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Dome Living
A Creative Guide For Planning Your Monolithic Dream Home
by David B. South with Freda Grones
Review by Thomas J. Elpel

      Dome Living offers a great look at the uncommon architecture of monolithic dome homes. Monolithic domes are made using large balloon like air forms. The air forms are usually sprayed on the inside with a seamless coating of polyurethane insulation. A grid of reinforcing rebar is put up inside of that, and sprayed with a thin layer of shotcrete to make a shelter that is incredibly energy efficient and highly resistant to natural or manmade disasters. The energy bill for a typical monolithic dome home is about 10% of the bill for a conventional house of similar size. Dome structures have proved impressively resiliant against earthquakes, tornadoes--even dropping bombs. While dome homes may not fit into every neighborhood, the reality is that if all houses were built like monolithic dome homes, then we would have very nearly achieved a sustainble (energy- and resource-efficeint) civilization already. Dome Living includes more than 115 house plans to give you lots of creative ideas to work with in planning your own monolithic dome home. ISBN: 0-9679171-0-7. 152 pages. 2000. The list price of the book is $24.95. We have it available for $10.00!