Site Visit by Monolithic Domes

Before I start this actual post, I wanted to share the picture of the soil sample being taken a few weeks ago. Gessner Engineering has this machine on tracks which they take on the site and drill a 20 foot deep hole and take soil samples every 2 feet. I am hoping to get the report this week or next and get on with the design of the foundation.

We have scheduled the people from Monolithic Domes to come down and look at our site and do a site evaluation to be able to complete the floor plans. They need to see where the house will be located, where the water line will come in, where the septic system will be located, etc. Also they will need to make sure their work crews and equipment can access the site and if not, what we need to do to make it accessible. They will be coming in this Friday, December 30th. Once we get this visit completed I hope we can start making steady progress toward completing the home over the summer.

Staking out the actual house location

After a month of doldrums, I think things are again making progress. Last week we contacted a local engineering firm to do the soil analysis for the site, so teh foundation can be properly designed. We're using Gessner Engineering in College Station. They estimated that they could get to taking the sample this week and they would have the full analysis in about 3 weeks. Well, on Tuesday (the 13th) they did come out and bore one 20' deep hole taking soil samples as they went. I'll try to post a picture of the process soon. For the analysis to be valid we had to estimate where the center of the house would be, so I met our contractor, Brian, and we walked around and took a wild guess at a good location.

The next day my wife and I met Brian on the land and we spent an our pacing around, talking about the pro's and con's of various locations. We finally decided on where we were going to place things. It looks like that out of a dozen mature trees, we will only lose one of them (plus one big tree that is already dead) :( . It took Brian and I about another 30 minutes to actually stake out the area and mark everything. It turns out that we missed the center of the house by about 10 feet on our initial estimate to Gessner Engineering.

As far as a timeline is concerned. Right now it looks as if we'll start doing some dirt work just after Christmas and hopefully be ready to put up the foundation and dome in early February. That is about a month behind the earlier estimates, but I admit those were very optimistic anyway.

Meeting with the City

We had our meeting with the city. I expected us to go to someone's office and talk with a city planner, but we went to a conference room and had representatives from Utilities, the fire department, 4 different branched of city planning, and 3 or 4 more people who I am not sure exactly who they were. It was a big deal. Everyone was very nice and we had a good meeting. The big thing first, the city has no problem with a dome home and it did not even seem to cause them to ponder the issue. One of them asked if we had seen the concrete house on the university property from the 50's. We left a copy of the most recent drawings from Linda with them for code review. They should get back to us in a few days to a week. We did find out that since there is no fire hydrant in the area we will have to have a sprinkler system in the house which is a modified 13D type system (I'm sure that means something to some people).

We have to contact a different organization to find out about water service, but there is no sewage service, so we will definitely be on a septic system. We have a power line running directly on the front edge of the property and the utility person said we could either run power above ground or under ground. They would have to visit the site once we had determined the location of the house to see what each option would cost.

If we can locate the house within 100 feet of the road then we do not have to provide driveway sufficient for a fire truck to turn around on, so that has become an important issue all of a sudden.

We are zoned "AO - Agricultural Open" so a lot of real "city" ordinances do not apply to us. (for instance we will be allowed to park a vehicle on the grass) We will need to pull the existing "roadway" out for the driveway and lay a better one with a concrete culvert rather than the corrugated metal one that is in place now. The good news is that this means we can pick where we want the driveway a little more freely. Also the tree canopy above the driveway has to be clear up to 15 feet to allow a fire truck to approach when necessary. There are also particular requirements regarding size and radius of curvature for driveways.

They do want engineering drawing for the slab, including where a soil sample was taken and analyzed, and the dome needs the calculations like we had for the IO-30 and they have to have a engineer's seal stamped on them. sigh. Also, when doing the load calculations, does the engineering need to account for the load of the rock covering which will be placed on the outside of the dome. I did a quick estimate and guess it will be a 10-20 psi load depending on how thick we have the rocks.

We have 50' setbacks front and rear and 20' setbacks on the sides. There is a utility easement on the front and both sides, so we could not really have built in that area anyway.

When we told them that we hoped to have the shell in place by Christmas they seemed to think that was a reasonable thing.

