DOOOOOME! I'm making a DOME!

[x88x]

Right, so my garden shed is...well, kinda crap. It looks like it used to be a chicken coop, and looks like it was cobbled together about 50 years ago and randomly patched at multiple points since then.

...soooo.....new shed time. And as you may have guessed, I'MA MAKE A DOME! A geodesic 1V dome, to be exact.

Why? 'cause I like domes and domes are cool, that's why.
Also, according to my calculations, the materials will cost about half what the materials for a similarly sized normal shed would. AND IT'S A DOME!


Right, so I've never actually built a dome before, so today I made a scale(ish) model out of dowels and tubing. I got the idea from this site, where they recommended using 1/8" dowels and 1/8" ID tubing to stick them together at the corners. Now, there were a few problems with that. First, I couldn't find any 1/8" dowels at Home Depot, second, once I stopped to think about it, I decided I wanted to use much thicker dowels for the size model that I wanted to make, and third, I remembered a while ago I picked up a bunch of 3/8" ID 1/2" OD watercooling tubing from Microcenter for, like, $3 for 8'. So, since that was thin-wall tubing like I wanted, I decided to just get 3/8" dowels instead, which worked out much better size-wise.

I got the rough design from that same site, which gave me an idea of how to shape the dome and what sort of connectors I would need to make.

Now, the shed I'm going to make with 8' struts because, well, that's an easy size to make because I can just use 8' boards...and more than 8' would just be really freakin huge and completely unnecessary. I decided I wanted to make about a 10:1 scale model, but that would have required me using 9.6" struts...and the dowels came in 4' lengths, so that would have required me wasting a lot of dowel...so I used 9" struts instead, so this is actually a 10-2/3:1 scale model...oh well.

I forgot to take pictures of the cut dowels and hose pieces initially, so let's start with the base done!

Then I just had to turn this:

Into a bunch of these:

..well, except that I forgot I needed 5-way connectors, not 6-way....and I didn't realize that until after I had already killed my fingers making three 6-way pieces.

Oh well, eventually I got here:

And then here!

So, stay tuned. I won't be making the full-size one until I get a job, but I have an interview tomorrow, so...*crosses fingers* Anyways, in the mean time I'll be finalizing my plans for how I'll be making the full-size one. I mentioned I'll be making it out of wood, yes? Well, I looked around online and the only plans I can find for making geodesic domes out of wood all involve special, expensive adapters, fancy multi-sided joint pieces, or lots of hinges and sawdust and glue....and I thought those were all just silly, so I'm designing one that I can make entirely out of 2x4's and plywood (well, and screws) with no cuts that can't be done with a standard mitre saw. So, I'll post those as I finalize them.

[Fuganater]

Looks good. Good luck on the interview. Hopefully its a job you really like.

[x88x]

Thanks. It does sound like a pretty cool job, but I won't go too much into it unless I get it...and know what it really is instead of what I'm inferring from the job listing.

It's kinda funny, I've been in kinda a funk the last month or so, but the giant robot dude's videos gave me a kick in the pants to start working on fun stuff again...and now instead of being depressed and apathetic about not having work, I'm just annoyed that I don't have a job to fund my projects. Well, hopefully I won't have to worry about that much longer...anyways, off to sleep so I can wake up early-ish tomorrow.

[mDust]

Good luck at the interview.

Hexagons could drop your corners to 3 per vertex.
8' struts are going to make this shed huge no matter how many sides it has. I would calculate the square footage you think you need (and then add, say, 50% ) since cutting off 2x4s is cheaper than buying additional plywood and other materials. You'll have a nice shed to store scrap lumber in anyway!

[Beta-brain]

Sounds interesting but you realize that some people might think it's a radar dome and drop bombs on you, they are watching you know

[Munty]

Sweet! I had a feeling this was GRP inspired just from the title actually
Looks good though man, sounds like it should be pretty fun to work on too. Good luck with t'interview too, I hate them buggers Keep us posted on your progress!

[x88x]

Good luck at the interview.

Hexagons could drop your corners to 3 per vertex.
8' struts are going to make this shed huge no matter how many sides it has. I would calculate the square footage you think you need (and then add, say, 50% ) since cutting off 2x4s is cheaper than buying additional plywood and other materials. You'll have a nice shed to store scrap lumber in anyway!

Yeah, but hexagons are a lot harder to make and the benefits of using hexagons are much smaller with small domes, and especially small, low-resolution domes like this one. Besides, like you said, 2x4's are cheap. [EDIT]Plus, even though the number of corners per vertex would drop, I think the number of vertexes and the number of struts would probably rise a lot.[/EDIT] Oh, and using 8' struts, covering each face will take one full 4x8 sheet with practically no waste. Though, I'm only doing the lower surfaces with plywood; the upper surfaces I want to do with some sort of translucent stuff..I'll have to go wander around Home Depot or something and find something good. If I were to cover all the sides with plywood though, using some nice 23/32 stuff, current cost estimate is ~$250. Bump that up to probably ~$300 if I put in a wood floor...which I probably will but might no...I haven't decided yet. That comes out ~$100 less than my estimated materials cost for a similarly sized, more traditional, design (10'x10', single-slant roof sloping from 10' in from to 8' in back).[EDIT]..nvm, checked my numbers again, and they're actually about the same cost. But domes are so cool! [/EDIT] For comparison, the closest thing I could find real quick on Lowes' website was this 10'x10' wooden barn-like-thing, for almost $900!

According to my calculations, 8' struts should give me about 110sqft of floor space, and with the low-resolution design I'm using, my side walls will be about 7' tall (7.05', to be precise) before the real sloping-in starts, with a peak of about 11' inside.

Sounds interesting but you realize that some people might think it's a radar dome and drop bombs on you, they are watching you know

Hmm, I do live near Goddard Space Center...

Sweet! I had a feeling this was GRP inspired just from the title actually
Looks good though man, sounds like it should be pretty fun to work on too. Good luck with t'interview too, I hate them buggers Keep us posted on your progress!

Heheheh, yup! His dome got me thinking along those lines, and a bit of research made me decide a fully wooden design was best for my purposes, since I want to have hard, permanent, walls mounted directly on the frame.

Thanks for the interview well-wishes, everyone. I'll update here afterwards (it's at 2pm EDT).

[Technochicken]

Good luck at the interview.

Hexagons could drop your corners to 3 per vertex.

I believe you mean pentagons. If you use hexagons, you would just get a flat sheet, not a dome- each vertex has a 120 degree angle, so 3 hexagons makes a full 360 degrees, meaning no curvature.

I can't wait to see this full size! Good luck with the build.

[Fuganater]

This.... is gonna be massive.

[mDust]

I believe you mean pentagons. If you use hexagons, you would just get a flat sheet, not a dome- each vertex has a 120 degree angle, so 3 hexagons makes a full 360 degrees, meaning no curvature.

That doesn't make any sense. I meant hexagons. A dome can be made out of any symmetrical polygon and many asymmetrical polygons.