Early morning is cold near zero degree. I’m wearing a vest, cotton gloves, two long sleeves, long underwear pants.
Ready to tackle the roof top
Laying two rows of earthbag on the roof
Regular visitor dropped by. The old lady is in 90s.
I said “Good morning!” to her but she probably could not hear my voice. She stayed for mintues then left.
How to fill the empty space at the center of roof?
I decided to make five Isosceles.
Alinging five isosceles to mark U-bolt mounting holes.
One U-bolt, a braket, two nuts join two adjacent triangles.
Top side of the roof center
Distance shot
10/15/2015
Added five more U-bolts to secure the MDF panels.
These are two biggest holes that I’ll have to patch before starting to coat plaster.
Plaster property (written on the bag)
CaO: over 80%
Particle size: 200 Mesh (0.075 mm) 80%
Calculation of the total earth quantity
I opened up a leftover earth bag, removed the earth carefully using a PLA object which was the housing of a blower conversion kit. Number of cups was 43.
Measuring the cup weight. It indicates 32.5 g. The annoying problem was that measurements the earth cup kept shifting depend on contact points on the surface of the weight machine.
I put earth in a small plastic bag to find the weight of unit earth. The reading was 294.4 g. I weighed it three times to get average unit weight for the calclulation.
Weight of the vinyl bag (Wb)
Wb = (5.5 + 5.5 + 5.6)/3 = 5.5
Weight of earth in the vinyl bag (We)
We = (294.1 + 294.4 + 294.4) = 294.3
Weight of unit earth (Wu)
Wu = We – Wb = 288.8 g
Weight of the earth bag
43 unit x weight/unit = 43 x 288.8 g = 12,418.40 g
It’s around 12.42 kg.
The dome has consumed about 650 to 670 earth bags, around 8,321 kg. My estimate of total earth quantity is between 8.5 ton and 8.7 ton because the sample earth bag was medium size.
