Day after the floor was poured

On February 8, 2006, Kerry Kincaid and his two helpers, Cory and Brad, poured the floor. It started out as a nice day, but then it suddenly changed. A strong wind came up and the temperature dropped. My husband had to run into town to rent a heater to keep the cement warm. In this picture you can see the plumbing stubs and the pex pipe stubs for the in floor heating. They did a GREAT job on the floor!

Vents after the floor was poured

This was how the vents looked the day after we had the floor poured.

Void form covered with plastic

The void form was wrapped in plastic to make it easier to remove the void form after the floor was poured.

Void form cover

Next, a cover was placed over the screws.

Void form screwed in place

In this picture, the void form has been moved in place, over the hole in the plywood, and has been screwed down.

Void forms for vents

This is a picture of the void form and it's cover which was screwed onto the plywood.

Pex pipe in the kitchen area

This picture shows the pex pipe in the kitchen area on the left and a separate zone for the dining area on the right.

Pex pipe for infloor heating

Next, my husband took a can of orange spray paint and sprayed where the walls would be. Then we laid out the pex pipe for in floor heating. We did not know at that time if we would need it, but it was easier to do it now than later. To date, we do not have the in floor heating hooked up, but we have purchased a boiler and we hope to have it hooked up before next winter. The pex pipe was laid out in five zones so we could turn on and off certain zones.

Rebar grid for the floor

After the conduit was finished, we laid a rebar grid over the whole floor.

Floor outlet

We wanted to have an outlet in the floor in the kitchen, so the box and the conduit had to be put in place before the floor was poured.

Under floor conduit

Next we had to place conduit in the areas where we wanted electric wires to go under the floor. In this picture the conduit ran from a wall outlet to an area where there would be a dividing wall which would have an outlet.

The cinder blocks below the vent cover

I know this is a strange picture, but the vent cover has been lifted up so you can see how the blocks were placed under the vents.

Vent covers

We needed to create vents on the north and south sides of the dome. This picture shows the plywood cover used to create the vents.

Did you have to cut cinder blocks?

No, we used mostly whole cinder blocks, but we also purchased a pallet of half cinder blocks. For the areas around plumbing that had to be brought up through the floor, we placed cinder blocks around them as best we could, and then we created plywood covers that fit over the blocks and had holes for the plumbing.

East Side

As I mentioned earlier, the east and west sides of the floor were filled with the small pieces of concrete we raked off the floor. We topped that off with sand and then rented a plate packer to pack it. This picture shows the cinder blocks on the right and the sand on the left. The plate packer is sitting on the cinder blocks.

Did you cover the whole floor with cinder blocks?

No, we only covered areas that might get sunlight from the windows. This is a diagram of the area of the floor that has the cinder blocks. The east and west areas of the dome were filled with the small cement chunks we raked from the floor and sand to bring it up to the level of the cinder blocks.

More cinder blocks

It took the two of us about one month to lay over 1800 cinder blocks needed for the floor.

Laying the cinder blocks

This picture shows the stacks of cinder blocks and how they were being laid. Sand was used to bring the blocks up to the needed level.

Moving the cinder blocks into the dome

My husband would use the forks on the tractor to move a pallet of cinder blocks to the south window that had the removable greenhouse plastic on it. From the outside, I would move the blocks to the ledge. On the inside of the dome my husband would use a dolly to move the blocks further into the dome.

The passive solar floor

After the floor was leveled and insulated we put down a layer of plastic for a vapor barrier. Next came a layer of sand and then we started moving the cinder blocks in. This picture was taken when there were ONLY 8 pallets of cinder blocks left (there were 21 pallets to begin with).

Big chunks of concrete

This is a picture of all the big chunks of concrete we dug up when leveling the floor. We would put them in a wheel barrel and periodically, my husband would wheel the load out to the pile. Later on we used these chunks when we put in our septic system.

Leveling the floor

Twenty percent of the sprayed on concrete ends up on the floor as little chunks or as big chunks. We would pick a section, dig up the big chunks and set them aside. Then we would rake the little chunks to a specified level and remove the excess. The excess little chunks were moved to the east and west sides of the dome, which would NOT have the cinder blocks, and were used as fill.
This is a picture of the east side of the dome with piles of little chucks. It took about one month to level the floor this way. In hindsight, it would have been better to get a bobcat in to do the job.

What is passive solar?

The Passive Solar House is a book written by James Kachadorian. There are four parts to a passive solar house: good insulation, lots of windows facing south, a passive solar floor, and thermal shutters. My husband included all of these when he was designing our dome. First of all, monolithic domes have excellent insulation (R value = 60), Second, he designed a dome with lots of windows facing south. A passive solar floor starts with a layer of foam insulation, a layer of plastic, for a vapor barrier, a layer of sand for leveling, and a layer of cinder blocks laid on their sides with their cavities lined up and the blocks laid in a north-south direction. A concrete floor is poured over the cinder blocks and there are vents at the north and south ends of the dome. The concept is that the sun shines in through the south facing windows, heats up the floor and the concrete blocks and the warm air naturally circulates through the blocks and the dome, thus heating the dome. The last part of a passive solar home is thermal shutters. Our dome has seven doors/windows and my husband has built thermal shutters for each of them. The shutters are closed at night during the winter (to keep the heat in and the cold out). They are also closed during the heat of the summer to keep the heat out. Thermal shutters have two inches of foam insulation, to reduce convective losses, and a layer of air foil (aluminized bubble wrap), to reduce radiative losses. This combination gives the windows a combined R value of 20.

