Our dome greenhouses are being used all over the world and can withstand all weather types. The following pictures show some of our dome greenhouses in some very remote places including Canada, Norway, and Alaska.
Read more about our dome greenhouse kits that you can build yourself (DIY) for home and commerical use (many gardening uses) at http://domegreenhouses.com.
DIY Greenhouses
The idea of growing plants in environmentally controlled areas like our dome greenhouses has existed since Roman times. The Roman emperor Tiberius ate a cucumber-like vegetable daily. The Roman gardeners used artificial methods (similar to the greenhouse system) of growing to have it available for his table every day of the year. Cucumbers were planted in wheeled carts which were put in the sun daily, then taken inside to keep them warm at night. The cucumbers were stored under frames or in cucumber houses glazed with either oiled cloth known as specularia or with sheets of selenite (a.k.a. lapis specularis), according to the description by Pliny the Elder.
Read more about our dome greenhouse kits that you can build yourself (DIY) for home and commerical use (many gardening uses) at http://domegreenhouses.com.
The first dome that could be called “geodesic” in every respect was designed after World War I by Walther Bauersfeld, chief engineer of the Carl Zeiss optical company, for a planetarium to house his planetarium projector. A first, small dome was patented, constructed by the firm of Dykerhoff and Wydmann on the roof of the Zeiss plant in Jena, Germany. A larger dome, called “The Wonder of Jena” opened to the public in July 1926. Some 20 years later, R. Buckminster Fuller named the dome “geodesic” from field experiments with artist Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain College in 1948 and 1949. Although Fuller was not the original inventor, he is credited with the U.S. popularization of the idea for which he received U.S. patent 2,682,235 29 June 1954.
Commercial Greenhouses
In the 13th century, greenhouses were built in Italy to house the exotic plants that explorers brought back from the tropics. They were originally called giardini botanici (botanical gardens).
Greenhouses in which the temperature could be manually manipulated first appeared in 15th century Korea. The 15th century treatise, the Sanga Yorok, contains descriptions of greenhouses designed to regulate the temperature and humidity requirements of plants and crops. One of the earliest records of the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty in 1438 confirms growing mandarin orange trees in a traditional Korean greenhouse during the winter and installing an ondol system to provide heat.
Read more about our dome greenhouse kits that you can build yourself (DIY) for home and commerical use (many gardening uses) at http://domegreenhouses.com.
The geodesic dome appealed to Fuller because it was extremely strong for its weight, its “omnitriangulated” surface provided an inherently stable structure, and because a sphere encloses the greatest volume for the least surface area.
The concept of greenhouses also appeared in the Netherlands and then England in the 17th century, along with the plants. Some of these early attempts required enormous amounts of work to close up at night or to winterize. There were serious problems with providing adequate and balanced heat in these early greenhouses. Today, the Netherlands has many of the largest greenhouses in the world, some of them so vast that they are able to produce millions of vegetables every year.
Dome Greenhouses
The French botanist Charles Lucien Bonaparte is often credited with building the first practical modern greenhouse in Leiden, Holland, during the 1800s to grow medicinal tropical plants. Originally only on the estates of the rich, the growth of the science of botany caused greenhouses to spread to the universities. The French called their first greenhouses orangeries, since they were used to protect orange trees from freezing. As pineapples became popular, pineries, or pineapple pits, were built.
The dome was successfully adopted for specialized uses, such as the 21 Distant Early Warning Line domes built in Canada in 1956, the 1958 Union Tank Car Company dome near Baton Rouge, Louisiana designed by Thomas C. Howard of Synergetics, Inc. and specialty buildings like the Kaiser Aluminum domes (constructed in numerous locations across the US, e.g., Virginia Beach, VA), auditoriums, weather observatories, and storage facilities. The dome was soon breaking records for covered surface, enclosed volume, and construction speed.
Read more about our dome greenhouse kits that you can build yourself (DIY) for home and commerical use (many gardening uses) at http://domegreenhouses.com.
Experimentation with the design of greenhouses (like dome greenhouses and commercial greenhouses for commercial gardening) continued during the 17th century in Europe, as technology produced better glass and construction techniques improved. The greenhouse at the Palace of Versailles was an example of their size and elaborateness; it was more than 150 metres (490 ft) long, 13 metres (43 ft) wide, and 14 metres (46 ft) high.
The golden era of the greenhouse was in England during the Victorian era, where the largest glasshouses yet conceived were constructed, as the wealthy upper class and aspiring botanists competed to build the most elaborate buildings. A good example of this trend is the pioneering Kew Gardens. Joseph Paxton, who had experimented with glass and iron in the creation of large greenhouses as the head gardener at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, working for the Duke of Devonshire, designed and built The Crystal Palace in London, (although the latter was constructed for both horticultural and non-horticultural exhibition).
Home Greenhouses for Gardening
Beginning in 1954, the U.S. Marines experimented with helicopter-deliverable geodesic domes. A 30-foot wood and plastic geodesic dome was lifted and carried by helicopter at 50 knots without damage, leading to the manufacture of a standard magnesium dome by Magnesium Products of Milwaukee. Our dome greenhouses can be used for home gardening or commercial gardening. Commercial dome greenhouses are a DIY greenhouse kit that can be used in your backyard, farm, ranch, factory, or off-grid. Tests included assembly practices in which previously untrained Marines were able to assemble a 30-foot magnesium dome in 135 minutes, helicopter lifts off aircraft carriers, and a durability test in which an anchored dome successfully withstood a day-long 120 mph (190 km/h) propeller blast from the twin 3,000 horsepower engines of an anchored airplane without damage.
Read more about our dome greenhouse kits that you can build yourself (DIY) for home and commerical use (many gardening uses) at http://domegreenhouses.com.
Other large greenhouses built in the 19th century included the New York Crystal Palace, Munich’s Glaspalast and the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken (1874–1895) for King Leopold II of Belgium.
In Japan, the first greenhouse was built in 1880 by Samuel Cocking, a British merchant who exported herbs.
In the 20th century, the geodesic dome was added to the many types of greenhouses. Notable examples are the Eden Project, in Cornwall, The Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky.
Greenhouse structures adapted in the 1960s when wider sheets of polyethylene film became widely available. Hoop houses were made by several companies and were also frequently made by the growers themselves. Constructed of aluminum extrusions, special galvanized steel tubing, or even just lengths of steel or PVC water pipe, construction costs were greatly reduced. This resulted in many more greenhouses being constructed on smaller farms and garden centers. Polyethylene film durability increased greatly when more effective UV-inhibitors were developed and added in the 1970s; these extended the usable life of the film from one or two years up to 3 and eventually 4 or more years.
Our dome greenhouse has been used near at the north pole!
Gutter-connected greenhouses became more prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s. These greenhouses have two or more bays connected by a common wall, or row of support posts. Heating inputs were reduced as the ratio of floor area to exterior wall area was increased substantially. Gutter-connected greenhouses are now commonly used both in production and in situations where plants are grown and sold to the public as well. Gutter-connected greenhouses are commonly covered with structured polycarbonate materials, or a double layer of polyethylene film with air blown between to provide increased heating efficiencies.
In the year 2000 the world’s first fully sustainable geodesic dome hotel, EcoCamp Patagonia, was built in Chilean Patagonia opening the following year in 2001. The hotel’s dome design is key to resisting the region’s strong winds and is based on the dwellings of the indigenous Kaweskar people.
Dome Greenhouses 