The Dome Begins

The well is dug, the plans are finished, the site is prepared, and the top soil has been carefully removed and set aside for reuse.  The house and garage are being staked out as I type.

It didn't fit!.  Well, not exactly as I had hoped.  I had wanted my bedroom window to catch the morning sunrise and the dining/living room windows to catch the evening sunset.  That was a big task because of where I wanted the domes positioned on the side of the hill.   Planning such things when one lives a thousand miles away can be a challenge.  Thanks to Google Earth, I have a pretty good, though not real-time view of the site.

My brothers are laying it out as close to my wishes as possible.  A few modifications had to be made--move everything a bit to the east, rotate the house/garage unit counterclockwise a bit, re-design the driveway, etc.  In the end, it will be exactly as I want it to be.

Septic system is in the planning stages with permits applied for; electrician has pointed out his route to and into the house; well driller, who is also the in-floor heating installer, has identified the location for the water entry into the basement; and all of the concrete contractors said that they do not want to tackle this job.

I want to use ICF (Insulated Concrete Forms), a relatively new system for placing concrete walls.  We have a few people who use them, but none local that are comfortable working with so many corners, none of them 90 or 45 degrees.  ARXX had a system that I thought would work, but they no longer make them.

We will do it ourselves.  Actually, my brothers will.  We are all  builders, and since one brother specialized in concrete work have the skills to do this.  It's just that we are not so young anymore, so we are looking for some young-uns to do the manual labor.

And I am here and they are there having all the fun *sigh*.

I still need to talk with the heating folks to make arrangements for getting geothermal into the house.

 More later.