Well it’s the end of October and the weather is turning colder. There is one advantage to living in middle Georgia and that is you can build year round.

I have been spending sometime thinking on the design of the house. The decision has been made to modify the house design. The previous version consisted of one large dome surrounded by a series of smaller rooms, each serving some type of function as kitchen, bedroom etc.

The new design will replace the surrounding domes with a octagon inspired polygon. I feel this would reduce the number of man hours required to complete the structure and still preserve the spirit of the house. The new floor plans (as rough has they are) show the new idea. The function and size of the center dome stayed the same. The space created by the surrounding the dome will be open in a kind of loft apartment type style. I will add interior walls if and when they seem necessary at a latter date. The roof of the space surrounding the dome will be flat with exposed logs harvested from our land. Bedrooms can also be added latter (on the west side of the building) if they seems necessary.

I think a problem that confronts most owner build homes is the balance between desires, resources and physics. Each plays a role in the evolution of a owner built structure. I may want a certain amount of space but is that really wise since it will take more resources to build, heat, cool and maintain. This structure is very organic in the sense that it is evolving. Most professionally build structures have worked out all the details and financing before hand. The owner built home often evolves month to month because of changes in the skills of the builder, and in the availability of resources available to the builder. I won’t comment on the wisdom of this process but I don’t think I could would enjoy it any other way. I only have one rule and that is to make some progress each week, even if it’s only a small amount of progress. The building of this house would be too large of a task if it was not broken down into a series of much smaller tasks. Only then could I fit this event into my life.

Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Well let me get down the hill and get some work done.

Love and Light,

Pat, Carroll and the rest of the Maukly crew.

The photos are as follows:

superadobe in Utah

Front View

Back View

Carrol and I under the vault

Consuela sitting on the vault

Two sitting on the vault

View from the laundry room

Begining the plastering

Window seat view

Another window seat view