Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hey anybody out there have, or know anybody that owns a dome home? We have been thinking of purchasing one. Would really like pros and cons on quality, etc of their dome home!!!
Friends of our have one up here on the WA coast. Amazing build quality, extremely solid. With insulated windows, it's impossible to hear noise (wind and rain really crank up here) from outside. The only off thing is the curvature of the walls in the upstairs rooms.
I hear they are quite a positive structure. I have seen them only in pics and they are pretty neat. The bigger/ more expensive ones look beautiful. I think they are supposed to be very tolerant of wind (hurricane/tornado). We also have thought about possibly owning one, and yet- I don't know if I can give up my dream of a huge old farmhouse on lots of land. The dome home would probably be the safer choice as well as more energy efficient. Sorry I couldn't be of more technical help. They seem to be comparable in price per sq. ft.
Another thing I forgot to mention was that they are near impossible to get financing for (unless it's builder financed) so you might be better off building new rather than shopping used. We ran into that problem last year when we found one we wanted to buy.
They have a tendency to leak alot when it rains and they're hard to repair; too hard to locate the origin of the leak. Also a problem are the solar windows. The inside is a round maze. We looked at one and the only attraction was the huge lot it was on. I think someone finally bought it and tore it down! Just too hard to work on. Sorry to be so negative. They're a nice novelty, but that wears off.
As with the building of any home...quality depends on the company building it.
There is a well known dome home in Pensacola beach Florida that you might like to check out. It has weathered several hurricanes now and is still standing tall!:
This dome has been thru several hurricanes now including Katrina.
Also this site have LOTS of great information about Domes that I think you might find educational and informative
My dad built a dome home about 15 years ago in Oklahoma.He didn't use any comapany's specfic kit or designs but he was really impressed with integrity dome homes.The dome is very safe if built right,after all its been through only a few shingles have been missing. It is harder to insure though I'm not sure why because it has been proven safer and more reliable,I think they wanted to insure our dome for only up to about 20-25,000 this or last year.We had a skylight and it has never leaked.The cost of utilities is a lot cheaper and more efficent.We just now have had a small leak in the house and that is because my dad misdid something and because of the few missing shingles we didn't see right away.The only thing we have had to replace like I said was a few shingles.The only bad thing of domes I can think of is that they look weird from the outside,but are surprisingly bigger on the inside,and that if you don't put straight walls at least three feet from the bottom of the house or if your walls are to curved your going to bang your head against the walls a lot.After we moved to AZ,we still have the dome in OK, we were thinking about building another dome home here,due to circumstances that didn't happen,but we went back and looked at integrity dome homes and they really seem to know what they are doing and getting better all the time.
There are several different types of dome homes that I have seen. There are many different geodesic dome home kits, that appear to link together triangular frames to form the outer dome structure.
Then there are the monolithic domes, which start with a large plastic air bubble and then a re-bar frame. That rebar frame is shotcreted and coated with foam spray insulation. Those are pretty complex and don't look like a project for rank amateurs like me.
A friend of mine built one from scratch many years ago as a summer home. Acoustics - One person could be whispering to someone in the kitchen and you could hear it in a whole 'nother part of the dome as if they were talking in your ear. Very weird.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Dome Survives Hurricane Katrina
As with the building of any home...quality depends on the company building it.
There is a well known dome home in Pensacola beach Florida that you might like to check out. It has weathered several hurricanes now and is still standing tall!: 