Six-Dollar Dome

(Page 3 of 3)

July/August 1973
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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Now begin putting on the skin. You'll probably have to continue holding up the arches while you do this since the dome will have no strength until it's covered. Begin at the bottom and run a long strip of plastic completely around the perimeter. Due to the curve of the structure (you can't just stretch a flat surface over a sphere) there will be a lot of slack at the top of the sheet. Ignore this for the moment and begin securely stapling the skin to the struts all around the bottom of the strip. When this is done go back, pull the excess material to one side or the other of each face of the dome and staple the top edge to the arches. Be careful not to rip the plastic, but stretch it as tight as you can. Then start another width of poly around the shelter farther up, overlapping the first layer by a few inches shed rain.

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Don't forget to leave a smoke hole at the top of the Umbrella if you plan to have a fire inside. . . and also leave a few flaps around that opening close it in bad weather. Finally, just cut a door in one wall and move in. Decorate your new home to suit your taste . . . we ornamented the perimeter ours with the sky signs of all the people who lived inside.

Dome dwellers should lift up the Umbrella's skin in a couple of places at the bottom for ventilation, especially if the sun is bright or a fire is burning within. Air circulates naturally through the structure, without fans or electricity: as the interior atmosphere becomes warm it rises and passes out the smoke hole, drawing cooler air through the vents at ground level.

We lived in our dome for five days in perfect comfort, and felt very close to the outdoors under that clear plastic skin. At one point we had over 40 people inside the Umbrella for a party and still had no problems. Some individuals we met at the convention confrmed our experience . . . they had iived in a similar shelter for a whole trouble-free summer. In fact, for space, comfort and pleasant living coupled with low cost and little work, we think the Umbrella Dome is hard to beat.

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