We also got an address. We will be 2400 Bird Pond Road.

There is an 8" main running along the front of our property, so getting water is no problem and it can come in basically anywhere from the street side of the property. They want about 2 weeks notice to hook up a meter and stub off a water line for the house. There is no sewer service, so we will have to be on a septic system.

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.

Estimates for Constructing the Shell

I think we have the design phase complete, at least in the structural context, and we have been given a quote for the construction of the main home dome and the secondary dome. They are expecting to get us the garage dome pricing on Monday and then we can look at our finances and make sure everything is a go with the process. Assuming everything looks good we will be giving them the green light to finish the construction documents for the dome by the middle of next week. They have estimated 4 weeks to complete the documents, so we should have them by late October, only a week or so off our optimal timeline.

Before we give the final go ahead for the construction of the airform, I want to have our meeting with the city on October 12th and make sure everything is alright with them and find out about the utilities and everything. We have been given repeated assurances that the city has no problems with a monolithic dome home, but I want to get that in writing before we commit that much money to a project that could be shut down by regulations.

Also, we want to cover the dome in natural stone and there is a person who did this on a monolithic dome somewhere else in Texas. The Monolithic Dome company is going to contact them and ask about cost, difficulty, and time for us and tell us what they found out. So far dealing with them has been a very good experience. This is not intended to be a sales pitch, but if you are considering building and are willing to consider something different like a dome, contact them and at least see what they have to say. You can also continue to follow this blog and see how our experience turns out. I plan on keeping this blog active to discuss how the home works out even after it is complete.

On other topics we have begun discussion of the driveway and the yard.

Starting the Detail Planning Process

We sat down this weekend and tried to make up for most of last week. Our son brought home a cold and it has migrated through the family, so last week was mostly spent doing damage control on the family and not planning for the future.

We did get a quote from Monolithic Domes for the cost of preparing the formal drawings. Once we get a final concept with a few section drawings of the interior we should approve that and at least have that process underway. They estimate 2 to 4 weeks to complete the drawings once they get started.

We also spoke to another general contractor and he seemed interested in the project. He has built a geodesic dome in the past and the interior work is very similar to a monolithic dome, just the shell construction differs. He wants to see the final drawings before he can give us a true bid, but he definitely sounded interested and knowledgeable about the process.

We took the latest version of the house plan (which is 99% correct in terms of room arrangement) and discussed the layout of the electrical switches and light fixtures. We placed fans and such. Our eldest daughter asked about an intercom and we agreed that one in the main house is unnecessary, but connecting the separate domes with one might be useful.

Finally we discussed the site plan and sketched out roughly where we think the house should go and the driveway and garage. It is very approximate, since we are working from an aerial image we got from Google Earth. It may also depend on the location of the city utilities and such which we'll find out about on October 12th. We did find the survey and the aerial photo teh city provided to us, so we can go and give a copy back to the planning and zoning board of the city to help them prepare for our meeting. Yes I know that sounds strange, but when you deal with city government you realize that one division frequently does not communicate well with another. Sigh.

This week we will turn our attention to the kitchen and dining room arrangement. Where to put the appliances and sink, cabinets, the island, etc. We also want to start thinking about floor coverings for the whole house.

We talked this afternoon and while we did not make a lot of progress with specific items, we did try to generate a list of the various details we need to reach some type of agreement on by the end of September. These are:

• Switch, Lights, Fans, and Outlets
• Flooring
• Kitchen Cabinets
• Bathroom Cabinets
• Kitchen arrangement/Island arrangement
• Window style/size
• Driveway location and design
• Back Patio/Deck
• Swimming Pool (if we want one or not)
• Front Courtyard
• Inside Door style
• Wall covering/finishes
• Closet Builtins
• HVAC vents and system location
• Outside dome finish
• Plumbing Fixtures
• Cable, Telephone, and Computer(Internet) connections
• Water Feature under the stairs
• Outside Doors
• Railing for Stairs and Balcony

Some of these items we need to go out to the land and look around, some we need to either go to a store and look or go online. As we make decisions I'll keep the blog updated.