Sulcata-geodesic dome

[Happydomes]

Hi

I've been building a new home for my sulcatas as they have been getting a bit big to move indoors and out what with the irregularities and inconsistencies of the weather in the UK.

As I put on anther thread, my key considerations when building this were the cost of heating, the space I could give them, the access to natural UV light during the 9months of the year it is too cold for them to wander freely outside and it also had to be a nice place for us to visit them.

To this end I have gone for a geodesic dome design, which should hopefully cost a third less to heat, and also looks attractive in the garden.

I've made the frame for the main enclosure and have added underfloor heating, loads of insulation and have made the whole thing completely watertight. It's taken about 3 months to get it to this stage, building it from scratch, and I'm just about to finish the external work sometime later this week, when I add the roof shingles (which arrived yesterday).

Next week I start to get it prepped up for adding the tortoise equipment. So I'll be finishing off their sleeping hide and adding barriers to the lowest Windows so they can't see through.

I'll post up a few pictures as I move towards completion, and any advice you can give regarding things I should do to give the best environment I can would be most appreciated.

Anyway, here are a few pics of the dome as it currently stands.

A view from above

Front on

The inside in daytime

And the other way round....facing front.

The inside at night. Fibre optic stars give the dome a cool evening glow.

The space for the sleeping area. Hide being built next week. The hide will have a smaller dome on top to desire to redirect the heat from the ceramic bulbs into the enclosure, and will have a thermal heat mass on one side that should heat up in the daytime/evening to provide an extra bit of night-time heat.

I'll post up more pics of the build process if anyone is interested.

 

[Careym13]

I'm interested

 

[Yvonne G]

A very ambitious project. And quite pretty!

 

[jaizei]

That is amazing.

 

[Jodie]

Wow. This is very elaborate, creative and pretty. Keep us updated on how it works. Nice work

 

[johnsonnboswell]

Yowza! That's amazing.

 

[Happydomes]

A few pictures of the early stages... the first thing I did was to order the wood. The dome frame is made from pressure treated roofing battens, about 500m worth in total go into the frame and Windows, with each piece bevelled and angled to form the dome shape once constructed. Unfortunately my table saw wasn't up to the task of getting so many cuts completed accurately and in a reasonable time scale, so I had to upgrade this after I'd done a dozen cuts.

Fortunately, this delay gave me a chance to start on phase 2. The space where the tortoise dome was going was half occupied with my garage (with a nasty asbestos roof). So I carefully removed half of the garage and all of the roof and rebuilt the roof and garage sides to accommodate.

By this time my new saw had arrived and so I made up the triangles needed to construct the frame and dug out the foundations for the dome to sit on. I went quite deep because of the large bushes on either side of the fence, although it probably wasn't necessary to do so. The blockwork was added to the foundations and I filled the centre with a dpm, sand and finally a load of cement to bring it up to the same level as the garage foundations.

With this now in place I was able to assemble the frame. This is a bit of a nervy time as all you know is you have made a load of triangles, but a small discrepancy on the angles or lengths will result in a dome with gaps. I wasn't honestly sure if it would go together at all until the last piece in the ceiling went on. And I was delighted when it all fit together like a glove.

I spent a few days going over each seam and sealed and filled and sanded down all joints. So far so good. I bought about 14 sheets of osb and cut the roof panels to size and fixed them to the frame before covering this with roofing underlay.

Next I gave the frame a couple of coats of wood primer and a finishing coat of gold. It's nice and sparkly in the sunshine

With the frame and roof in place I next needed to make the door and Windows. Once again this required the manufacturer of lots more triangles, but these had to be marginally smaller than the frame triangles so they fitted in the gap. These all needed priming and painting before adding the window covering and fixing them to the frame. Beading was added (the bevelling offcuts) to prevent water ingress and this was all caulked and sealed.

With the dome now pretty much watertight, the next job was to insulate. In each roofed segment I added 25mm insulation board and then thick 100mm board on the floor. Cutting this into a precise circle wasn't that easy, so I filled any gaps with expanding foam and cut level.

After this it was time to add the underfloor heating cable. Mats were no good due to the irregular shape, so I lay the cable out to fill the edges and then covered this all over with about 8mm of self levelling screed. I covered this with some quarry tiles, grouted and then sealed to prevent damage to the tiles.

The rest of the electrics came next. I wired in the electrics and fitted a ceiling fan to help push down the hot air that gets trapped in the roof, or cool it down if it gets too hot. I hid the wires in the frame and added (after a suggestion from the wife) about 450m of fibre option cable for mood lighting, and also made sure all of the plugs were put up above tortoise height. This was run off a separate garage consumer unit with 4mm swa cable running to the house unit.

With all this in place I covered all of the wall panels with plywood, primed and painted them in graduated colours.

And that's about where I am up to now. The sleeping hide is currently under construction and the roof shingles will go on the next day it's dry enough to work outside. I'll probably be getting them to move in in about a week or so as I can always do any finishing off jobs while they are in situ.

So far I would guess I have spent about 3k on the build, but I've shopped around and have done everything myself to keep costs down. I hope this helps anyone who wants to do something similar for their shelled friends in colder climates. Obviously it doesn't have to be as big as this... a small 2m dome would work well for some smaller breeds, and as I have mentioned this shape should help keep the costs down when thinking about heating.

Sorry for the lost post. I'll add some more updates as I get the inside prepped for the tortoises.

Paul

 

[Careym13]

Thanks for all of the pictures and detailed info! Can't wait to see it finished!

 

[SarahChelonoidis]

Whoa, now that is an aesthetically pleasing structure!

 

[Yvonne G]

This is just amazing. Do you work in the construction field?

 

[Speedy-1]

Really nice ! I hope it works great for you .

 

[Tom]

A fine example of what can be done. Thank you for sharing this build with us.

 

[Happydomes]

Thanks all.

Yvonne, no I don't work in construction. For most of my working life I've designed and built databases, strictly office bound stuff. I only started on little diy projects when we got the tortoises a few years ago and I needed to update and expand their indoor enclosures. Before then putting up a wonky shelf was about my limit.

I left my job about a year ago because I was spending too much time away from the family, and decided to teach myself a few new life skills to pass the time. Most of what I have done has been taught by you tube videos and trial and error. My first little project was to build a greenhouse so we could grow more of our own veg. This was my first stab at a geodome and it didn't go quite to plan. I got the measurement of the jig about 1.5mm out on one length of the triangle and ended up with a 2inch gap when putting the final piece on. Needless to say it was a hard lesson to learn, but valuable in getting the tortoise dome right. I really did sulk for several days afterwards though.

This is the greenhouse. I've decided to build an emergency hide in here so I have somewhere I can move one of the tortoises should they start to fight! I've learnt quite a lot this past week, browsing through the forum, and have certainly taken the caution warning of having 2 sulcatas together seriously. It would only be a temporary solution, but it's best to have a fall back position.

Regarding building stuff like this, I find it is a combination of having the right tools, the right information and the confidence to just get stuck in. As long as you take your time to do the best you can then things usually end up ok in the end.