Well, we are finally putting up paneling - something we expected to do a couple of month ago until we found out about the additional fire proofing foil paper that was needed. On the bright side, seeing the dome covered in what is essentially tinfoil is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It looks like the set of a cheap 70's science fiction movie. Though it was easy to light up at night with a single bulb. There isn't much to describe about the process - we stapled up the FSK (Foil-Scrim-Kraft) paper and taped all the seams just like we did with the vapor barrier. The FSK paper also acts as a vapor barrier. Had we known ahead of time that we needed it we could have skipped the 6-mil plastic that we put up before it. The FSK paper does tear easily so it's probably better to have the plastic barrier as well. While the FSK paper was being put up, Mike spent most of his time carrying interior triangle panels around. Each panel needed one coat of stain and two coats of fire retardant. That means each panel was moved at least 9 times - from the dome (where they are stored) to the staining "station" (the side of the back extension), to the drying racks (a couple of tarps on the ground), and back to the dome once they were dried. Times 3. With all that work finished, we are finally seeing some nice results. The last two visits we put up a little over half of the interior panels (we would have gotten more done, but our generator conked out on us over the labor day weekend and cut our visit short.) The acoustics in the dome are slowly changing as we get the panels installed. We have a radio playing while we work - in one part of the dome the sound appears to come from your right, in another your left, and in some places it's balanced and you can't tell the source. It will probably take another two visits to install the remainder of the panels. We also had a couple of truck loads of dirt delivered to our future garden site. I think there was some miscommunication as to the size of the garden so we are getting a couple more truck loads dropped of this week to make it bigger. It will be about 1500 sq feet when complete. Sara ran some PH tests on the soil and found it to be very basic - 9.2 or so. We will need to pick up some sulfur (sulphur?) to try and drop it to 6.5. On our last trip I colonized the dirt with a pound of mycorrhizal fungi. That is the fungi that forms bonds with the roots of plants and help to gather additional nutrients and protect the roots from disease. All soil contain these fungi species, but freshly "manufactured" bulk dirt tend to have low levels since the composting process kills most of them off. Once the fungi takes hold and the sulfur helps the soil PH we'll plant some clover as a winter cover crop. With any luck we can plant some vegetables come spring (after we build a fence.) This week the trench to the well should be filled in as well. We can then trim the water proofing on the foundation to the correct height and call in the siding company (hopefully they can get to it before the winter rain/snow hits, otherwise it will have to wait until next spring.) We will be placing a order for all the wood we'll need for the interior walls/loft soon. We already have the walls and doors marked in Sharpie on the floor. We will start building those as soon as we finish with the interior panels. Neil
We didn't go to the dome this weekend, but here is the update for the last one. We packed up and left Thursday night so we would be ready for the insulation/vapor barrier inspection on Friday. We had about an hour or two worth of work to do before the inspector came. Since he could come any time on Friday (and they start work at 7 AM) we finished it up late on Thursday. He ended up getting there a little after noon on Friday, and while we passed the insulation/vapor barrier, we found out that our wood paneling isn’t thick enough for fire code (which requires 3/4 of an inch. The paneling is only 1/2".) The easiest way of remedying this is to staple up some fireproof "paper" over the vapor barrier. That is going to take another two trips to install.
On Saturday we installed a hand pump on our well. We had to feed the pipe assembly down by hand as we installed each nine foot piece of piping and sucker rod. While it's only 150 feet to the water level we installed 220 feet worth of pipe. That way we don't have to add any pipe in the future if the water level changes or we use a lot of water at one time (the well only produces 4 gallons per minute.) The depth of the well is 350' so we will probably install the electric pump even lower then the manual one. The pump seems to work great. We probably get about 1 cup of water per pump stroke. It takes about 20 or so pumps to get it started since it drains about 4-5 feet worth of water from the pipe to prevent freezing. We didn’t get to drink any of it yet – we had to pour bleach down the well to kill any organisms we introduced with the pipe assembly. We'll find out next weekend how it tastes.
