Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looking forward to this!

I'm really looking forward to your Geodesic Dome GH build. What made you decide on a Geodesic Dome verses a standard retangular style GH?

The "coolness" factor.

They are actually very strong buildings and can span a good distance without any special supports. They're also fairly inexpensive to build, once you figure out how to put them together.

Very nice videos!

Wow! I don't know which is more impressive; the quality of the videos or the dome itself. FANTASTIC!!!

Looks like fun! I have always wanted to build a geodesic dome greenhouse. I was thinking of making two molds for the pentagon and the hexagon and casting the components in glassfiber

It would be interesting to see how fiberglass would hold up to those kind of forces. It would definitely be worth the effort to experiment with it first!

I've been trying to figure out a way to mold the hubs in some kind of plastic...I'm sure it wouldn't be cheap. The guys at growingdomes.com have a good hub design...very simple but effective. If I had a way to cut the plate and press them, I probably would have gone with his design.

Laser cutting is cheap and effective. Most can also fold usually. Will think about the fiber glass. I have seen plans that use polystyrene sheets which are simply glued and then plastered with chicken wire as reinforcing. like ferrocement I guess. not a greenhouse though.

A quick update on the Geodesic Dome Greenhouse project. The site clearing is nearly done. The hardwoods will be used as firewood. Some of the pines will be cut into lumber while the rest will be ground-up and used as ground cover and erosion control. Next step, stump removal and then the foundation!

Site before clearing trees.


Site after clearing the majority of the trees. (My wife and I are sitting on a huge stump)


130 +/- year-old tree. Each tack is 10 years. Where were you in 1880?

Are you going to mill all that wood, or just burn it?

One word: charcoal growbed media.

I'm planning on building a rocket mass heater inside the greenhouse and burn the hardwood for heat..I'm on the fence about it still. The property was timbered about 20 years ago so none of it is large enough for a mill except the pines. They are going to my neighbor who owns a sawmill. The smaller pines are going to be ground-up and spread over the site. The environmental folks like to make sure the dirt doesn't wash away and the chips make for a good erosion control.

The growbeds are going to be filled with Expanded Shale. (shameless plug = http://www.ExpandedShale.com )

A pyrolytic stove could heat the greenhouse whilst making new growbed media at the same time. (I have a diagram in my head for this, which I call the "Collier Gardens" concept)

Ok... Domes and wood gas. Two topics of great interest for me The revolution starts here!

I downloaded some interesting software... Domedesigner I think it is called. Designed and drafted up a small dome and constructed it from cardboard. Not too difficult to do....

P.s. i have round growbeds!