STEP 1: Preparing the spot

STEP 1 in this building process was preparing my building spot. Talking to several excavator guys, I discovered that if you want to berm a home/dome/house it is much more cost and labor efficient to move the dirt once instead of twice. In other words, place your dome(s) where you want them and then bring the dirt to the domes.......instead of choosing a hillside and moving the dirt twice - seems simple enough, but that somehow did not occur to me.

My decision of where to place the dome and how many I wanted was easily made on my property since the top of my property is flat and the rest of the 5.5 acres is mostly hillside and forested. However, I discovered that in order to place my domes in a most optimal way, I would need to clear out more trees on my plateau and get some excavation done to remove and level my ground. During this process, I was also busy drawing my domes, their position relative to each other, the connection hallway, the mudroom into the first dome, the other door and windows etc etc, soon enough I was drawing in detail the layout of the domes and their surrounding landscape that had to provide for some parking, dog area, garden, driveway to the shed, porch area - covered and open. An easy way to draw the dimensions in accuracy is an good old notebook with a grid, however there is a lot of floor plan software out there on the internet you might enjoy, some of them free.

Here is my land after the removal of some trees and leveling my spot.

I figured since I knew the dimensions I could work with and I had decided I wanted to create two domes that were connected with a hallway, I should detail my plans as much as possible, because the step right after leveling is preparing the foundation ring and in order to do that properly, you will at least need to know where all plumbing needs to be and where you will be placing the doors. I figured that since concrete is very 'unforgiving' with the location of anything - you better know for sure where you want your toilet, bath/shower, sinks etc - and to make sure that I gave everything the correct dimensions I decided to purchase my doors, bath, toilet and sinks, so I would know exactly how they fitted into my dome and where. Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself, I will get into the plumbing part later.