The rest of Saturday and Sunday Mike and Sara worked on cutting and stacking firewood. They made a dent in the big pile of logs next to the garden area but it will take many more days of work to chop them up completely. I worked on creating some in-wall shelving in what will be the back of Mike and Sara's closet. Behind their closet is about a food of dead space formed when we framed in part of the arch opening that sticks out into the back room. It was harder then it normally would be since I had to frame in some room for insulation since we will be leaving the back room unheated.
The fire proof paper didn't arrive in time for us to visit the dome this weekend, but I got a call today from Arrow Lumber saying it arrived, so we'll be there next weekend.
People have asked why there have been no new pictures and text posted in awhile. The answer is not that we haven't been working, but that the work is tedious and not very "showy". The insulation triangles have to be carefully fitted and fluffed out to leave no gaps where air could infiltrate. The vapor barrier over the insulation needs every seam and hole taped. The seams for the vapor barrier aren't nice straight edges either. When you put square sheets of plastic on the rounded shell you have excess that needs to be folded over. Those folds then need to be taped as if they were seams to prevent moist air from sneaking behind the folds into the insulation. It's hard to describe so I'll try to dig up some pictures. The end result is the last couple of months of posts and pictures would be very repetitive. The good news is that we are almost done with it! It should just take one more weekend to put vapor barrier on the skylights. We will then be returning to the more "sexy" carpentry work and the posts and pictures will pick up as we have something worthwhile to show. We do have some progress to show: a new back wall! The remaining vapor barrier work is a one-man job so Mike and Sara built the back wall this previous visit. Even though it's an inside wall we built it with 2x8s to fit extra insulation since the back room will not be heated. This coming memorial day weekend Mike and Sara will start laying down an additional layer of 1/2" plywood over the existing 3/4" subfloor. This will make the floors nice and stiff for tiling later. It will also help with the problem of pictures rattling on the walls when someone jumps on the floor that so many new houses seem to have with their lightweight building methods/materials. While they are doing that I'll be finishing up the vapor barrier.
After being lazy and taking off TWO weekends (Oct 26th and Nov 9th) out of the past twenty some, we built the front entry wall. There isn't too much to say: it's a wall, it's made from 2x8s, it has a hole for a door, and it was complicated to cut all of the needed angles. Next we can put in the doors and lock the place up when we leave! We had purchased a bunch of corrugated flexible pipe for the drain tile around the perimeter. Some of it was perforated (for drainage around the house) and half was solid (to carry the water away from the house to a drainage pit.) We noticed the piece of pipe sticking out of the ground to the left of the entry wasn't perforated. I'm crossing my fingers that it is just a small extension piece to T into the solid pipe for the drainage, but I have a sinking feeling that our contractor may have buried a long length of solid pipe along the perimeter that will need to be dug back up. Luckily none of the soil has been backfilled, just gravel so far.
So we passed our first framing inspection on Monday. I say 'first' since we will need another framing inspection when the interior walls are up. We initially failed the framing inspection a few weeks earlier. Our shear schedule (the nailing pattern in the plywood) didn't match what was called for in the engineering drawings for high wind/seismic areas. I only looked at our floor plans, not the generic engineering drawings. We weren't the only ones who missed it though - the foundation wall pieces needed additional nailing as well to match the specs. In addition we added additional blocking in the foundation where the two pieces of plywood meet, put additional strapping over the plywood to anchor the dome to it's foundation, and added A35 clips to every 2x4 "mini" stud in the riser wall. I doubt we needed to do the A35 clips as the plywood extends past the studs and into the rim joists. We had already argued and gotten waived on needing additional tie plates between the plywood since we meet on the rim joist so I wasn't going to push that too. On the plus side, the dome should be able to take any winds or earthquake that mother nature throws at it now. We also got to see our roof 95% completed this last weekend! Allan had a patch of it done the previous weekend which gave us a little taste, but we left on Monday a few hours before he finished. We'll get some more aerial shots this coming weekend from the manlift (40 foot height.) Allan did a great job on it and it looks beautiful. This coming weekend we'll be putting the waterproofing on the foundation and laying the drainage tubing all around. If we finish, Jim Ashe will head out there to backfill with pea gravel and dirt. Then we'll just have to wait for the siding to be installed to be completely weatherproof!
