Under the Thunderdome
At this time of year, when Spokane gets even a little smattering of rain, it’s like the whole natural world breathes a sigh of relief. The leaves stretch out, there’s a lichen hanging from trees that goes from a sad, sooty black to a startling lime green, and everything suddenly looks lush and verdant.
It’s not, however, that great a thing for building. We shoved a bunch of stuff under tarps:
But what do you do with a dome? Farmerteen and I spent a hot and dusty afternoon yesterday dragging two hundred pounds of plastic sheeting back onto the dome, and rolling scaffolding and ladders around to get them out of the way and then to hold the sheets down, but it looked like we’d just end up pooling a lot of water in the folds on the not-quite-but-fairly-level deck.
The Renaissance Guy came home with a big idea: put the whole dome under a tarp . . . but what kind of tarp do you get for a 45′ diameter 5/8 ball? (Answer: a very large one). But we know, from tarping the hay, that really heavy-duty tarps can be too heavy to do anything but hold them. So he arrives with a 40 x 60′ tarp and dozens of bungee cords.
I’d like to say this went perfectly smoothly, like all our projects do. (There’s about 100 lies in that one sentence–I am so full of it, I’m attracting flies). But we did manage to get it up (dropping it from the manlift over top, using guy lines to pull it over, with the help of the O-Parents and a light breeze). I didn’t get a picture last night (though I think Oma did — I might rough her up for hers –) but here’s one from this morning, through the haze on my windshield.
and one I took for the Renaissance Guy from underneath, of the puddles that we got (which are still not the whole thing soaking and drenching the crawl space):
