Why I'd consider a dome... 1) safety - tornado / straight-line winds main risk here, and the aerodynamic shape is better than boxes. Aside from a friend into geometric shapes, there's other supporting evidence, two of which are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic_dome
http://static.monolithic.com/plan-design/survive/index.html
2) Structurally, we have about 6 months of more indoor-than-out weather here, and the square rooms 'appear' smaller than a round area, especially if it is 2 stories with 1/2 open loft; fewer corners to narrow visual perception, kind of like the horizon.
3) Cold / hot weather. I believe air spirals and circulates more smoothly in a dome. Possibly a simple and inappropriate example would be trying to roll marbles around inside a square box versus a circular can.
4) Cost and difficulty. Assembly costs for 'do-it-yourselfers' makes it fairly reasonable compared to stick-built conventional housing - two offered here.
http://www.intlist.com/cat2.htm structure
http://www.intlist.com/cat5c.htm pricing list
5) And you're right - the design will annoy "square-lovin'" folks, yet most cathedrals, native huts, sweat lodges, igloos, bird's nests, bee hives are circular. If squares were a better design, I believe Nature would have evolved squares, but the closest I could come to squares was cellular structure of some plants (more oblong); it was a question I pondered driving one time, and if you can think of anything Nature squares, I'd be glad to add it to my "things I know that serve very little use" pile - seriously.
I will suggest "getting back to nature" may mean considering the practical aspects of a spherical shape; I dreamed I was bouncing in a 'Bucky-ball' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckyball - darned if they don't mention domes on this site!) which is when my description triggered a friend to tell me about carbon60! :)
6) I have no affiliation with any given identity particularly; I'm not hippie-straight-white-Native-Christian-Atheist-traditional-nontraditional-orthodox-radical-etc. anything. I'm just me, with a handful of tools trying to apply logic in an illogical world; a beaver dam is round, seems to me there may be a reason it exists this way. Future saleability, I don't really care - I plan to live 'til the day I die, and then I hope I have the good sense to not get up. My main concern is creating a structure most practical and efficient for me. If I cared what others thought, 90% of the life I've lived would be altered, doubt I'll change soon (considering I just turned 50, odds aren't looking good). The thought of using a waste product for something practical fully appeals to me; I've banked with leaves for the winter from the perception of 'free insulation'; kept dry with a plastic sheet, it couldn't hurt, and then easily returned "to nature" come spring. Maybe part of that is 'poor farmer mentality', we made do or did without, and I've replaced 'real insulation' in houses for newspaper crumpled in the walls (talk about fire hazards, nothing like century-old lathes with newspaper creating flues in the walls). I surely hope we, as a people, can create housing with greater intelligence and ease than earlier civilizations, but with the same self-sufficient, hands-on approach that generated sod houses. I don't see why I should need $50,000 - $100,000 "to build a house" if I'm smart enough to seek alternatives. Yet a pre-fab before foundation was $80,000, not so solid, and wouldn't withstand the living we tend to generate here (it was pretty, not well-designed for functionality, and... boring). I'm just trying to keep a roof up, and if there's a reason for alternatives not gaining any ground....
THAT is EASY!!! - no profit. 'Square-built' thinking wants square houses, banks will finance, money market will provide material. Anything that messes with someone's profits will not get much voice, including GE's electric car (Who Killed the Electric Car?). Wind generators need to be company-controlled to grid, so they don't lose future profits; even if they could share ways for all of us to cheaply be energy-independent, they wouldn't / couldn't because it'd be cutting their own throats, as in "$ business as usual". A lot of nay-saying will go into stifling alternative methods to keep people thinking in the direction best-serving money interests. It's logical to the society we've developed. How else could they sell Humvee's as a status symbol when oil-shortage warnings have been around for decades, and we were at war in an oil-rich country? Lemmings following the leader aren't necessarily going in the right direction, but it's comforting to be following the pack; it's also what we're taught.
In some ways, I got lucky. My life was conducive to self-thinking from a young age on a lot of heavy topics, and the farm taught me more than any human has, barring a gent who passed in 2000 and taught me what it was to be loved. :) 'Nam vet I picked up hitch-hiking, which does show how orthodox I'm not.
No idea why anyone else would consider domes, but my research and local model (water foundation, with solar / ground heat / wind / composting toilets, etc.) display make it worthy of consideration. Reason I'd suggest it for a second story on this place: open area, base round, wind resistant, snow weight minimized. Reason I wouldn't: support structure of lower level would need re-enforcing, about the same for any extra weight on top. Comparatively, if a structure weighs less and sheds snow better than 20 - 24 inches of compact snow on the current roof... I am tired of shoveling it off regularly!