So I guess I wouldn't be able to make it as a professional blogger if I can't even manage one post a week. These last two weeks we've concentrated on the front extension. The front extension is made of arches that fit to the dome extension opening and kind of makes the dome look like an igloo. The front of the front extension is open to the elements, making it a large porch. Eventually we'll screen off the front to keep the bugs out, but for now it's open. There are four skylights in a "stripe" to allow in extra light since the opening faces north. The front extension was originally designed to be at the same floor level as the rest of the dome. The foundation walls were made to a four foot height instead of six feet like the rest of the dome so less material would need to be excavated from the front. However, do to how the dome is positioned and the natural slope of the ground, the front ground level ended up being at the same level as the rest of the dome. That led us to two choices - either add two feet of soil and pack it down so the extension would sit at the correct height or have the the porch sit two feet lower then the dome. The second choice (which is what we opted for) also had the advantage of breaking the front steps into two sections - a set to get up to the porch, then a couple of steps to get into the house. The weekend of Aug 23rd we built the 4' foundation and subfloor, assembled and raised the extension arches, and started on the sheathing. We also met with a vinyl siding installer to measure and estimate a premium quality siding product. It's going to end up costing double what we could if we installed it ourselves, but it will save us several weekends of work and the rainy season is fast approaching :) The weekend of Aug 30th we added an overhang to the extension to keep the rain off the subfloor, finished the sheathing, and cut and framed the skylights. While that was going on, Sara finished up the rest of the bracketing and framing clips in the crawlspace and mike cut a bunch of plywood to size to close in the crawlspace. We won't install the plywood until the roof is on so that the crawlspace can dry out from any rains (this weekend Mike vacuumed 55 gallons of water from the crawlspace.) Next weekend we will finish cutting and framing the last skylight as well as framing and sheathing the three egress windows. While looking through the permits I found out that the back extension needs an attic access door per code, even though there is maybe 100 cubic feet of "attic" space there. We should be able to fit that in next weekend too. If all of that gets completed, we can call in the framing inspector. Assuming he finds no big issues we can start scheduling the roofing and work on the backfill.
The back extension took two weekends longer to build then I originally thought, but it's finally finished (well, the rough work that is.) I'm still glad we went with the hip roof because it meshes better with the dome then a gable roof would. It will also protect the back door from the elements (southern exposure) more then a gable roof would because of the lower overhang. In the race to beat the rainy season we have a bunch more steps that need to be completed: - Build and sheath the front extension (should be quicker then the back)
- Install the remaining windows and skylights
- Enclose the foundation and apply the waterproof membrane and drainage
- Lay the perimeter drain tubes and backfill with gravel and dirt (we are having Jim Ashe (the excavator) do this step)
- Rent a manlift and bring in Allan, our dome roofer, to install the shingles
- Put up siding
Once all of those steps are done we can relax for a bit and take our time with the inside work. Next weekend we will start tackling the front extension. It has permanent wood foundation walls (pre-built) like the rest of the dome has. We have to level and position those two wall sections and build the subfloor. The decking will be built with all treated lumber since the front will be exposed to the elements. We may screen it in sometime in the future. I'm guessing we'll only be able to finish the subfloor, but if it goes quick we can start making the short walls that will support the extension arches.
Not exactly "woes", but they are a pain in the butt. If it wasn't for this handy hip roof calculator, I would still be trying to work out the angles: http://www.blocklayer.com/roof/roofeng.aspx We didn't get the roof sheathed, but we did get all the roof trusses installed this weekend. We also got a visit from the roofer, Allan. He stopped by to check out the job site and verify we had all the right materials. Actually Allan stopped by at just the right time. I had the clever idea of turning the skylight sideways to fit better in the extension. Right when we were starting to frame it, he arrived and mentioned that the flashing is customized to fit vertically, not horizontally. We flipped the skylight the correct way, but it doesn't fit quite as nicely. Next weekend I may move one of the ceiling joists over to give better access to the skylight and the attic storage space. Other then that, all we have to do is put up a bunch of blocking, saw off the tips of the roof joists so they are even, and put the sheathing on. With any luck we'll get that finished and start on the front extension next weekend.
