Monolithic domes

Just  starting to investigate, do not know all pros and cons, yet, youtube



Very do it yourself,  imagine the possibilities

What do you think??
Paul

Thanks for this link, Paul! Just sent me down a rabbit hole of research. Aircrete sure has advanced since I last looked at it 10 years ago. For cold climates the insulation value looks interesting

It looks to me like the biggest issues are consistency of the homemade pours, and also building taller blocks, and reinforcement. I saw some anecdotal stuff about the air holes meaning traditional rebar and wire mesh doesnt hold up well. I think it looks really interesting for pouring single cast structures, but I see people having difficulties with foam collapse at pour heights of about 1 ft.

The blocks would worry me, just due to lack of reinforcement and inevitably having mortar that is stronger than the blocks (always a poor idea). Plus the mortar might provide thermal bridging.

I'm giving serious consideration to aircrete.  I'm thinking of doing panel coops and maybe a small cabin down the road.  I want to mess with it a bit before doing anything big but I'd like to do a deck, some interlocking panels, and maybe a smallish water container for ducks.

I'm going to see how much collapse I get with a couple of different foam agents, but I think Catie has outlined the issues.

If you do, please share? There are also some Sika products that may increase the strength and decrease the set time which could theoretically be helpful/worth trialing.

I was thinking if you could get a reasonable (1-2') pour height, especially if you could mix with a quick setting product that allows you to do multiple lifts per day, and reinforce with plastic mesh near the surfaces, a rectangular building with an arched roof should be reasonably easy to form and pour and reasonably strong.

This is awesome.  I had no idea aircrete was taking off like this, in small backyard-scale settings.

Christopher Alexander thought it might be good for his Pattern Language generative architecture.

The idea of using thin brick/tiles to build a curved shell is really smart.  It reminds me of timbrel vaulting  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_vault which could help with strength and thermal bridging.

I think basalt fibers would be a good way to reinforce it.

There are lots of videos on the Youtube of people experimenting with aircrete.

(Apologies if linking this many videos is a bad idea or something.  I'm new to these forums, just let me know if I'm doing the wrong thing here.)

"Building a air Crete dome, beginning to finish"




"Kauai Air-crete dome workshop"




"How to make AirCrete using the Dragon XL"




"DIY Aircrete Foam Gun - Demystified"




"Aircrete Collapsing Time Lapse"




"Making AirCrete without an Air Compressor Foamer"




If you poke around there's lots more.  It seems like an explosion of
interest and activity was ignited by the Domegaia folks.