Will monolithic structures eventually mean the end of construction altogether? In a world with only monolithic dome structures, there would be only a very minimal need for fire departments, emergency response and disaster relief and natural disasters would have no effect on our homeowner's insurance rates. Their indestructibility, e.
When you consider that Monolithic Dome homes are constructed to last 500 years, the possibilities are interesting. Concrete homes require very little in the way of home maintenance. The roof will never need replaced, there are no shingles to wear away and no wood to dry rot or be destroyed by pests.
Natural disasters have little effect on a monolithic dome home. The concrete is inflammable, and the dome shape helps protect the home from high winds from hurricanes and tornadoes. One piece construction means the home shifts with earthquakes and tectonic plate shifts.
"When you start looking at the ramifications, they get pretty interesting. For instance, let's suppose that I were a king, and I said that this new town is going to built with nothing but monolithic domes in it. We would no longer need a fire department. We would need an emergency response team for people that got injured in other ways. We may need a fire truck to go put a car fire out. If we had a sub division in Florida and we had another major hurricane come through, yes we will have lost some car port roofs, a bunch of trees might blow over, maybe some glass, but we really wouldn't need much in the way of disaster relief. The ramifications would be enormous. Of course are still talking way off into the future," says David South.
David South is co founder of The Monolithic Dome Institute and Monolithic Constructors, Inc, both located in Italy, Texas. He has been perfecting, building and teaching people to build monolithic domes for almost thirty years.
That kind of complete housing overhaul is a long way in the future, though. It will take a very long time for monolithic domes to replace traditional home building. First the general public will have to be interested and willing to consider building a monolithic dome, then as demand grows, builders must learn to build them. Finally, in order for it to mean the end of construction as we know it, everyone on the planet, current and future generations would have to forgo traditional homes in favor of monolithic domes.
David South says, "My analogy is that if you have three full, five-gallon buckets of water that you have to take down the road, you can take two for a ways, then you have to go back and get the third one and carry it ahead a ways. Then you go back and you're tired, so you carry one of the other two buckets for a ways and you kind of keep going down the road with those three buckets. We've got to build the interest in this type of building, so that's one bucket. The ability to build is another bucket; the financing is the third bucket. Those buckets are moving now, and I'm getting them down the road. And financing is much easier than it use to be. I've had about 1,200 to 1,300 builders go through my classes, 280 of which have built one or more domes. Some of them built one dome for themselves and never want to work that hard again. Some of them have built 50 to 60 more domes for other people. It is moving the buckets down the road; it is still going to take a long time."