We played hooky from work for a half-day today so we could get some additional build time on Sunday night. The plan was to build out the back extension and get a roof over it. We got half way done with all three walls and the ceiling joists up but no roof rafters yet. Temperatures were once again in the upper 90s (or 38 liters for you metric people) and the mosquito population is stable at a quadrillion. The back extension is framed with 2x8s for maximum strength and insulation. However, we bought the cheapest windows we could for the back since we won’t keep it heated. We also bought a skylight at the last minute to reduce the need for lighting and to keep the solar electric batteries from freezing in the winter (the back extension faces due south.) We mistakenly used most of the 20’ 2x8s on the walls and didn’t leave any for the roof joists so we also took a quick trip into Randle to pick up some 14 foot 2x8s. Fitting those into an 8 foot trailer was exciting. Every bump threatened to send the load tumbling. We’ll be using them on our next trip down when we finish the hip roof. The back extension has twice as much blocking as a normal wall. We wanted to make sure that the top piece of foundation plywood overlapped onto the walls by at least a foot. That will firmly hold the walls onto the foundation without needing a ton of tie straps (which we also put on.) The down side is that we had to add the second layer of blocking so the plywood has a nailing edge. The extra two hours of work probably tripled the uplift strength so it was a good tradeoff. Cost was probably an extra $125 for the blocking and 4-5 additional pieces of plywood.
It’s been a crazy week but I finally have a chance to sit down and write. Right now we’re sitting down to a lunch of corn chowder and grilled cheese sandwiches. The dome has 22 more panels left to put on and the front and back extensions still need to be framed. The back is more complicated but it’s foundation is complete, while the front is easier to frame but has no foundation built yet. Yesterday's video will be a short one. We took a break in the middle of the day to do laundry and shower. Monday’s video is only half there due to camera error. The video on Sunday is quite a bit larger then normal. Rather then snapping a new picture every 10 seconds, we upped it to every 5 seconds to have a smoother video. We posted the "quick" version (just the dome struts going up) as well as the full days video. The skylights may be a problem for us. They are a little too big for the three of us to handle by ourselves and we don’t have a ladder long enough for one of them. We will probably leave them out this trip and get Jim Ashe to help us install them later. Since a full panel is installed and then the window opening is cut out from it the dome should remain mostly water tight. We'll just cut the opening when it's time to install them. The foundation is 98% complete. When it gets a little hotter we’ll take a break from putting up the panels and finish up the various braces and strapping under there. The scaffolding needs to be returned on Thursday unless we want to pay for another week's rental. I may look into purchasing a cheap set since we'll need some over the next several weekends and again when we finish the inside. *Update* It's now 4 hours later and there are 14 more panels left to go. We may attempt assembling the mini cupola (for the "roof" venting at the very top of the dome) before we get the last panels on so we have something to climb on to reach the top. We have also framed three of the four riser wall openings (about 8' x 4'.) Since they are on the west side we'll wait for the morning before putting up the plywood sheathing on them. We also need to cover the top two feet of the foundation with plywood as well. That's it for now. We can hear Mike's Mom and stepfather pulling up our driveway. They will be here helping for the remainder of the week and will come home with us to Seattle on Sunday.
We just had our first shower in 5 days. While I was checking my brother into his hotel room we snuck up to his room to shower. My brother, nephew, and Mike’s dad are all arriving in about 20 minutes. This is very good news because we are running 6-8 hours behind schedule. The joist work has been going slower then anticipated – mostly due to the sheer number of nails that every joist hanger requires. We got the back extension mostly finished with just some simple blocking left to do. The good news is that we are getting a routine down, the bad news is that we are losing Mike and Sara for about 3 hours tomorrow while they pick up some scaffolding and a new air compressor. For some reason my air compressor has started tripping the breaker of the generator when ever it turns on. Maybe some dirt or grime is seizing the motor and making it draw more current. What ever the case, we don’t have time to troubleshoot it so it’s worth renting a new one. Tomorrow is going to be one busy day. We have to finish as must of the joist work as possible and hopefully get some of the subflooring installed to be ready for the riser wall installation on Friday. We’ll also lose a bunch of time on Friday unloading and hauling the dome shell materials up to the top of the build site in my trailer. Mike’s brothers should be getting here around 5-6 on Friday so we can put them to work right away. Right now I’m off to dinner with everyone then back to the dome. The video today lost about 1-2 hours of time, so you’ll see a jump in the beginning.