Wood stove

Our little wood stove kept us warm that winter. We would start it up when we came to work and then let it burn out after we left. We had some really cold weather that December, -20 and -30 degrees Centigrade at night, but the coldest it got in the dome was 3 degrees Centigrade.! What was amazing was we did NOT even have the floor insulated at that time! Things were primitive that winter, in the picture you see a blue barrel, which we filled with water from the well prior to freeze up and a generator which we used to run power tools.

The Red Deer Advocate

Penny Caster, a reporter for the Red Deer Advocate, came out to do a story on the dome in the middle of November, 2005. You can see from this picture, the inside of the dome was quite dark and the floor was quite rough. We had a lot of work ahead of us.

Rough plumbing

Because the crew used a rotary scaffold to build the dome, some of the stubs for the plumbing had to be buried. After we insulated the doors and windows, we had to find the stubs and extend them. We also poured a cement pad 5'x18', seen in this picture. The pad would support a stone wall in the future.
On the cement pad is a stack of 1.5" insulation sheets that would be used to insulate the floor and a rotary laser level that was used to level the floor.

The south windows

This picture shows two of the three windows that face south. The crew had taken the outer air form off the middle window in order to get their scaffold out of the dome. We closed it up from the outside with greenhouse plastic that could be removed and resealed easily. From the inside, all three openings were insulated with two inches of foam insulation. The combination of insulating the doors and the windows plus the wood stove kept the inside of the come comfortable so we could work through the winter.

Preparations for winter

Since we were planning on working on the inside of the dome through the winter, we needed to put in a temporary door and insulate the areas where the doors and windows would eventually go. We did not want to install permanent doors and windows until most of the framing was done so we would not accidentally break one with a 2x4. This is a picture of the temporary front door and the west window with the wood stove piped out of it. Both were insulated with two inches of foam insulation. That insulation would eventually be used later when we constructed our thermal shutters.

The day the crew left

November 5, 2005. The crew removed the airlock and the hording, dismantled their scaffold, packed up their equipment and bid us farewell. This was how the dome looked that day. Now it was our turn. My husband and I looked at each other and wondered what we had got ourselves into.

The crew

Our thanks to Adam, Dave, Moose, Josh and all the other people who came and helped build this dome. It was a very interesting experience.

Sprayed concrete

This picture was taken after some of the concrete had been sprayed. Over the course of a week, there were eleven concrete trucks, which meant eleven layers of concrete were sprayed over the foam insulation and the rebar grid. This gave us four inches of concrete over the three inches of foam insulation. The final layer of concrete was mostly sand to smooth out the surface as much as possible.

The concrete pump

This is a picture of the concrete pump with a pipe going into the dome. On October 31, 2005, the first concrete truck arrived and the spraying of the concrete began. You can see, it snowed that week, but inside the dome it was warm and cozy.

Electrical outlets

After the crew finished the rebar grid, but before they started spraying the concrete, we wired electrical outlets and conduit pipe in places where we wanted wall outlets.

Rebar grid

It took a week for the crew to construct the rebar grid.

Rebar hangers

Here are some of the rebar hangers stuck in the foam insulation.

Rebar hangers

Rebar hangers were stuck into the foam and two more inches of foam insulation was sprayed on the inside of the dome. This left the wires exposed to secure the rebar grid. You can see the rebar hangers in the previous picture also.

Setting up the scaffold

The crew set up the rotary scaffold and sealed the seams of the air form on the inside. One inch of foam insulation was sprayed on the airform.

Bracing the bucks from the outside

The bucks were braced from the outside to keep them upright. They become part of the building structure.

Standing up the window bucks

After the dome was inflated, most of the work was done on the inside of the dome. The first thing was to stand up the window bucks. This is a picture of two of the three big windows that would face south.

The airlock

The white thing in this picture was the airlock you had to go through to get into the inflated dome. The red tube was the air pressure indicator. You can see the tunnel you had to go through from the airlock into the inflated dome.

The Fully Inflated Dome!

After only twenty minutes, the dome was fully inflated. It was exciting to me to think that someday, this would be our new home! In this picture you see two bulges on the right. Those would become the bedroom windows. On the left you can see two of the three bulges for the three big windows that would face south.

More inflation pictures

Inflating the dome

After the hording and the airlock were set up, they started to inflate the dome!

Attaching the air form to the ring beam

In this picture you see some of the crew members attaching the air form to the ring beam with a metal strip.

Spreading the airform

The next step was to spread out the air form and prepare the airlock and the hording which th crew is doing in this picture.

Preparations for inflating the dome

On October 18, 2005, a crew from Canadian Dome Industries arrived to construct the dome. In this picture they are putting the window bucks, their rotary scaffold and rebar in the middle of the ring beam.

Transporting the bucks to the building site

You can see how massive some of the window bucks were. In this picture, two bucks, and another piece of equipment are loaded on a twelve foot trailer for transporting to the building site.

Insulating the ring beam

After the crew left, we insulated the inside and outside of the ring beam. We then started to backfill around the insulation, but we ran out of time and the weather did not cooperate. Canadian Dome industries brought a bob cat with them when they came to build the dome and finished backfilling for us.

Still more buck pictures