After much research, Sam and Evan chose a 30-foot geodesic dome home kit from Pacific Domes. It comes to about 700 square feet with 15-foot ceilings, big bay windows, and a huge skylight. Impressively, the main structure went up in just a day with the help of friends.
First, they cleared an overgrown corner of their friend’s property in northwestern Washington. Then they built a post and beam platform out of treated lumber. It took approximately 12 hours to put up the dome home kit. Every one of these bars is clearly labeled, and the assembly follows a simple pattern. They followed a clockwise direction to construct the dome in five layers.
After the kit went up, Sam and Evan finished out the interior over the next few months. Inside their dome home, they installed running water for the kitchen sink but have no indoor bathroom facilities. So they built a luxurious Japanese-soakhouse style bathhouse next door. Additionally, further from their geodome home, they built a composting vaulted outhouse. It has two chambers. When one is full, they will cap it to allow it slowly become soil.
Due to the circular nature of their dome home, the interior is laid out like pizza slices. They established zones for different “room” functions. No walls or barriers make it feel very open and airy. The main living space is the center of the geodome with a giant half-circle window wall offering an enchanting view into the woods surrounding their home.
Evan and Sam changed their primary heat source to a large pellet stove. After struggling to keep up with their wood stove heat last winter, this is a low-maintenance welcome change. They can load it with a 40-pound bag of pellets, which will burn for up to 17 hours on the low setting. If on the high, it’ll burn for roughly eight hours. This is one of the many lessons they learned from their first year in their dome home.
“I’ve said it 100 times, but instead of trial by fire, we got trial by ice.
So we hadn’t insulated our floor, and we didn’t get the insulation kit that Pacific Domes offered because we couldn’t afford it at the time. So we’re like, well, we’ll just get a really big wood stove.
And so we did, and it was just hard. We have 16-foot ceilings. All the heat kind of goes out the ceiling, so heating, yeah, I agree, was probably the biggest disadvantage, and it’s fixable. It’s something we’re learning and working on. We have a plan.”
-Evan, @ebog.arts
For Evan and Sam, living in a dome home feels like the best of both worlds. It’s an alternative affordable homeownership opportunity like a tiny house on wheels, but with more room for all their hobbies. While they learned some hard lessons from their first winter in their geodome, they love their simple lifestyle close to nature.
“Alternative living, for me, is kind of being more in tune with nature and being closer to the land, and being in the dome, we are hyper-aware of nature, what’s happening outside. When it rains, it’s very loud in here but also very meditative to get that beautiful ripple sound and the way that we just kind of have to interact with the land.
We have to think about it more than you would in a house. And I really love that.
Early relationship, we went camping and hiking all the time, and that has just kind of evolved with us. And now, like when we were building a dome, it was like being two steps away from camping. Like, we’re in a tent kind of, but we have all of our stuff, and we’re comfortable.
Yeah, and some people would just say glamping.”
-Sam & Evan
Similar to tiny houses, where to put their dome home was a top concern for Sam and Evan. This was especially true because purchasing land wasn’t a financial possibility for them at the time. Ultimately, Evan reached out to a friend with rural property to ask about renting space. Fortunately, he was immediately into the idea. They pay $500 a month here for their lot. Additionally, Sam and Evan help with chores around the property when needed, like taking care of the chickens and the ducks, and putting away the goats at night.