We've started taking long breaks in the early afternoon to beat the heat. It's been in the 90s in the sun and well over a hundred in the solar shed. Our pale Seattle skin and nocturnal eyes have a hard time with direct sunlight. We got down to the land at around 5:00 on Saturday with the car and trailer packed full of tools and equipment. We were actually dragging the safety chains on the ground as we drove, we were that weighed down. Most of Saturday night was spent preparing the camp site for our extended stay. We drove into packwood and ate at the pizza joint there (one of three restaurants in the area.) As an added treat I slept on an air mattress - a first while camping. The concrete was poured on Thursday and the beam bases that were embedded use bolts and not nails. First thing on Sunday (at the crack of 11) we first drove into town to pick up the proper bolts and some misc. lumber for the changes we will be making to the front porch. The rest of Sunday was spent putting up the posts and finishing up the double header around the perimeter. Sunday night is when I discovered the camera hadn't been recording for the last day and a half. At least we have pictures from the normal camera. Monday (today) we moved most of the 2x8 lumber into the dome foundation so we wouldn't have to haul it over the wall when we bolt in the last wall section. When that last section is installed we'll need to use a ladder and a wood bridge to get in and out. We measured and chopped all the posts to their correct height which involved being covered in a blizzard of sawdust. It wouldn't have been bad if I didn't just slather myself with sunscreen. We also built a couple of sawhorses and a table to stage all of the joist cutting. Once it hits 4:00 or so (when it cools down) we'll start building and installing the main beams. On a side note, it looks like the lumber company ran out of 10 foot 2x8s and instead gave us 18 foot pieces. That must have cut into their profit. It also means that we are going to have a lot of wood scraps left over.
The permanent wood foundation was delivered this weekend. The pieces are premade and too big to fit into my trailer so we had to rent an all-terrain fork truck to ferry them up the driveway to the building site. 
The bearded guy is Jim Ashe who built the road and did the excavation. We’ll be seeing more of him whenever we need any big equipment. 
The other guy hanging off the fork truck is Hugh Mayhew who owns Domes Northwest. They are the dealer for Natural Spaces Domes out here. He’s been a great help in putting all this together. Hugh will be here for 3 days during the dome raising weekend of the 21st to make sure we don’t do anything stupid. It rained on and off in the morning while the “cargo” was being transferred to the top, but it cleared up around noon.  The dome site looks quite different from when we were here last week. Jim had cut down another dozen or so trees and cleared out the building site and septic area. The excavation was finished and gravel was spread as well. Our first priority was to get the shed finished so we could store all of our tools. I brought a new sheet of exterior paneling and some 2x4s to patch up the door hole in back of the shed and to make a new door opening in front. We managed to get a nearly identical match on the paneling with what came with the kit. The kit had a pretty poor excuse for a lock so we put on a latch that I bought. While I was finishing up the shed, Sara and Mike were moving all of the foundation panels and footer plates to their approximate location. It turns out the 360 degree laser level can’t be seen in full daylight from 20 feet away so we broke for lunch (backpacker’s macaroni and cheese and mixed nuts.) Once we could see the laser we started evening out the gravel around the edges where the foundation walls will be. It looks like there is a 1.5 inch deviation between the lowest and highest points. When it started to get dark we put away all the tools and made dinner (veggie burgers followed by rice pilaf.) In the morning Mike (who wakes up first) did some trail clearing while the rest of us slept in. After that we spent a few hours fine tuning the placement of the foundation (lots and lots of measuring!) Once we were satisfied we leveled out the gravel, laid the first footer board, and setup the first foundation wall piece. After we braced the first piece we then proceeded to tear it back down again since my measurements didn’t include the width of the plywood on the outside of the wall. Once that was figured out we put the first wall piece back up and the second followed suit an hour later. Before we could put up the third wall piece we had to do some digging to make sure we had room behind the wall for the drainage pipe and gravel backfill (it was a little tight on that side.) We left shortly after that so we could make it home at a decent hour. Since I was starting to fall asleep at the wheel, Sara drove us home.  Next weekend we will finish the foundation walls so that concrete can be poured during the week. I'm going to leave early from work on Friday to drive directly there to get a jump start on it. Mike and Sara will come on Saturday so that Sara doesn't have to miss any volunteer time at the pet shelter. -N
