Cutting the boards to length was repetitive work. I grabbed a board from the pile, marked where to cut it, handed it to Tom, who cut the board and put it in a pile. After all the boards a certain length were cut, the boards were labeled "A", "B", "C", "D", or "E".
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In the early hours of February 16, President's Day, sleet fell from the sky. What was suppose to be four to eight inches of snow turned out to be an inch of ice enveloping everything and anything that wasn't covered. Temperatures were in the 20s and wouldn't get above freezing for the rest of the week.
To build the dome, we needed a dual angle miter saw to cut the wood. It had to have AT LEAST a 60 degree angle capability, and the blade had to tilt a minimum of 20 degrees. Good saws aren't cheap. We paid about $650 for this 12" Dual-Bevel Sliding Compound Miter Saw (6955-20) from Milwaukee Tool. It has a digital read-out angle with repeatable accuracy to 0.1" degree. The Integral Dust channel captures up to 75% of the dust and debris cut, which is nice to have. I can't imagine how much dust there would be without it!
Feb. 15, 2015, from Joel Salatin:
Yesterday, our Staunton newspaper carried a lengthy article about the collapse of the Monarch butterfly and the efforts to plant milkweeds in order to keep them from going extinct. While I'm excited about the awareness, research, and efforts at restoring milkweed numbers to help the Monarch, it's another example of fooling around with a faucet and teacup instead of using the fire hydrant located a dozen feet away. The house burns down during our own inefficiency. This is halfway through the build of our icosahedron 3V 4/9 dome. The dome is about 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter and about 6 meters (20 feet) tall. To help with calculations, SimplyDifferently.org is a great website and uses the metric system - so be prepared.
At first, we were going to build a dome 7 meters (23 feet) in diameter and bought the following lumber:
Our first project was to build a greenhouse to house an aquaponic system. Tom wanted to construct a hoop house, but I wanted to build a geodesic dome. Why a dome?
This was in August of 2011. As a precaution against digging predators, we used a long strip of secondhand chicken wire and made a 'skirt' around the perimeter of the dome. Railroad ties, stones and leftover wood - whatever we could find - were laid on top to hold the fencing down. Now all we needed were some chickens! ![]() Note: grass grew through the fencing, which made it quite difficult to move the dome when the time came. Since we never did have any problems with predators trying to get in the dome, we removed the 'skirt,' and so far, haven't had any trouble with predators getting into the 'locked' dome. This was done on March 23, 2012. Leftover wood from the domes and some old siding we found under the shed were used to build this chicken coop. I read online that chickens need about 9 to 12 inches of perch space per bird, so we built this coop a little over 2' x 6' to house six to eight birds comfortably.
![]() The door was made from electrical conduit connected with PVC elbows. We ran out of electrical conduit and used a length of PVC pipe we had lying around for one side of the door. Chicken wire was then wrapped around the pipes. The door was attached to the dome with shoelaces: three on one side to act as hinges and two on the other side to 'lock' and 'unlock' the door. It works well. After a year or so, the shoelaces broke but were easily replaced. We never had any trouble with predators getting into the 'locked' dome and went to using only one shoelace to 'lock' the door. The door was built on March 23, 2012. I posted on freecycle.org that I needed some chicken fencing and was offered a bunch of used chicken wire in differing lengths and widths. We had a four foot tall section that we wrapped around the bottom of the dome and secured with twist ties at the base. Wire was then used to connect the top of the fencing to the dome. Of course, we left a section open to attach a door later. This was done on February 27, 2012.
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PattiI've been inspired by Henry David Thoreau to live the life I imagine. I want to live without depending on dirty fossil fuels; to grow an abundance of healthy, organic food; and live in a home built with natural materials like cob. I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it. ArchivesCategories
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