Jen, the Annoyed Construction Worker
If you’ve asked me about the scanty summer schedule of fiber classes, you’ve no doubt been treated to my diatribe on dome building, and my “other” job as a construction worker, which begins, “In 1979, my in-laws bought a geodesic dome kit, which has been moldering in a barn on the Mason Dixon . . . .”
Last summer, we finished the foundation, added the deck, and put the thing to bed just as the rains started rolling in in late October. So, last week, with the help of an emergency crew of friends (all of whom we called after 7pm Tuesday to beg them to come out at 10am on a Wednesday), we put up the first ring of triangles:
It’s not that we didn’t know this next part, but that first ring of wall doesn’t sit on the deck. It actually goes on top of a 2 foot stub wall. So, instead of taking the wall back apart (which would require the larger crew), we tied the wall together with chains (so it wouldn’t kick out), and jacked the whole thing up 2.25 feet into the air, and then put the stub wall under it.
I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to build walls from the bottom up, there being the issue of gravity and all. But we had an issue with the foundation not being as, um, perfect as we’d hoped, so we needed to know for sure where the kit walls were going to land, before adding the non-kit stub walls.
Then we added a second ring:
And began a third ring:
So I’m off, dear reader, to run the manlift, and finish off the skeleton of the dome.
