Click to return to home page
10 facts about dome homes
Ten quick facts about amazing dome structures:
  1. Domes are the most efficient structures known to man: they use less material, are lighter and stronger than any other type of building—no exceptions .
  2. Domes use much less material than conventional buildings but are much stronger. For example, a dome home could be made from 16-gauge aluminium without the need for support beams across its 24-foot diameter, only the skin may be used for support. To enclose the same volume in a square building, one would need 30% more material and loads more structural metal/wood. If you built any other structure using only the skin as support, it would simply fall down!
  3. Because domes have at least 30% less surface area than other shaped buildings, it takes at least 30% less energy to heat or cool them. The same size building with the same volume and the same thickness insulation takes at least 30% more energy to heat or cool, just because it is not dome shaped. Long, thin buildings and buildings with extensions perform worst of all.
    4. Skeleton of a dome
  4. Domes are naturally hurricane resistant. Tract-style buildings generate huge amounts of turbulence when high winds pass over them, causing massive low-pressure that sucks the roof off. High winds can pass smoothly over a dome, because it has no corners nor flat surfaces to cause turbulence; high-pressure air presses the dome down toward the ground.
  5. Domes are not a new invention. The Pantheon, one of the most impressive buildings in Rome, was built in A.D. 117-125 from an early type of concrete. Igloos may have been around far longer, but it’s impossible to tell, as the Inuit community was isolated from the rest of the world, and believed themselves the only people in the world until the beginning of the 19th century.
  6. Domes only become super strong when they are fixed to the ground. Try this simple experiment: Cut a ping-pong ball in half to form a dome, you will notice that each half is floppy and distorts easily. Now glue one half to a flat peace of cardboard and see how much stronger it becomes.
  7. Domes have acoustic qualities like no other building. If you lie on the floor in the center of a dome when you talk, it sounds like you have your head in a large metal pipe. If you stand at one side of a dome, a person standing on the opposite side can hear you whisper.
  8. Buckminster Fuller, its inventor, designed geodesic spheres that, when filled with warm air, could float around the earth housing hundreds of people. They would be half a mile in diameter, and a rise of just a few degrees in temperature could make them float like huge airships.
  9. Some of the largest buildings in the world are domes: London’s Millennium Dome and the Eden Dome were record breakers when they were built. The Miyazaki Ocean Dome in Japan is known as the world's largest indoor water park (300m-100m-38m). The Georgia Dome is the largest cable-supported, domed stadium in the world; it covers 8.9 acres and 1.6 million square feet on seven levels. Its 290-foot high roof is composed of 130 Teflon-coated fibreglass panels, covering 8.6 acres.
  10. The Dome Home at Big Bear is at your disposal to enjoy with friends, colleagues and family.