Windows and Insulation

Last night I spoke with the head of the construction team from Monolithic at great length about the location of the windows on the second floor. He thought the location, as called out on the drawings, seemed a little funny and wanted to make sure this is what we wanted. It was not and he was right, there was something fishy about the drawings. I have a few guesses at where the issue came in, but anyway I talked to the general contractor and he agreed with us that it was incorrect and is going out this morning to talk with the crew and get the correct location for the windows on the second floor.

Once this is settled, they will remake a "template" for the second floor windows and be ready to spray the polyurethane on the inside of the dome. They have actually framed the entire first floor windows and doors (actually they also still need to frame the front door) and can precisely spray around these, but framing the second floor windows is a bit more difficult, so apparently they build this template out of 1x6's (or maybe 2x6's) and someone climbs the scaffolding and holds the template in the correct location for a window and someone else sprays the foam around it. Then they pull it out and go to the next window. They have done this enough times that I believe this is the most efficient way to do it, but it seems strange to me.

The other thing they did yesterday is to cover the slab with plastic (to catch any drips of the polyurethane) and also spray a contact adhesive to the inside of the dome to improve the bonding of the polyurethane to the airform. This makes the entire thing sticky on the inside.

Anyway, if all goes right today, by tonight we'll have an insulated dome with about 3" of polyurethane on it. I think this puts them on schedule to work with the concrete early next week. Once that's done and set we'll have a dome shell that can withstand F5 tornadoes or Cat 5 hurricanes! then comes the fun part of building the interior structure and letting Monolithic work on the garage and workshop domes. Hopefully by mid June all these will be done and that phase of construction will be done.