It’s 6:30 PM on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We came out this weekend to build a Solar Shed kit. For the most part, it now resembles a shed. We ran into a few problems (half of which were human errors.) First, our door is on the wrong side of the shed. While it appears that we got the majority of the shed build before we noticed that, in reality Mike pointed it out to me while the second wall was being assembled on the ground. I had blindly followed the pictures in the directions without considering that the words printed on the page may have some bearing. The specific paragraph was: For added flexibility, the doors can be located on the side or tall wall. Before beginning assembly, Determine Door Location per illustrations on Page 2. Right side wall assembly shown. If building left side assembly, place wall panels on opposite side of frame. I know exactly what you’re thinking: Why did they capitalize “Determine Door Location”? Some of the smarter people reading this will also be wondering why we didn’t just fix the door right when Mike noticed it? The answer is that, due to learning how to build things under the tutelage of my father, everything can be made stronger. So while the directions have you placing a 2” smooth nail (included with the kit) every 12 inches for the panels, we instead placed 2 ½ inch galvanized ring shank nails every 6 inches. After we glued every joist with Liquid Nails industrial adhesive of course. Now the only way to fix the door involves a Sawzall with metal and wood bits. That will have to wait until next weekend. The other problem we ran into was with the roofing trusses. We followed the directions exactly but one end of the truss didn’t sit flush with the top header of the wall. Near as we can tell they probably cut it backwards at the factory. There wasn’t any way we could have messed it up. Oh yeah, I also managed to screw up my brand new generator while testing it out on Friday. Since it said to fill with oil to the level of the oil cap I happily turned it on its side and poured 2 ½ quarts of oil in. Turns out they meant for you to keep it flat on the ground and fill just the bottom part of the pan with oil until it is level with the oil cap. I cranked up the generator, it ran for 10 seconds, and then it gushed oil from out of the air filter. After spending two hours to drain the oil and gas and clean out the cylinder I still couldn’t it to run more then 30 seconds at a time. I didn’t have any time to strip down the engine further to clean it so I borrowed a generator from a friend. I’ll have to fix it next week. Back to the shed. It’s now mostly done, but before we can put in the windows we need to acquire some drip edges from the hardware store. All of the hardware stores closed at 4:00 today, whereas I pulled up to them at 4:10. Hopefully we’ll find one open on Memorial day, otherwise we can’t finish it until next weekend. As far as I can tell, the requirement of drip edges was not mentioned in the manual until page 60. I personally felt they should have mentioned it on the cover where they described the needed and optional tools.  But not all is bad. We now have a nice sturdy shed that’s mostly water resistant. The new tools (framing air nail gun, air impact nailer, and new cordless drill) got a good workout and I’ve figured out most of their quirks. We managed to haul the heaviest load yet in our trailer (right near its maximum capacity of 1.125 tons), and plenty of brush wood got burned. What else? Lunch yesterday was Subway while on the go, and crackers, cheese, and mixed nuts for dinner. Today breakfast was more crackers and cheese, lunch was a cheese pizza (I Can’t Believe It’s Cheese Pizza! backpacker’s mix), and dinner is a vegetable stew that’s currently cooking over the fire. Since our picnic table gets crowded with all the tools and misc junk, I’m going to design an extension shelf to build and bring next weekend. 
Here is a view of the completed shed – just before the dome foundation excavation.
What great project was ever executed without personal peril? Hopefully ours will be of the bump and scrape variety. Either way, they’ll be documented here in gory detail.
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