You can get a-round in this home
Posted: Friday, November 25, 2005
BROOKINGS, S.D. (AP) -- Is Vermillion the only place in South Dakota where you can see a dome? Thanks to a Brookings couple, the answer is a resounding "no."
Darrick Wika, a real estate investor for Ameriprize in Brookings, has been building a concrete dome home on the southern edge of town for the past 18 months. He shares the house with his wife, Elizabeth, and three children. The family has occupied the 3,500-square foot home since September.
"The dome shape is the best shape there is for usage of space. We like to think of it as round footage rather than square footage," Wika joked.
His home consists of three 34-foot domes and one 40-foot dome. He added that he expects that the house, which sits on 40 acres, will be finished by the summer of 2006.
"When it's done, it'll have three bedrooms, four baths and a detached garage," Elizabeth said.
"It's been easy to build, and it's low-maintenance. I was looking for an all-concrete home. I searched on the Internet, and this is the only structure I could find that had concrete walls and a concrete roof," Darrick explained. "We're also partial to extreme homes."
During the Internet search, he said that he came across a Web site for the Monolithic Dome Institute. What Darrick found on the Web piqued his interest.
"I then went down to Italy, Texas, where they build these dome houses, and I built one for training. And then we finished the design on our house, took it to the county, they issued a permit and then we got started," he explained.
"The institute people were easy to work with. They provided the airform, and I bought the concrete mixer and pump from them. They also answered any questions I had; they even figured up how much material I would need."
Construction, Darrick said, has involved many steps.
"We poured a ring footer and attached the dome's airform, which is made of PVC tarp, inflated it in 12 minutes, and then we primed the interior of the dome," he said. "We then sprayed polyurethane foam, added all the reinforcement steel and then sprayed 3 inches of concrete on the inside. That got the structure up and standing."
Darrick said the early stages of construction were a real balancing act.
"You literally worked under pressure the whole time. There's an airlock on the dome to get inside until you get it inflated. Two inches of watercolumn will hold up 7,000 pounds of material at the time. You had to make sure that the air pressure was right. Otherwise, the dome could collapse or blow out," he explained.
Now that the house's basic structure is in place, Darrick said that he expects that his family's home will prove very durable.
"It's fireproof; there's nothing to burn besides your belongings inside. And it's impervious to tornadoes and hurricanes, and it's good for 250 mph winds. It won't rot, it's termite-proof, and it's also earthquake-resistant," he said.
Elizabeth said that working with a dome structure offers a lot of design freedom.
"You're really not limited at all. You don't have to have interior walls. None of our walls are load-bearing. You can do whatever you want because the external structure is so sound. When you have a lofted space, you have to make accommodations, but it gives you so much freedom," she explained.
Darrick added that the cost of building and owning a dome home are the same or less than that of conventional houses.
"It's the efficiency of the dome. The shape and the concrete act as heat storage. The insulation is on the outside of the building rather than on the inside, and that's what's made this house very attractive to build because all the masonry's on the inside and all of the insulation is on the outside. We heat this house with an electric water heater," he explained.
Darrick said that awareness of the benefits of dome homes has been raised since the first such houses were built in the 1960s, but he expects that it will take years for dome homes to become commonplace.
"Everybody grew up in a square box, and that's what everybody's idea of a home is," he said. "You come up with a new idea, and it takes a while for people to bend their mind around the concept of round."
Darrick Wika, a real estate investor for Ameriprize in Brookings, has been building a concrete dome home on the southern edge of town for the past 18 months. He shares the house with his wife, Elizabeth, and three children. The family has occupied the 3,500-square foot home since September.
"The dome shape is the best shape there is for usage of space. We like to think of it as round footage rather than square footage," Wika joked.
His home consists of three 34-foot domes and one 40-foot dome. He added that he expects that the house, which sits on 40 acres, will be finished by the summer of 2006.
"When it's done, it'll have three bedrooms, four baths and a detached garage," Elizabeth said.
"It's been easy to build, and it's low-maintenance. I was looking for an all-concrete home. I searched on the Internet, and this is the only structure I could find that had concrete walls and a concrete roof," Darrick explained. "We're also partial to extreme homes."
During the Internet search, he said that he came across a Web site for the Monolithic Dome Institute. What Darrick found on the Web piqued his interest.
"I then went down to Italy, Texas, where they build these dome houses, and I built one for training. And then we finished the design on our house, took it to the county, they issued a permit and then we got started," he explained.
"The institute people were easy to work with. They provided the airform, and I bought the concrete mixer and pump from them. They also answered any questions I had; they even figured up how much material I would need."
Construction, Darrick said, has involved many steps.
"We poured a ring footer and attached the dome's airform, which is made of PVC tarp, inflated it in 12 minutes, and then we primed the interior of the dome," he said. "We then sprayed polyurethane foam, added all the reinforcement steel and then sprayed 3 inches of concrete on the inside. That got the structure up and standing."
Darrick said the early stages of construction were a real balancing act.
"You literally worked under pressure the whole time. There's an airlock on the dome to get inside until you get it inflated. Two inches of watercolumn will hold up 7,000 pounds of material at the time. You had to make sure that the air pressure was right. Otherwise, the dome could collapse or blow out," he explained.
Now that the house's basic structure is in place, Darrick said that he expects that his family's home will prove very durable.
"It's fireproof; there's nothing to burn besides your belongings inside. And it's impervious to tornadoes and hurricanes, and it's good for 250 mph winds. It won't rot, it's termite-proof, and it's also earthquake-resistant," he said.
Elizabeth said that working with a dome structure offers a lot of design freedom.
"You're really not limited at all. You don't have to have interior walls. None of our walls are load-bearing. You can do whatever you want because the external structure is so sound. When you have a lofted space, you have to make accommodations, but it gives you so much freedom," she explained.
Darrick added that the cost of building and owning a dome home are the same or less than that of conventional houses.
"It's the efficiency of the dome. The shape and the concrete act as heat storage. The insulation is on the outside of the building rather than on the inside, and that's what's made this house very attractive to build because all the masonry's on the inside and all of the insulation is on the outside. We heat this house with an electric water heater," he explained.
Darrick said that awareness of the benefits of dome homes has been raised since the first such houses were built in the 1960s, but he expects that it will take years for dome homes to become commonplace.
"Everybody grew up in a square box, and that's what everybody's idea of a home is," he said. "You come up with a new idea, and it takes a while for people to bend their mind around the concept of round."
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Dan & Jeanine Fricke wrote on Oct 10, 2006 11:55 PM:
Dan & Jeanine Fricke wrote on Oct 10, 2006 11:53 PM: