My wife and I moved to the Tampa Bay area from a 3,500 square foot house on a canal in Southwest Dade County, Florida. Our four children had grown, three off to college and one remaining in High School. We settled in a series of apartments and rentals, looking for a home that would meet our needs for simplicity and open space.
Searching for houses in the Tampa area was very disappointing. The homes that were available were few back in 1979 and all reminded us of our first house purchased in 1959, but at vastly inflated prices. We had examined condominiums and town houses, but in each instance, the lack of privacy was evident.
One day, Joan returned from a beauty parlor with pages torn from a magazine. An article described a dome-home in California, had interior pictures of wide open spaces and described the unique visual and practical features of a geodesic dome structure. “I could live in this”, the wife said.
I called the magazine’s publishers and, eventually, was put in touch with a Cathedralite Homes, a manufacturer of kits for domes in Aptos, California. That company, which is no longer in business, put us in touch with their representative in South Carolina, and we began a series of treks to see groups of dome homes, all different, but similar in that they were unique, spacious and, frankly, looked fun. We then began to search for other builder options and discovered a contractor from Sebring, Florida, who, himself, lived in a Geodesic Dome, had imagination and creativity and was willing to travel across the state to build our dream.
Then came the fun of obtaining financing. Although Dome Homes were common in parts of the country and that the concept had been approved by the federal agencies, we were told by several financial institutions that they would finance the second geodesic Dome in our area, not the first. Eventually all of this was resolved and construction began.
As the home was being built, we would find total strangers wandering through the structure, curious and inquiring how the darn thing would stand up. As a matter of fact, we were assured by a relative of my wife’s that the entire structure would never last one week.
The floor of our geodesic Dome is a rough circle, 49 feet in diameter. Spaced around the perimeter are four five-foot high walls. The Dome is created in pentagon pieces that sit on the walls and then are build built and attached to each other. The entire structure is supported on these riser walls. There are no load-bearing beams or supports in the center of the Dome. The ceiling-roof extends 35 feet into the air.
We choose to have a second floor built over about 40 % of the ground floor level and to have access by a spiral staircase. Our master bedroom, bath, kitchen and living-dining area are on the first floor; upstairs we have a bedroom and all-purpose family room, in which I have placed my favorite comfortable chair and computer. At the suggestion of our builder, we decided to omit ceilings on the bedroom and family room, leaving both rooms open to the ceiling far above.
In the Fall of 1984, we moved into our new Dome, built on a then rural lot in Lutz, Florida, just north of Tampa. In an article in Associated Content on May, 2006, Rachael Johnson wrote of her Lutz neighborhood and bemoaned its growth and loss of its character. But in 1981 the community was still small and personal. Shortly after we moved into our home, a letter was delivered by the Post Office addressed: “The Stillmans, Dome Home, Lutz, Florida!
What’s living in a geodesic Dome like? First and foremost, they are fun places in which to live. They are less expensive to build, per square foot, than conventional homes and far more efficient to operate.
Geodesic domes are efficient structures in several ways. The triangle is a very stable shape; for example, a force applied to the corner of a rectangle can deform it into a parallelogram, but the same force will not deform a triangle. This makes geodesic dome buildings highly resistant to such forces as snow coverings (not a major concern in Florida), earthquakes, wind of hurricane strength, and even tornadoes. The surface area of a geodesic dome is only 38% of the surface area of a box-shaped building enclosing the same floor space. There is less surface exposed to outdoor temperature fluctuations, making the building cheaper to heat and cool than a rectilinear structure.
There are a few disconcerting things about living in a Dome. Sound carries. Someone talking quietly on the telephone in an upstairs room will be clearly heard in areas of the main floor. This can be very embarrassing for a teenager! Some of the rooms are irregular in shape so, while no space is wasted and unusable, furnishing the Dome can be an exercise in creativity.
In the 25 years that we have lived in our Dome, I don’t think that we have regretted our decision even once. And for the skeptics, the roof doesn’t leak, the electric bills are substantially lower than that of our neighbors, and the fun has not diminished.
