You Can Teach Old Domers New Tricks!
Monolithic Dome Veterans, Jennifer and David South, Jr. Move Into Their New Dome Home
by Freda Parker
Photos by David South, Jr.
And it was -- but only after Jennifer and DJ learned, first hand, the value of a dome-planning trick that Monolithic's President David B. South has been advocating almost since he first co-invented the Monolithic Dome process: the Word Picture.
David says, "If we fail to plan, we create a plan to fail." To avoid such failure, David continues telling everyone to begin their home design with a Word Picture -- a detailed description of everything you want in your dome home.
Often, when people first hear or read about doing a Word Picture, many categorize it as just another bothersome, unnecessary something someone wants you to do.
Jennifer almost fit into that group. She says, "David always talks about how we need to write that Word Picture, and, of course, I understood that there was some value in it, but I didn't really understand how much value. I didn't want to just say 'No' to my father-in-law and company president, but part of me was kicking and screaming."
To complicate matters, several other things happened that added to the importance of writing the Word Picture. DJ says, "In the fall of 2000, Monolithic had extremely full Workshop classes. The September Workshop was packed and we could see that the October one would be too."
Normally, Workshop attendees get hands-on, dome-building experience by working on a 20-foot diameter dome. But because the October Workshop was so full, Monolithic decided to do something larger and more substantial, and since Jennifer and DJ had already been talking about it, the bigger dome home they wanted became that Workshop's project.
But only a few weeks remained before the Workshop would convene, and DJ and Jennifer had no plan, and DJ had to go to Norway on business. He recalls, "We had actually started a plan, and several people threw ideas at us, but we didn't really like it, and I had to go to Norway."
When DJ returned, only one week remained for completion of their dome design so the floor could be poured.
But by then the Word Picture was done. During DJ's absence, Jennifer, led by David who suspected her reluctance and volunteered his help, had completed it.
Jennifer says, "David took me to the various domes here. We actually tape-measured spaces and rooms to get an idea of the sizes I wanted." Based on these measurements, she wrote the Word Picture. It included wall lengths that would attractively accommodate a long sofa and a piano, the size of walkways and spaces between kitchen counters, the depth and height of closet shelves and rods, exact measurements for bathroom fixtures, the size and location of windows and doors, as well as the overall measurement of each room.
"Our Word Picture had lots of detail and that helped the ideas in our minds to come together," Jennifer says.
Nevertheless, important decisions still had to be made. "We decided on a 50-foot diameter Callisto design," DJ recalls. "It would give us about 1900 square feet of living space -- three bedrooms, two baths, kitchen, great room, den, sitting room and laundry area."
But when Jennifer and DJ began applying their Word Picture to existing designs, they found that the bedrooms were twice the size of what they wanted, and the living room was considerably smaller than the great room they envisioned. So, with the help of MDI's professionals and their Word Picture, they designed a new version of a Callisto
Its features include a kitchen at its hub with an open design and access to all the other areas, tall windows with a delightful view of the pond, and a permanent overhang that girds the outside of the dome. This steel and metal overhang, bolted directly to the dome shell so it requires no supporting beams, varies in width. At its narrowest, about four feet, the overhang shades the windows. At its widest, it provides cover for the patio and a roof for a two-car carport.
DJ claims their dome is unique in a few other ways as well. "Because we're not within city limits," he says, "we didn't have to follow some building codes exactly. For example, one building code stipulates that electric outlets should be installed at 12-foot intervals. But to save a lot of trouble in building this dome, especially considering the Workshop and the time we had, our design eliminated some of those outlets." Both Jennifer and DJ agree that they still have more outlets in this home than they ever had before.
The dome's highly elliptical shape also contributes to its uniqueness. "This house is only 16 1/2 feet tall. For a 50-foot diameter dome, that's very low," DJ says. "If you look at it from the outside, it's squished on top. Neither of us ever wanted a second floor, but we did want central air conditioning.
"So we designed a mechanical space of about 400 square feet above the center of our house, that we can access through a pull-down staircase in the hallway. All of our electrical wiring is tied to the walls of that upstairs area," he says. "The plumbing converges up there too. That makes it easy to get to and move around if we needed to."
The space also houses a water heater on a pan and a two-ton air conditioning system, that heats, cools and dehumidifies the house. Originally, that system had four, five-kilowatt heating elements, but DJ says they removed three of them.
"We have just one, five-kilowatt heating element for heating in winter, but that's all this Monolithic Dome needs," DJ says. "Gordon Cuthbertson, president of Cuthbertson Mechanical Engineers, did a heat-loss analysis on this dome that showed we only really needed a 1 1/2 ton unit. But the smaller unit must be special ordered, so it's more economical to get a 2-ton unit and remove the unnecessary elements.
"And it's good to have a tiny bit of excess capacity, but you want to be careful not to get too high," he continues. "A too-large system won't run long enough to remove the moisture from the air, and the house gets sticky. In a Monolithic Dome, the air conditioning system controls humidity. For example, if you put a four-ton system in -- which is what a conventional house of this size would normally take -- it would just run half as long. The system would turn on, run half as long, cool the house and turn off. That sounds like a good thing, but is really not. The larger unit puts more demand on your electrical system and doesn't run long enough to remove moisture. So you want an air conditioning system that's properly sized, that runs about 50% of the time. That's the trick. We're using half as much energy, even though our air conditioning runs for about as long as it would in somebody else's house."
The system also includes a timer that can be set in the winter to remove unwanted moisture from showering or cooking.
DJ says, "There are houses built to please the neighbors and there are houses built to please their owners. We built ours for our family."
Besides Jennifer and DJ that family now includes five-year-old Amy and four-month-old Aubrey. All seem perfectly happy in their new Monolithic Dome home.
Jennifer says, "There's very little about this house that I don't like. There are a few things that I would do a little differently. David will be tickled to hear that they are the few little things that I did not include in our Word Picture!"
Related Articles:
- The Callisto Construction Photo Journal
- Editor's Circle -- Editorials by David South, Jr.
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