Final Concept Approval

We got the final concept drawings back from Monolithic Domes yesterday and everything seems to be reasonable. These last few were elevations/profiles of the interior spaces. Domes have this habit to curving and making headroom not nearly a plentiful as the plan drawings look, so I wanted to see some profiles and measure things out. We have added a little loft area to the kids bedrooms (about 80 sq. ft.) and we wanted to see how that was going to look. Today I'm going to reply to them that we want to see one more full set of concept drawings and then we can give the final approval and start this ball rolling again.

This also allows us to authorize them to begin work on the airform (the big balloon which forms the shell) so that we can stay on schedule with that. The production of an airform takes 4-6 weeks (mainly getting in the queue). We won't begin that until after we talk to the city engineers on October 12 and make sure everything is OK with the concept and find out what silly hoops we will have to jump through (we've been told that there will be none and I sort of trust College Station government, at least as much as I trust any large bureaucratic body). One big question outstanding is whether the city will require full structural engineering calculations for this specific dome or if the general calculations for the domes will be sufficient.

Once the airform is done (actually when it is close to done we can start) we will schedule a time for them to come out and begin construction. Hopefully this can be done within a few weeks of completion, but it might be a month or more depending on how many other jobs they have going at that time. We're still crossing our fingers to have a dome up by Christmas.