[Cob] Joe Kennedy's take on domes

[Marlin Nissen]

Sounds VERY reasonable......when Randy Gates and I were doing natural building in Wisconsin we always thought that roofs were the most overlooked piece of design and yet really most critical for any building.

Also saw a lot of "falling in love" with difficult roofs. Our idea was "light, renewable, well insulated, not overly technical....." was best. Many people had read about domes or more likely earthen roofs and thought they sounded groovy...they we saw the non-expert try to employ such massive monstrosities with not so good (luckily not fatal) ends.

Marlin


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"I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate. " - George Burns

--- On Mon, 7/26/10, Joseph Kennedy <livingearth62 at hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Joseph Kennedy <livingearth62 at hotmail.com>
Subject: [Cob] Joe Kennedy's take on domes
To: coblist at deatech.com
Date: Monday, July 26, 2010, 3:54 PM


Hi everybody,
 
Having worked on a number of domes, all I can say is BE CAREFUL!!  Especially in a rainy climate.  It is notoriously difficult to totally waterproof a dome.  Those dang cracks.  It is particularly susceptible during construction.  I like the idea of working the grasses into the plaster, but still, very experimental.  I really like what Kaki and Doni did in Moab with their earthbag dome.  Kelly Hart's work is great too.  But these were both in very dry climates.  
 
I know that Gernot Minke has published quite a bit on his dome construction technology, but I believe that was primarily in Bolivia.  Nader's book is great (Ceramic Houses) but the fired house idea is (IMO) a resource-wasting dead end.  Paulina Wojciechowska also wrote a book on earthbag construction through New Society Publishers that has some discussion on domes.  Check on Hassan Fathy's work of course, and Simone Swan's work in Texas.
 
However, while I know they are sexy, to me domes have a lot of drawbacks.  The main one for me is acoustic (echoey).  Secondly the skill needed to build one properly, third, the challenges of waterproofing, fourth - difficult to furnish the round space.  Domes over square rooms are cool (using the squinch technique), but impossible for earthbag.
 
My thing now is to design a clean, resource efficient, lightweight, easy-to-build, well-insulated roof, and design your building to fit elegantly beneath it.  All those curvy wurvy roofs over those curvy wurvy cob walls are such a pain! (and very wasteful of time and resources).  And a simplistic roof over a complex wall often looks ugly and amateurish to me.
 
Anyway.  Sorry for the manifestoish quality.  Mostly just trying to make sure people don't get killed (remember Ken Kern), and to avoid the zillions of mistakes I've made during the past 25 years :).
 
Warm regards,
 
Joe Kennedy

                           
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