alt.building.engineering

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"ravenise" wrote in message
news: $x% @pd7urf2no...
>I remember seeing a program (I think it was on the discovery channel) a
>year or two ago about a new type of dome that was invented. It was so
>simple and cheap which I suspect may be the reason that it is so hard to
>find on the net. All they used was an air pump, a big balloon, cement, and
>rebar. As far as I can recall this dome started off with a layer of rebar
>somewhat laid down across its center (imagine: draw a circle, then put
>lines across the circumference creating almost a pie chart look- I'm sure
>there is more to it) and then they add cement to top it off. They let this
>layer dry thoroughly. They then added a big balloon (I don't recall the
>material used) across the entire foundation. The next part I am still a
>bit foggy about, but what they did was laid cement down over top of the
>balloon (or maybe it was more rebar and cement...) then they quickly topped
>it off with a layer of cheese cloth. Next they sprayed the cheese cloth
>with water to keep the cement from cracking as they filled the balloon with
>air... I recall them saying the pressure used was equivalent to the puff
>off a cigarette because the balloon covered such a large surface area of
>the cement. I don't remember exactly how long it took for them to blow it
>up, but I think it was like, 4-8 hours, maybe 12... then they left it to
>dry and it was finished within a couple of days. They showed other
>versions of this with intersecting domes that were massive, some 80+ feet
>tall... Again my memory is a big blurry over this so I may have left some
>steps out on building this. Ingenious, super efficient, materials are
>available almost everywhere and it is extremely cheap, only a couple
>thousand dollars for materials. If anyone knows the name of the inventor or
>a website or some way of contacting him I would be very interested if you
>could help me find out! My em@il is: "ravenise"@"shaw".ca" (no quotes)
>
> Thank you!, take care.
> Tyler.