Got hose? Got sticks? Build a dome!

So I was working on a garden bed and looking overy irrigation supplies.
I have a lot of short lengths of hose, and it made me think of this geodesic dome hub design:

https://www.instructables.com/Kid-friendly-bamboo-geogesic-dome/

Basically the author uses irrigation tubing to form hubs and bamboo for the struts.
It's designed to be a teaching tool.
I mostly have chunks of garden hose, but I think it could work.
While the resulting dome wouldn't be capable of holding much weight, it will probably be stable.
I happen to have a huge supply of finger width mulberry branches that I would probably use instead of bamboo.

Depending on the results you wanted, you could cover the entire strut with a piece of hose longer than the strut, then flatten the hose at both ends.

Taking this idea even further, you could slide your strut into an old inner tube, leave plenty of  extra tube on each end and  tie knots, making a "strut sausage" with a rubber inner tube as the "casing" .
Tie the resulting ends together  to form your hubs.
If the strut is wood, maybe toss some borax in there with it.


Since you have inner tubes,can you just inflate them and use them as struts?
Like a geodesic dome made with balloon animal balloons.
Can you join them together in a way that allows you to inflate the whole thing at once?
Could you fill it with spray foam?

Ok, I think that's enough for now.

William Bronson wrote:I have a lot of short lengths of hose, and it made me think of this geodesic dome hub design:

https://www.instructables.com/Kid-friendly-bamboo-geogesic-dome/  

Have you experimented with this? I've got bamboo, but it seems as if I would need it to have a *very* specific size of ends, and my bamboo fluctuates a lot over both small areas and the culm as a whole.

I'm also thinking that the bamboo lengths would have to be quite short also, which will reduce the usefulness of the end product.

If something like this could be made into a stable "tunnel" shape, that I could use to cover plants to extend the season, or to create a covered area to work in rainy weather, it would be incredibly useful. Domes are much harder to cover with tarps than tunnels are.

 I've not tried it yet.
The lengths can be relatively short.
A 2V dome with struts 3' or shorter is almost 10' across.

Diameter of the canes can be adjusted by wrapping the ends with tape.

There are geodesic tunnel calculators out there.
The geodesic tunnels seem to require many different lengths of strut, a complication I do not like.

I have previously used hose to join PVC pipes into a gothic arch style of hoop house.
This should also work with , mulberry /black locust branches or green bamboo.

Also check out Zip Tie Domes.  https://www.ziptiedomes.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoolBuozQnPipPLc3QfiyzCmWCXM5rUI9lfzuBpdu9SPTMt7hymC

Great info, calculators and more there.

I've not built one, but I did build this