Joel’s Dome
I don’t know how other people build their dome homes, but this one would never have been finished without the grace of Almighty God. After surviving cancer, and a couple of motorcycle wrecks, not to mention various close calls of which some I don’t even remember, it’s nothing short of a miracle that I was still around to even begin such a project. After ignoring God for almost 30 years it still amazes me that He didn’t squash me like a cockroach.
Ignoring God. That seems to be the original sin. All other sins appear to be a result of that. Now my grace came (and still does) in the form of every breath I take and every beat of my heart. Like I said, according to my disrespect for God, I should have been dead, in jail, homeless, in the looney bin or some less-than-desirable place. But, a regular heartbeat and the ability to breathe are pretty obvious. Aren’t they? Check your pulse; you’re probably getting some grace yourself right now!
What I want you to know is the grace (the Love of God toward man) that came my way while building this igloo. I did not like the look of the domes I had seen. Those offending units had the roof sloping upward at the very edge of the overhang (the overhang is the section at the top of the wall where the roof begins. They looked like a mushroom – a big one. My idea was to recess the roof back a little from the edge giving it the appearance like that of a brim on a hat. On paper it was much more to my liking. Problem was that previous dome builders fastened the airform (a big fabric balloon basically) to concrete which had a great deal of holding power. My airform was attached to a brick wall. The fans used to inflate the airform put an extreme amount of air pressure into the building. You need a lot of air pressure to hold the layers of concrete up against the ceiling until it gets hard! It was quite difficult to open the door while under pressure. When I raised the pressure to the point that I needed it, the brick started to break loose at the top. I knew this might be a problem before hand, so I had put some steel vertical re-enforcement in there. Only thing was, I didn’t put enough. When I first noticed the cracks I didn’t know what to do. To take the wall down and fix it would have taken a lot of time I didn’t have. I had the spray foam contractor and the shotcrete contractor scheduled to be coming in a few weeks. On the other hand if I didn’t fix it I could lose the whole works after I put more time and money in it. I was up the creek without a paddle and a hole in the boat to boot! What to do? The situation was completely out of my hands. To add to this, my windows were bulging out about one half inch from the air pressure. I didn’t even know glass would flex that much! The experts at Monolithic told me that you don’t install the glass until the shotcrete installation is complete and the fans are shut off. OOPS!
My only recourse was prayer. I’d given thanks on occasion for this and that but this was the first time in 20 years (since my son had spinal meningitis and we thought we might lose him) that I begged for God’s help. I was pretty sure my cry for help would be rejected, another human being in God’s shoes would have laughed at me. But by the grace of God it held together. Even with a two week delay due to the shotcrete contractor having to finish other work. I could not figure out why God would be so good to me after years of me being downright despicable.
Through the ages God had punished the Israelites to bring them back to Him. He brought me back with much undeserved kindness. As great as this is, and you would really have to have spent some time in my shoes during this time to fully appreciate how bad this could have easily turned out, and how good it actually did. All said and done, it is just a mere shadow of God’s gift of His Son.
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
One other thing that I firmly believe is the result of the grace of God. People have told me that I’m an artist with brick. I have told quite a few of them about the text books on science when I was going to school. Every year they had a picture of a monkey in a room with a bunch of boxes scattered on the floor and a bunch of bananas attached to the ceiling. The monkey would have to stack the boxes to get to the bananas. Same for me. My job is stacking bricks to get to some food.
If you look at my website (www.irdthay-igpay.com) you’ll see a lot of unique designs. Just about every time I put together one of these, I have no idea at all of what I’m going to do until I get started. A prime example of this is one of the bathroom floors in my own house. I was going to put a large fancy pattern in the center of the living room, but my wife told me I could put anything I wanted to there, but she was going to cover it with a rug. Okay, so I’ll put it on the bathroom floor right next to the living room so when the door is open it can be seen. I had two months to think about what I was going to put in there. I couldn’t picture anything. I thought about a compass, but to line it up correctly it wouldn’t have pointed to the toilet and I didn’t want someone in a hurry, getting lost in there. When the day came to pave the floor I still hadn’t thought of anything so I went to Lowes and picked out four or five different brightly colored stone tiles to inspire me. I took them to the checkout counter and the girl working there asked to see my driver’s license. I asked her, “Do I have to be a certain age to buy stone?” She replied, “You can’t buy these, they’re rental items.” “Who in the world would want to rent stone?” I said incredulously. She told me that they were samples for people to take home to see if they went with a certain color scheme. What’s a color scheme? Oh well, I put all that stuff back on the shelf and went home empty handed. Like I said, that was the day for that floor to get done. There was nothing else that could be done that day and I was out of time for thinking about it. I took some leftover marble from the shower and some tile brick my Dad gave me (by the way I used all but one of those units) that were a different color than the field brick and made something nice looking that afternoon. So that’s what a color scheme is. Oh, I’ve literally bricked myself into a corner more than once; and by some miracle it’s come out alright.
I bought the windows for the house too big. I had to raise the wall height to make them fit. (They have to be a certain height off the floor to pass code unless they are tempered). Although I was upset that I had to go a foot taller with the walls, the finished house looks much better proportionally than the original plans. I’ve always said the two requirements for masonry work is a weak mind and a strong back and that makes me doubly blessed!
So you see it is not I, but the grace of God that has built this dome. Also, the grace of my Earthly father who, without his help, I would not have finished – without his help both physically and inspirationally. In the words of Stonewall Jackson after a campaign in which he kicked much butt and took beaucoup booty. “He who does not see the hand of God in this, is blind sir, blind!” I couldn’t have said it better myself, and if you still don’t see it , check your pulse.
Joel Emerson