Dome Raising

A man standing on a dome riser wall with one set of strut triangles — Jon provides a scale for the strut lengths of the MinneDome

I am so excited to announce that our geodesic dome struts, which form the triangle framework, are up!!! It looks awesome here!!!

2 partially constructed geodesic dome buildings — The sawtooth utility dome on the left and MinneDome on the right

A few days before pouring the patio and greenhouse piers, Hardcore helped us move the extremely heavy riser walls and other prebuilt components from where we’ve been storing them in the cage to each dome slab. That was immensely helpful because our tractor is broken, and like I said, those components are heavy!

We wasted no time propping the riser walls up and pounding the pins in hubs to lock them together. We’d this been looking forward to part for years!!!

A man hammers a pin into a hub above his head on a geodesic dome — For the Natural Spaces Dome kits, each strut intersection is connected with a hub and pins to the black sleeves on the struts

A woman in shorts and a tank top pounds a pin into a hub - part of a geodesic dome kit — Did I mention we were having a heat wave this week in January?

A sawtooth shape of walls lines up with the mountains on the skyline — The sawtooth shape of the utility dome matches our skyline rather nicely

We borrowed a taller ladder and installed struts as high as we could before assembling our scaffolding, appropriately purchased at ScaffoldMart, “Where we sell scaffolding, and that’s it!”

A couple assemble the bracing for the second level of scaffolding — Thank you, Stacey and Ceal, for assembling the second level of scaffolding!

A woman climbs up scaffolding — Scaffolding is a really useful tool when building a house!

Wonderful, very appreciated friends came for a couple days and we got a ton done! Shy us didn’t even have to ask for help- they just volunteered!

A man hammers a pin out of a hub (in a geodesic dome) — Sometimes the hubs weren’t rotated correctly, so we had to use a pin punch to hammer them out and then align the hub. Thanks, Jeff!

In a geodesic dome construction with 2 extension openings, the first strut spans the two sides. — Celebrate! The 2 sides of the utility dome are connected!

3 people crowd the scaffolding and 1 is on the extension ladder to fit and connect 2 stubborn struts on a geodesic dome — 10 hands were way better than 4!

Very, very appreciated! The 2×8 struts for these dome sizes are long and heavy!

Two people hold struts up, while a third nails a pin in the hub connecting them, as part of geodesic dome construction. — Our neighbors were such a big help to us!

Up on the scaffolding, — Ceal was high up on a ladder to get this action shot. Thanks!

2 people on scaffolding working near the top of a partially constructed geodesic dome. — Fellow Dome enthusiast, Marguerite, and Barry came after work to help!

Following our impromptu Dome Raising, Jon and I were on our own for a couple days and mostly finished up with the struts.

2 people smiling at the top of a partially constructed geodesic dome — The top hubs are red, just for fun

Then Stacey returned to help us with the last few struts at the top of the MinneDome, which are part of an overhang and were quite awkward. He also snapped some great shots as we finished up!

2 men up on scaffolding work to attach a strut in the dome structure — Our neighbor enjoyed working on the domes and we enjoyed his help!

Later, Jon drilled and bolted the domes down to the concrete slabs. Natural Spaces Domes recommends securing a structure to the slab after assembling the struts because cast-in-place anchors are tough to line up with a dome.

A light shines on a man drilling a hole through the mudsill and into the concrete slab in the dark. — Hammer (Drill) Time: drilling holes to attach the dome to the concrete slab

And just in time, too! A storm blew in the next day and dumped a whole lotta snow.

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