Hi Dee, I examined this issue when one of my friends was trying to talk me out of building with concrete. First he told me it took an incredible amount of energy to process...which it does but many concrete plants fire their kilns with old rubber tires, which burn surprisingly clean and hot.

Then he tried to say that the material was hard to come by, involving a whole lot of mining and such...thats not necessarily true either. Concrete, shotecrete and the lot are pretty much made locally and used locally, the direct availability of materials is usually dependant on your geographic location.

too be continued...

Ok sorry I was at the firehouse and I had a call come in....

The short answer is there are a HUGE amount of variables to consider when looking at building a house or eco-village. What may have an impact in the short term may wind up not being so beneficial in the long term and vice versa. When it comes to building a home, I have a tendancy to look at the long term energy savings, long term maintenance costs / amount of maintenance and design factor (because who wants to live in a parking garage?).

The way I look at it. I'm not a big fan of traditional stick box building, forced air systems are generally a waste of energy. And I prefer an open floor plan.

So I'm a natural candidate for a dome. Well the other stipulation is that I'm not wanting to build a wooden dome. It doesnt appeal to me on several levels.

So the other option in shotcrete. Its strong, termite proof, doesnt require any trees to build. Stronger than most kinds of extreme weather that we are experiencing under global warming.

It requires less energy to keep at temperature in either winter or summer weather. The structure is permanent and will require very little maintenance over your lifetime to keep in good order.

Without doing a life cycle analysis, I would have to say that the gains versus the losses over using concrete as oppossed to traditional building materials is great. Ultimatly should you decide to take the dome home down, the concrete can always be recycled. Try doing that with a sheetrock and stick wooden house.

I'm not going into a sustainability argument here. If folks want to live in old tires, cob, manure bricks, dirt bags, shipping containers or an old bus, its whatever. I dont really care. That is your choice. For me personally all the research I've done points to concrete being the way to go, its tough, strong, gets better with age, is recyclable, has a high R rating especially when combined with foam and ceramic laced paints, and most importantly its able to be shaped into the ideal floor plan for me. Because design is just as important as function.

I should also mention that I'm a planning on using a radiant floor heating system and thermodynamic cooling in the summer. I like the monolithic dome system, because it is a system, but that is not to say that once I have my land that I dont shop around for an architectual building firm instead of going with monolithic dome. Maybe, maybe not, thats cost analysis I havent gotten that far yet. Once I decide on the ideal location for my business then i will adress that issue.

I hope that answers your question or gives you a little more validation. I have some actual figures buried away in my files somewhere, when I find them I'll post the data up here.