From: The Butterfly (salsbury_at_sculptors.com)
Date: 12/12/02
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 13:31:47 -0800 From: The Butterfly <salsbury_at_sculptors.com> Message-Id: <200212122131.gBCLVli04746@bootstrap.sculptors.com> Subject: Re: Simplicity domes, and a question about PVC...
In article <009301c27afe$783f6e60$4fdececf_at_gateway> you write:
>The weather is finally starting to go bad around here, which means its
>time to catch up on indoor projects. I'm still chipping away at Domes
>for the Next Millenium, and hope to do more on that this winter.
>
>One idea for a chapter is Simplicity Domes. The main objective would
>be to compile materials, designs, methods of construction, etc.,
>that reduce the "reasons not to" when one considers a dome as an
>alternative to the routine rectilinear structure. If nothing else,
>its a leader to help people break the ice and try a dome for the first
>time. This might be easiest to apply to small structures like sheds,
>garages, place-in-the-woods, etc., but need not be limited to that.
>
I like this idea, and that's one of the reasons I've been
considering manufacturing versions of my dome greenhouse to sell as kits
(http://reality.sculptors.com/hydro/greenhouse/) and sheds or playhouses
for kids are another good way to help folks "break the ice." (I like that
idea!)
I would encourage the use of the Reality Sculptors Wiki
(http://reality.sculptors.com/cgi-bin/wiki) to start collecting these
ideas, reasons, designs, images, common excuses "not to", etc. It seems
like a perfect application for the wiki, and will allow each person to add
ideas and respond to others but we'll construct something durable, rather
than simply having it fill our inboxes and sit in the web archives. The
wiki can be a dynamic (as dynamic as we make it, anyway) place that
continues to grow and refine the idea, and provides a place we can refer
others to in the future, rather than saying "go dig through the archives.
Try it out. Cut-n-paste some of your existing ideas and documents
into a new wiki page "SimplicityDomes" would be a fine name, and in fact,
to once again demonstrate how easy it is to create wiki pages, I just made
one at http://reality.sculptors.com/cgi-bin/wiki?SimplicityDomes (You can,
of course, make a different named page, or link to others from there.)
Give it a whirl! It's fun! :-)
>But to some extent this is a case of "easy to use = hard to
>make", as someone has to do the up-front work, especially the thinking
>part. (Rather reminds me of some great builders who often say the
>same thing - "Sure, I can do complicated stuff - you got plans?") I
>guess for Simplicity Domes, I'm thinking about ways to make domes from
>commonly available materials (PVC pipe, EMT tubing, OSB, etc. with
>tools you might have on hand, could afford to buy or perhaps rent,
>even from jigs you can make easily. I've seen quite a few of these on
>the web, and continue to collect them, but thought I'd put the idea
>out on the list in case anybody has some strong desire to contribute
>to such a chapter. I do a great deal of looking myself, but I'm sure
>some of you will come up with something I've never seen and would not
>have thought of.
I've been researching PVC for my ball-and-socket hub design, and as
soon as I raise some money for the prototyping, I plan to give it a go and
try to produce kits. But I also just finished reading "Cradle to Cradle"
recently (a fantastic book, and I recommend it to everyone on this list!)
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart and they have lots of bad (yet
vague) things to say about PVC and basically think it should be phased out
and not used at all.
This I find a bit confusing, and would like to know more about why
it's so bad. I don't *need* to use it for my dome greenhouse kits, and only
selected it because it was cheap and available locally in many places. But
if it poses an environmental threat, I'd rather go with something safer.
Does anyone have more info on the perils of PVC? Suggestions for
other things? I'll also do some digging in the chemical libraries, but
thought I'd check the collective knowledge-base.
> Even if you don't have anything now, if you spot something later
>that might be useful, please send it my way. I hope to have several
>pages of credits in the appendix!
>
>Thanks - Dan G.
>
Just start assembling info in the wiki, and it will start to take
shape. Later on, if you want to work on print-publication, we can extract
the info for typesetting, etc. (If I'm misunderstanding and you don't want
to web-publish at all, please correct me. This is an old thread...)
It's just that wiki is one of the best tools I've seen for
group-collaboration, and can produce quality results if people only use it.
(That's the tricky part...getting people to try it.)