A lifelong Harford County resident nears completion on his geodesic home, a goal he has had for a long time.

By Anne Lauren Henslee
Special To The Sun
Originally published June 13, 2004

Guy Thompson stumbled across a geodesic dome home while taking an architecture class in 12th grade at C. Milton Wright High School. "And it stuck with me ever since," recalled the 30-year-old senior software engineer and lifelong Harford County resident.

"It was something different, not as boring as a plain old box house. Structurally, it's a lot stronger because it's triangles. Plus, it's supposed to be more energy efficient," Thompson said.

What began as fascination with residential dome structures became a goal for Thompson, who after graduating from the Johns Hopkins University nearly a decade ago moved in with his parents to save money - to buy property and build a geodesic dome home, similar to the ones he'd studied in high school.

If all goes according to plan, by early September Thompson will be moving into his dream dome - a three-bedroom, 2,400-square-foot, 45-foot-tall structure on a 4-foot riser wall with a cupola and extensions, surrounded by 3.4 wooded acres in Forest Hill.

The process has not been easy. Uneven floor joists delayed the raising of the dome, which was initially set for May 22 and then rescheduled for June 5. Other construction delays pushed the date from June 5 to the next week.

Construction woes aside, Thompson acknowledges that the greatest challenges have been finding land and a bank willing to help finance the project.

Thompson researched various dome home companies and settled on Oregon Dome Inc., a panelized dome-kit manufacturer based in Veneta, Ore.

Looking for land

"I knew I was going to build a dome home, which limited the choice of properties. Some people didn't want to sell to me if I was building a dome home," Thompson said. "I didn't bother to look at places with community associations, figuring they probably didn't want a dome home in their community. It just doesn't go as well as with other, traditional houses," Thompson said. "They aren't considered conventional houses, which makes finding a bank very difficult. And if you don't have good credit, getting a dome home is not in the cards. "If you go and say, 'I'm going to build a dome home,' most banks say, 'Sorry, can't help you.' Since it's not a conventional house they can't resell it, so they're not interested," Thompson said. "I found one bank, but the rate was at 7.5, when most of the rates were below 6 percent." Even with construction half completed, Thompson has not secured a loan. "I think I've found one, but that remains to be seen at this point," he said.

Inventor R. Buckminster Fuller patented the geodesic dome in 1954. Fuller is most noted for his 20-story dome housing the U.S. pavilion at the 1967 World's Fair in Montreal. Years later, Fuller designed a dome two miles in diameter that would enclose Midtown Manhattan in a temperature-controlled environment and pay for itself within 10 years from the savings of snow-removal costs alone.

Today, plastic and fiberglass "radomes" house radar equipment along the Arctic perimeter, and dome weather stations withstand winds up to 180 mph. In Africa, corrugated metal domes have given shelter to families at a cost of $350 per dome.

Worldwide, there are an estimated 300,000 geodesic dome structures - including a 265-foot-wide geodesic dome pavilion at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center in Florida, a 360-foot-high domed shopping center in downtown Ankara, Turkey, and a 280-foot-high domed civic center in Stockholm, Sweden.

Unique in town

Other than a nearby church with a dome roof and salt sheds that are geodesic domes, Thompson's dome home is unique in the town of Forest Hill. Thompson purchased plans for the home from Oregon Dome, which also provided the roof panels and exterior walls.

"The big difference is there are no real exterior walls; it's all roof. And instead of having siding, it's basically all roof shingles," said Mark Kappus, president of Kappus Construction Inc., a certified Energy Star builder that oversaw the project and built the interior and floor system on site. "It has the normal equipment that you would have in a standard house, except the shape and the panels are so efficient that it does not require the heat and air conditioning as a normal house would. The shape of it makes it very thermally efficient," Kappus said.

Efficient design

The design of the geodesic dome - a spherical structure created from triangles - incorporates the principle of more is less, theoretically saving on materials and costs by enclosing the largest volume of interior space with the least amount of surface area.

In practice, however, the cost of building a dome home is comparable to or somewhat higher than that of a traditional residence, mainly because it is uncommon. "The building cost is a little more, due to the fact that we don't have many trades here that work with a geosphere or a dome. So there is a premium on the structure," Kappus explained. "Theoretically, it should be cheaper to build because it uses less materials; but because it's not the same as what everybody is used to building it blows any cost-saving out of the water," added Thompson, who is spending $300,000 to build the house, not including the price of the land.

But the energy-efficient design saves money over time. The spherical structure of a dome enables air and energy to circulate without obstruction, enabling heating and cooling to occur naturally. "Many of the subcontractors are really excited because of how energy efficient this package is. My Energy Star certifier said this is fantastic, because there is very little heat loss or cooling loss due to exterior walls," Kappus said.

The master bedroom, laundry room, study, kitchen, living room and dining room will be on the first floor, with two guest bedrooms and an additional bathroom on the second floor. The house will also have a basement-level, two-car garage.

Richard Truitt, chief of building services for Harford County, recommends that anyone interested in building a unique structure such as a dome home should first contact his department to ensure residential building and safety codes will be met. "It's a unique construction method, and since the method is not specified in the residential code that we follow, there are alternative methods where we would require a structural engineer or some other design professional to prove to us that it will meet the minimal design load requirements of the code. After that, we would look into the life safety and fire safety aspects," Truitt said. Truitt has been chief for five years and has been with the department for 10. He recalls receiving one other request in Harford County to build a dome structure.

In Forest Hill, Thompson's dome home has been well-received. "All my neighbors have visited and don't care that it's a dome home. They all think it's neat," Thompson said.