Odds likely, this place would be flat if a tornado hit it. There is 'no safe place' in it, and a hole in the ground would be more protective. I figure the Universe knows the situation here, and mostly it's the micro-climate of the nook I'm in that keeps much of the wind at bay and temps more moderate than surrounding area (60% of county froze septics one year, I... got lucky). Most 'storm-proof' housing' costs more than I can afford, and the high-end energy-efficient also follows this model. Breaking this cost-cycle for proverty-level folks is one of the potential uses of papercrete; pouring concrete isn't that difficult, though time-consuming, labor-intensive, and dirty (my mom mixed & poured concrete once when I was a kid; she died when I was eleven, but set me a standard of independent thinking). Interesting how warm a barn is without insulation, but a lot of hay bales in the loft and critters below; papercrete holds promise of this insulating effect, due to the lightness of the mix... and the last time I gathered rocks, the DNR made me put them back? :)
So we see why I, for one, would consider a dome structure, especially when earth-home isn't too practical to dig down at this location - water complications, otherwise I'd say it was ideal in a winter-cold, summer-hot, tornado-risk climate.
Hope this answers some of your questions, but this is "just me" - elaine in MN
--- On Thu, 6/26/08, clydetcurry <clyde@evesgarden.org> wrote:
From: clydetcurry <clyde@evesgarden.org>
Subject: [papercreters] Re: dome construction
To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008, 6:49 PM
maybe you should build with some other material- Clyde- In
papercreters@ yahoogroups. com, "Chita Jing" <cargovanfan@ ...> wrote:
>
> Okay, I'm dense. Exactly why are people building domes and vaults
with
> papercrete? Do they like the looks of Middle Eastern housing on an
American
> desert floor? I admired Nader Khalili, thought his version of "mud
houses"
> was the natural heir to Hassan Fathy - fired ceramic housing made
Khalili's
> method da bomb - but most of those houses look alien on American soil,
> pretentious even. Adobe people are lovely, well meaning and way down the
> wrong path both aesthetically and culturally outside the locales
which bred
> mud housing. Just as a teepee would stick out in the middle of
Devonshire,
> it's a bit surprising to see Swiss Alps housing in Southern
California, even
> if Solvang is, like, the funnest collection of vernacular
architecture since
> the hot dog stand that looked like a hot dog. A Fathy-Khalili house
in the
> Denver burbs is as jarring as those moussed and moccassined
Caucasians in
> yoga classes who reluctantly but unavoidably "speak Sanskrit" as
they relate
> how they spent five years learning to tuck their feet behind their ears.
>
> I've been interested in alternative housing a while. I've tried to
> understand and keep in touch with various lists and groups over the last
> twenty-five years and honest, I just see so little progress. We must be
> doing something wrong. The few viable alternatives foundered in
their most
> expensive trials - google SIP in Alaska for one sad example.
>
> I admire papercrete as a material, don't misunderstand me. I'm not
> against most of the methods that have mailing lists. But in my
opinion, a
> major reason alternative building methods have gained almost no
ground in
> thirty years is that the people in those groups hardly ever get down to
> bedrock discussions. Every group seems to fall into a mindset where the
> question becomes, "Where can we build a waffle-weave- polyester
dwelling,"
> instead of, "How do we house people better within our lifetimes?"
>
> Can we do more to get to the core of the issues? Have we spoken
about
> what could be called The Point? Is papercrete basically being passed
around
> as a way to make imitation drywall/plaster? Look around you. With
gasoline
> at $5/gallon, what sort of demographic segments will move out to the
boonies
> to buld individual houses that won't qualify for mortgages or
insurance? Who
> will clean those houses that make the front cover of Alternative
> Architecture Monthly? Where and how will THEY live? If alternative
houses
> are all owner built, how will those owners sustain those homes out
in the
> boonies as they get older? Should we call this field Trust Fund
Housing so
> folks are better prepared for the long term picture that's emerging?
>
> I'm just asking.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Tom Curry <contact@... >
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Kristen,
> > Nader Khalili's book is a good how-to source. Papercrete works
very well
> > for dome and barrel vault construction. We have built both here
in Alpine
> > and Marfa, TX. and so has Clyde Curry over in nearby Marathon.
We're not
> > that far from southern NM so come check them out sometime. Also
you can see
> > pictures on the papercreter' s website.
> >
> > Tom Curry
> >
> >
>
