Life in a Dome

Off-grid, already

Kibbutz Lotan in Israel has already achieved what the governments of New York and London have recently aspired to – a working eco-neighbourhood. In this exclusive article, two residents, Sheera Cipilinski and Ryan Gluckman, describe their setup.

The building we are living in, Ha-Kipah Ha-Shniyah (Hebrew for ‘The Second Dome’), is just that – the second of two existing domes, which is the beginning of a new, off-the-grid, eco-neighborhood (the plans include 12), on Kibbutz Lotan in the Arava Desert in the south of Israel. Many volunteering hands have worked on the dome’s construction over the past year, under the instruction and guidance of the staff at the Centre for Creative Ecology on Lotan.

To start off, a steel geodesic dome was constructed to act as the frame for the building. Some alterations were made to the frame, to include a doorway and five windows. Used tires were packed with sand, and leftover concrete building blocks were alternated to stand as the foundation for straw bales that were stacked and fastened to the outside of the frame. We then applied a mud plaster to the super-insulating straw bale walls and around the double-paned window frames. All the electricity for the two domes, as well as the kitchen, composting toilet and shower lights, is generated by photo-voltaic panels; the hot water for the communal sink and shower is heated by a solar panel. Highly energy efficient LEDs provide us with light at night from the batteries charged by the PV panels, which are also enough to power our laptop, music system and ceiling fan. As the neighbourhood grows, we are looking at the possibility of supplementing with power from wind turbines in the future.

We live in an extreme desert environment, where there is less than 25mm of annual rainfall, but where the summer temperatures are consistently above 40°C in the day and do not usually drop below 30°C at night. In the winter, the coldest nights can dip to just above 0°C. The aim was to build a structure in which we would feel warm in the winter and cool in the summer despite the extreme climate and without the use of cooling/warming energy-sucking systems, generally regarded as a necessity in the concrete, largely uninsulated conventional buildings that are the norm in this region. So far, the dome gave great results in the winter time, and we hope the results will be just as encouraging over the summer. Air vents were strategically placed above ground level around the dome (closed in winter, open in summer) to allow cool air to flow in and circulate, with the hot air rising out through a single ventilation chimney in the ceiling with the aid of the fan. Garden beds were planted near the dome to create a cooler microclimate for the wind passing into the dome. On the south facing side, grapevines will climb on trellises to create shade and bear fruit.

The eco-neighbourhood is used as the campus for students participating in our 10 week ecovillage and permaculture design course, Green Apprenticeship. (Lotan is a member of the European branch of the Global Ecovillage Network.) The living spaces are geodeisic domes put together on site, covered in strawbales and adobe mud. Four people are currently living in the neighbourhood in the two domes that have been completed. The plan is to eventually have 12 domes, we have 8 completed in time for the latest intake of the course.

Many visitors have come to see our hand-built house, initially struck by the shape and material. But once they approach it from the outside, everyone asks to see inside. They love the fact that it’s made of mud, that its round, and they can really sense the organic vibe. It opens their eyes to a different perspective on how to view homes, based on the environmentally sound building materials and its unique shape. There certainly is a different energy to a round home. People are so accustomed to the right-angles of conventional buildings and disconnected from the circular patterns in nature, that when people walk into the dome, we can feel their excitement and see their minds open up.

Sheera Cipilinski and Ryan Gluckman, Kibbutz Lotan,