Last few weeks...

And we are back! The last few weeks we have been waiting for the Dome to dry. The plaster dried fairly quickly, also the floor inside. But the moisture levels in the straw bales has been difficult to understand. Even after weeks of drying the plaster the moisture level in the middle of the straw bales increased from 85%RH to 90%RH. The sensors in the straw bales just below the outside clay plaster has been increasing with higher outside temperatures and lower with at low temperatures - the opposite of what I would expect. The average moisture level in these areas are about 95%RH... of course the weather has not been very kind, here one of the rainy and windy days, but the clay still seems to be fairly dry.

From Strawbale Dome Minke

After the floor dried (took about 10 days) we put the windows in. Then I taped them from the outside. And we started to heat the inside:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

Domas from Lithuania stopped by with his friends on the way to Italy - we had a great evening!

From Strawbale Dome Minke

The border between the floor and the walls that had been covered with cardboard had to be fixed. The gap has been filled in by Catalina today. She arrived from Hungary yesterday. Now this part is also air tight:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

From Strawbale Dome Minke

From Strawbale Dome Minke

And the big news: we decided to take the roof down and put the EPDM on. Here is the roof cover being taken off:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

From Strawbale Dome Minke

On some spots some dew in the morning had been dripping down from the tent, so a hairdryer was used to dry the clay surface:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

The EPDM from Athos Syntec arrived in one roll and needed to be refolded on the nearby field:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

From Strawbale Dome Minke

Then we started to take apart the wooden construction - this was not too difficult:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

Even the last element was standing nearly on its own - really a good design:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

From Strawbale Dome Minke

First picture without the roof!

From Strawbale Dome Minke

We were putting geotextile around the wooden parts to protect against any sharp elements:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

The concept I had to put the EPDM on worked much better than we thought - after lifting the EPDM up it took just a short half hour to cover the whole structure!

From Strawbale Dome Minke

The hole in the middle is 90cm diameter - just a bit smaller than the frame to have a good fit:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

The membrane was then lowered onto the structure, and gravity did the rest of the job:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

From Strawbale Dome Minke

The membrane is definitely big enough, big chunks will have to be cut out:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

The membrane covers everything - tomorrow we will adjust the EPDM, fix it and cut off the parts in front of the windows:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

In the evening Tom Rijven arrived from Poland! Another nice evening:

From Strawbale Dome Minke

Tomorrow we hope to get a better fit for the membrane and then we will start with the green roof! Will be back with an update!