Scott Perkins

This is a great video that addresses many of the issues in this thread

This is an exellent and thorough video explaining the different stone wall techniques for the last 20 centuries

There is lots of useful and important information in the past issues that are available  like  "Understanding Integral Waterproofing"  Spring 2010
"The Basics of Integral Crystalline  Waterproofing"  Spring 2008
https://www.waterproofmag.com/

It is too bad that this company did not make it  because their finished product is truely a masterpiece worth owning.   The collapse of the company had to do with the expense and overhead of setting up and training franchise operations.   I live in Marietta, GA a suburb of Atlanta and the first attempt at
setting up a marketing/installation  operation including a full size demo house which was used as their office is about a mile from where I live.
Today,  the house on the lot sits vacant and abandoned but it is easily inspected and viewed.     I'd say the lot is zoned commercial  and thus best used as office space instead of residential space.     I' think the reason for coorporate failure  was because .... probably like a lot of other dome designs..... was because of inability to obtain loans for placement in normal neighborhoods because of space ship appearance.   If you own your own land in rural areas then maybe not a problem  but still a bank might question the residual value if borrowers cant make the payments.   Most of us arent ready to pay full cash up front for a major project like this.   The company was way ahead of their time and with really big bucks i believe an entire subdivision could be designed and built using these structures  which would eliminate the  "odd duck" syndrome with  placement of spaceship houses dropped into conventional structure developments.

John C Daley wrote:Scot, I am trying to understand what you are trying to sort out?

Pretend that we want to build a structure with 8 feet interior height.  The blocks needed as shown would have to be very large.
Notice that in the photo there are only four different  shapes that are used to create the  Arch shown.   I am saying that the perfectly square shape can be used by adding more ( as spacers)  of the rectangular shapes  to extend the height of the structure
without having to make obcenely large heavy components.     Or you could have massive components if they were made of lightweight styrofoam.  

For example in the Vault shown in the photo,  insert between each piece in the vault another  perfectly square piece to extend the height   OR
you could use a greater quantity of smaller pieces to make the same height vault.

Our current day material scientists have plenty of motivation given the limited lifespan of roads and bridges and skyscrapers collapsing and an awful lot of progress has been made in the form of  ADMIXTURES  added to teh concrete mix that increase the strength and make the concrete water proof-impermeable  so that the moisture and other contamnates cannot reach the rebar.  Further different forms of rebar and reinforcement are being used like boron, fiberglass mesh,  galvanized rebar, stainless steel rebar, and fiberglass rebar.    If these additive components prevent the concrete from deteriorating over time then the lifespans expand dramatically.   As a layman, I have already added the acrylic liquid that tile installers use to make the tile installations in showers waterproof and longer lasting.....   I add it to the mortar used in brick sidewalks and steps and in the mass pours of sidewalks and driveways and  concrete floors of garages and basements.  

Study the attached photo and notice that there are actually only FOUR different shapes.    The shape of a Vault that is properly designed uses the weight of the blocks to reinforce the strength of the arc so that it is self supporting..    In this photo if you were to make a vault big enough for a human the individual pieces would be humongous ...  so  the way I see it is that  if you take this vault shape  and identify the  completely square rectangle  block,  you could use them as spacers so that you aould put three or four of the rectangular  between the different angle wedge blocks  to make the overall structure big enough and allow the individual parts to be small enough to be handled by a human.   I'm thinking molds could be made and these block components could be made out of various materials from pure foam to  concrete and the vault could be made much like an igloo is made only the shape is different and  fat least for me....  I think is a better solution in a way than are igloos- roundish structures instead of the rectangular footprint of a Vault.   Of course the drawback of the Vault is that you have to construct the two end walls.   As I think about it more, if you were to add the proper angles to the molds,  you could use the angled components to make a curved wall structure... ie igloo-ish dome.