Hi Jenny,
You have a great idea, and I think dome houses in Sedona are a perfect idea. For desert living, you will need very thick walls to get an “R” value high enough for the hot weather. You could also look into adding two inches of “closed cell spray foam insulation “ to the outside which will give the required moisture barrier as well as the needed insulation. Lastly, and this is the real problem....is most cities are not accepting Aircrete as a material worthy for construction even though it is used throughout the world with no problems. You would have to get a structural engineer to sign off on your plans when submitting them, and then you might have a chance. I’m going to try this in California, as soon as I can find a structural engineer that will do this. Anybody reading this post....do you know of one?
CaliforniaSteve
@CaliforniaSteve
Posts made by CaliforniaSteve
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RE: Desert Capability?
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RE: Encouragement
Great thoughts Brian. I tried to reply to Jenny about building in the desert. I think the biggest obstacle is getting American cities to accept Aircrete as a reliable building material. It seems to be well accepted in Europe, but they also have very controlled manufacturing standards where the ratios of materials, and baking of the blocks create very standardized strong material. Also, building anything with concrete demands steel rebar in California, so, again, with the dome, a structural engineer would be required to show the DomeGaia model will be strong enough to handle an earthquake.
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Hurricane of August 2018
Please keep all of us posted on how your homes hold up during this trying and dangerous weather Kauai is about to endure. Our best wishes you get through this safely.
Steve