but the 'let me get a few buddies and a crate of beer and I'll build a house over a long weekend' type) because they as a single male engineer with family who owns some land have managed to 'live' (read: sleep and code) in it for a few seasons; - the rocket stove zealot, proposing that people use those for everyday cooking without making it part of their identify or self-worth; - the 'self sufficiency' crowd, thinking they'll go 'live off the land' on half an acre growing some zucchinis and 5 chickens. Or in a log house in Alaska - which they have to build with 50 tonnes excavators and for hunting they need a rifle with a scope for which the lenses need to be cut in a vacuum lab for sufficient clarity; but hey I pulled the trigger so I'm self-sufficient amirite? - part of the 'organic food'/'farmers market' cheerleaders. Look, I buy organic as much as I can; and I love farmers markets. But these are luxuries, they're not part of the solution for a 'sustainable' future. We can't feed that many people on inefficient agricultural techniques. - the 'urban farmers' and related folk. I have a garden in an urban area myself; again, I'm not complaining about the principle. But thinking that this is something that can be upscaled as an alternative to 'traditional' agriculture is just silly; and sometimes dangerous when it takes away from real alternatives. In this category is my favorite idiot: the ones who go to town hall meetings to advocate for planting fruit trees all over town to feed the poor and the homeless. I have yet to meet a single one who has ever tended to a single tree, let alone one who has tackled the many problems with this on the surface great concept. But that doesn't stop them from pushing others to work on their braindead ideas, and thereby harming the efforts of others who have actually workable plans (which are less ambitious and nowhere near as flashy, but at least not doomed to failure). I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm annoyed at people who assume that everybody else is an idiot, and that they're Gods gift to mankind who has come to tell the unwashed masses how to achieve enlightenment (that's not what OP was doing, just talking in general). Instead, have some humility, try to understand why things are the way they are, check if your proposed solution has the same problems others have, and if they don't, show that you've done your homework by pointing out how your solution is better than the others by highlighting them.

dalbasal 9y ago

Lets not hang anyone for wanting their work to “save the world” or be important in some other way, even if it is naive. What he does have is a cool temporary structure. Maybe it can be made into a commercial product for residential outbuildings or durable camps. Maybe other people can take this design and make it their own. Maybe it’s just a concept build, without a practical application but some hobbyist potential. Either way, it’s a pretty cool thing to build or read about someone building. The “frameless” feature that he discusses is interesting. The simplicity is interesting.

nl 9y ago

This is true. BUT that doesn't make this a terrible idea. I believe the famous Ikea flat-pack shilter[1] is the current state of the art in "emergency" (think refugee camp) shelter. This is certainly comparable. [1] http://www.bettershelter.org/better-shelters-house-iraqi-returnee-families-in-the-anbar-province/ http://www.bettershelter.org/better-shelters-house-iraqi-ret...

ehnto 9y ago

I'm confused by your last paragraph. Living in nature, especially if you're trying to do it with a small footprint, is nothing like eating your horse. To suggest that wanting to live in nature is to want to destroy it is a bit extreme. If you buy a massive piece of land, and build a house on it, you haven't ruined all of nature in your land. If you farm it, sure. Back to the article though, I hear you in regards to "I've solved the world with this one idea" sentiment. I will suggest though, that missing from your first paragraph is any notion that people can live differently to the standard house or apartment. Some people live permanently in large rugged tents in mild climates that don't need much in the way of heating. Their showering done in creeks or lakes, their cooking done outside. Some people live permanently and happily in the back of vans, even utility vehicles. Your complaints about the dome aren't unfounded, surely that's what most people would want so to suggest that the dome could solve the world's housing desires is obviously not correct. But it would be a more than whole and total solution for many people, even if it may be transiently. I think the domes would make a great temporary structure for someone building a homestead though. Some people live in an RV on the property while they build up their home, which I assume is to skirt some housing regulations while they live on site.

roel_v 9y ago
"To suggest that wanting to live in nature is to want to destroy it is a bit extreme." Well no, they don't want to, but they do it anyway - in the aggregate. Look, a single person living in a forest isn't damaging it; it's when many people want to do so, and actually do it, and the infrastructure required to live such a low-density lifestyle. The equilibrium is that almost all inhabitable land had people scattered all across it, along with a few high density cities for those who rather live close to people than have lots of room. But even those want to go to resorts in 'nature' on the weekends, so they still disturb and on the larger scale destroy natural habitats. If you really care about nature, you go live in a city, and you stay away from nature as much as possible (with the exception of some reserves that could be designated 'nature recreation' areas; I'm not saying nobody should ever be in a forest). Of course from the individual choice point of view it's more complicated; prisoners dilemma and all. My point is - if you live in a forest, you don't like nature (or at least, you're not doing your best to protect it); you like living in nature, which is different. And it's fine, I understand - but don't pretend you're protecting natural areas by living in them because you're the only one on your 10 acres. You're contributing to the destruction of habitats, biodiversity and most other measures of 'health of natural systems'.