My dome for Burning Man 1998
Hmmmm... Shelter. 120+ degrees in the noonday sun and 50+MPH winds, what should I do? This was a big question for me, mostly because I didn't know what I was going to be contributing to the festival, and at the very least I had to do a cool structure.
I started out looking online for information about shelter at the burningman.com site, found some good ideas but the way they were talking about connecting PVC didn't sound like a very strong or simple idea. From there I knew that I wanted to do a Geodesic dome, but didn't realize what goes into those two little words.
As I searched online, I found a great site by a guy named David who happened to have all of the math worked out already! After many VERY helpful e-mails, I was able to make a model out of straws and pipe cleaners, figure out the geometry of what the dome was supposed to do, and go to Home Depot to buy my materials. Of course at this point I had about a week before I left for the desert, and I had never done this before! Luckily, the connector idea that David had worked perfectly and I was able to finish and put the dome together once in my back yard (in under two hours, by myself) before I left for the desert. Trust me, you will learn a LOT the first time you put one of these together.
Quick statistics: The dome was 8' tall, 16' across, had 65 pieces, the longest of which was 5' long, 26 connections, and was covered with about 20 aluminized mylar Emergency Blankets. It held up relatively well in both the wind and rain that we had, and was pretty easy to fabricate, if you have experience with hand tools.
Down sides?: It was LOUD during the really windy periods, mostly because the cover was not on tight enough.
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| First step is to cut your PVC to the right length. Measure three times, double check your math, THEN cut. You don't want to go buy more pipe because you cut it too short! I spent the extra $25 to get a PVC cutter, and let me tell you, it's worth it! Nice, clean end cuts, right to the lengths that I wanted. | I set up this jig to hold the end of the PVC 1" from the hole in the top piece of wood. The first end is easy, drill anywhere, but to get the other end aligned with the first hole... | ...I put a bolt in the hole I drilled and was able to visually gauge if I had the PVC turned correctly before drilling the other end. | After all the pipe was cut and drilled, I switched to the table vice because I found I had to hold the pipe pretty steady to cut it with a hand skill saw. I use the bolt here again to make sure the pipe is rotated correctly for the cut on the end. I marked the pipe with red for the long pieces and blue for the short pieces using a cut piece of wood as a guide for consistency | Pipe is now drilled, straight, marked and ready to cut! |
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| After cutting, I noticed that there were a lot of sharp burrs of plastic on the pipe, SO... | ...I shaved them off with a sharp knife. | And this is what a joint looks like after it is assembled. David's site said to use 2" hardware, and I thought I'd want ends to hang stuff off of so I got 2 1/2" bolts. If I had cut all of the pipe closer to the wall of the pipe, I might have been able to get away with 2", but as it was, the 6 piece joints were pretty tough to get together sometimes. | ||
| Build the top, lay out the next layer of the dome. | Make sure you have all of the pieces you are going to need and that the right lengths are in the right places. | Connect the next layer and it is starting to look like a dome. | At this point, if you have a prefabricated cover, or are building a cover as you go, you would want to put it on the top level. It will not be this easy to get to again. | Top layer covered, dome completed, time to keep covering. Oh no! The wind is kicking up and it is starting to get hot. Better hurry! |
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| Ahhh... Dome is done, time to.... | Sit inside and have a smoke break! | We had up to 8 people in here at a time for a meal, could probably sleep 4-6 depending on how comfortable they were with each other! | ||
Okay, time to be honest, what did I learn from this experience? Lots. First and foremost, breeze is very important in your structure for Burning Man. I was thinking that if I was able to keep the heat from getting into my shelter in the first place, it would stay cool all day. I was kinda wrong. The covering I used kept 90% or so of the light and heat out, but there was enough getting in to heat it up. The only real temperature readings I got were one day when it was about 120 outside, and it got to 100 inside.
It might have been cooler with a more light/wind proof cover, or if I'd had an evaporative cooler inside. One benefit of that solution would have been to help re-humidify the air that had about 0% humidity! However, I think my solution for next year is to leave the bottom section open all the way around. Let the breeze blow through!
The plus side to this was when it got cool at night, and this would hold true for really cold weather, I was able to heat up the dome noticeably with a single mantle propane lantern in about 10 minutes. This was even with the lantern about one foot from the vent that I had in the top. Not bad! The other positive thing about the mylar was that with three candles or one glow disk or two flashlights, you could really see the whole inside! The light just kept bouncing around the inside until it lit up what you wanted to see.
And now, on to next year! I have already built a 5-f model, and am thinking about making a dome with 5' pieces again, but this time, because of the increased frequency, MUCH BIGGER!!! Also, I will not plan on cutting all of these pieces by hand. I am looking for a shop to borrow that has a radial arm saw (to cut PVC to length), and drill press (to drill all of them straight!), and I will probably have to build a hot/cutting wire to help cut all of these pieces. A 5-f dome comes out to about 280 pieces X2 ends... 560 cuts? Ouch!
Let me know if you:
Thanks for visiting my dome section. As there are more pictures (from preparatory dry-runs and such) they will appear here
All images Copyright September 1998, by Graham Linn. No unauthorized use permitted without prior written permission.
If you wish to negotiate use of these pictures, please contact me at burningman@thatplace.net There are more pictures that are not up here yet.
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