Hot House

I want to build a geodesic in my backyard (for practice) and use it as a greenhouse (you know, cover it with plastic). I thought that it would be a good test of stability (since it is quite windy where I live) and I could experiment with covering it with shading material to control light (to test low light growing conditions).

It may not be a good idea, but I want to build the thing out of wood (easily available and lighter than metal bars). I would use screw-type tie-downs to keep it from blowing away. Could you suggest lengths necessary to make it about 10 feet tall and roughly 15 feet in diameter?

Thanks, Roger

You can figure the sizes you need from the radius. Take your 15-foot dome:

radius = 7.5
radius * PI * 2 = circumference
which is 47.123

the geodesic base has 10 of the long segments, so your long segments will be

47.123 / 10 = 4.712

the short ones are

4.7 * 0.88 = 4.146

Use the metric system instead and you'll make your life a lot easier.

Another idea besides wood is electrical conduit. It's cheap and you can flatten each end, and drill holes. Then you can bolt the whole thing together, bending the tabs as needed. For a small dome even smaller pipes could be used, don't know where to get 'em though. Hope that helps some.

Joe.