making a door

topic posted Mon, August 11, 2008 - 9:13 AM by  Ben
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Will removing a piece of pipe from my 3v 5/8 24' dome to make a door seriously weaken the structural integrity?. We are planning on hanging hammocks in the dome so i'm hesitant to remove any pieces from it, but it would be really nice to be able to walk into the dome without squeezing through a triangle every time.
posted by:
Ben
offline Ben
Georgia
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  • Re: making a door

    Mon, August 11, 2008 - 9:59 AM
    Yes, it will weaken the dome. But, you may be able to mitigate the problem in other ways.

    You could tighten the bolts down in the dome (I never do in a complete dome) and that helps somewhat... to a point.

    I've seen some clever doors in domes.

    Bad Idea Theatre uses a clever idea. It helps.

    They take a hexagon on the side of the dome and do something like this:
    _
    /| |\
    \|_|/

    I don't know if the above will look good in tribe, but the concept is to take the top left vertex of the hexagon and connect it to the bottom left vertex with a two-piece vertical strut. It is two pieces because in the middle of that vertical strut, there is a short strut that connects to the left vertex of the hexagon. Same thing on the right side. The vertical strut is actually two struts that meet in the middle with a short horizontal strut that is attached to the right side of the hexagon.

    The end result is a rectangular door. It is marginally better structurally than leaving a strut out, but it is much better than the typical missing strut door because it has vertical walls and a flat bottom, so people don't trip and fall on their way in.
  • Re: making a door

    Wed, August 13, 2008 - 12:29 PM
    We used the information on Earl's webpage to modify the geometry of our 2v and 4v domes to make a larger entrance without significantly impeding structural integrity. This seems to me like the proper way to do it if you're worried about the stability factor (i might be if i was hanging hammocks or people on the inside). It moves the center point of one of the hexagons upward to make one triangle about 6.5 feet tall. For a 3/4" EMT dome, 1" EMT should be sufficiently strong. We used 1.25" EMT for the long struts of the entrance of our 4V dome but it was expensive and probably overkill. We used 1" EMT for the entrance on our 2v dome and it seems plenty strong.

    dome.zillabit.com/geometry.html

    (math skills recommended)
    • Re: making a door

      Thu, August 14, 2008 - 5:52 AM
      Justin, I actually came across that website already when I was looking for door ideas. That definitely seems to be the way to do it. I leave to start heading West in 5 days though so I just don't think i'll have the time (or math skills) to get that done this year. That will definitely be a goal for next year though.

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