Monday, March 22, 2004 11:13 AM CST
'Puzzle people' build functional dome home
BY SUE SMYSER, Features Writer
Thinking outside the box comes naturally to Wil Fidroeff. In fact, you could say his ideas have a triangular aspect.
Fidroeff and wife Carol have built a 10-sided dome home on the outskirts of Sullivan. To the casual observer, the home resembles a big sphere, while inside rooms fit together like pieces of a puzzle. The couple enjoy working puzzles so much, they have incorporated them into nearly aspect of their lives.
Upstairs in front of the sofa appears to be a coffee table, but Fidroeff demonstrated how it, too, is a puzzle. By sliding boards on two of the table legs, the center part of the coffee table became taller, making benches from the sides for a picnic-style table. Another slide of a board and the whole piece was turned into a geometric-style coffee table. He has applied for a patent for his puzzle furniture.
Between the sofa and Mrs. Fidroeff's desk is a card table with a jigsaw puzzle the couple are putting together. Others have been framed and hung on the walls of their puzzle home.
"We are the puzzle people. We build puzzle houses all day long, then work on puzzles at night," he said.
Fidroeff, a mathematical whiz, was a few courses away from earning a degree in engineering when he decided he didn't want to do that kind of work. He moved here from California, where he also worked on dome homes.
The couple bought the ground near Sullivan that already had a metal building on it. At first, they lived in a camper, then in a makeshift part of the building, while they assembled their dome home.
His philosophy is, "Think about everything before you do anything. Keep it simple. Think about the cost. Think how it makes you feel."
The dome home is energy efficient, has a nice structure and is strong, he said.
"I want function first -- function, then form. Beauty can be a byproduct of function, but it should not drive the design."
Upstairs, only a rare wall or two for the bathroom and his office space detracts from the vast area that they call the attic. Even a bedroom, which they use most of the time, is in the open.
"This is a true living room. We live, sleep and play up here," he said. "Many living rooms don't have much function. People have a living room that they don't use and a family room. This is integrated."
In the upstairs bathroom, a flat, rectangular hot-water heater hangs on the wall. Shelves built into the wall hold all the things normally found in linen closets and medicine cabinets.
Storage areas pop out in surprising places. There is enough storage area over the shower to use for sleeping. It compares to a camper with sleeping area over the cab of the truck. The downstairs bath is similar, but it also has a tub.
Despite the openness of the home, heating bills are minimal. The couple heats with propane and said they fill the 500-gallon tank twice a year.
"The ceiling is a breathing ceiling. Warm, moist air from the top of the home goes back down to be reused," he said.
Instead of a cold air return, they have a hot air return. Fidroeff explained by comparing the home to an igloo, where the door is down low, then people step inside the domed igloo to warmth.
"It's the same concept here."
Downstairs, guests enter the home by walking into a five-sided central circle created because every other one of the 10 sides has an interior wall parallel to it. From the central circle, whichever direction one turns, a door leads either to a room, to the upstairs or outside.
The Fidroeffs have three outside entrances to their home, one of which has a ramp. Inside sliding doors vanish into walls to create privacy.
All corners in the house intersect at 90 degrees in order to make rooms. But Fidroeff said people automatically tend to build a wall into the corner of the triangles, which wastes space. This makes a corner that nothing can possibly fit into.
"Avoid running walls into corners," he said. "Bisect on offsets. It gives you more usable space. We run the walls at right angles, because things fit better."
For example, a standard 12-foot-wide carpet fits inside the rooms without trimming any off, except against one wall where a triangle offset made it necessary. Work is still in progress and a formal dining room is still in the creative stages. Laminated flooring will soon cover the central circle downstairs.
Kitchen cabinets are not far behind, For now, offset from the kitchen, a walk-in pantry accommodates groceries, cleaning supplies, etc.
The master bedroom, which Mrs. Fidroeff dubbed the "hospital room," is spacious and has a walk-in closet big enough to convert into a den or nursery with ease.
She pointed to the location of a television in a "cubby" higher on the wall across from the bed. "This makes me think of a hospital," she joked.
The entry to the crawl space under the house is found by lifting a hidden door in the huge closet in the master bedroom. The crawl space is large enough to use as a storm shelter. But he said it's hard to beat a dome home for safety, because the wind flows over and around it.
Upstairs in the lofty open area, the area is all open, while the ceiling and walls are crisscrossed with boards outlining triangles that resemble a huge honeycomb.
The secret of the dome home's strength is in these triangles.
"A box is not rigid. If you make a square or rectangle, it's flexible, but with a triangle, there is equal pressure on all three sides. There is nothing stronger," he said.
The house is made so each board reinforces the other. Screws, not bolts, were used at every junction where the triangles come together. He said if he used bolts, the house would have to be shingled, because of expanding and contracting.
"Thirty screws stitch every connection together," he said.
Fidroeff compared the triangle idea to a drop-rectangular ceiling, only in this case the builder used triangular panels. There are 480 triangles in the attic area alone. The panels are just the right size for a man to work comfortably with.
"It's strong so snow can't push it in, but light enough to handle," Fidroeff said.
Elastomeric waterproof paint that doesn't chip or peel covers the outside of their home. Beneath the paint are hardy panels made of cement composite, then OSB sheeting, while the interior is made of 2- by 6-foot frames.
"If the wood is precision cut, then it makes a building that does not expand and contract. Timber does not change in length."
Each seam acts as an expansion joint. He used saturated rubber tape to makes a nice seam and criss-crossed metal straps at each connection.
Movement, light and air flow with no barriers. Windows and doors are directly across from each other, so there is always fresh air and a feeling of well-being inside the house.
The Fidroeffs like it so well, they don't want to leave.
"We are seduced by the design."
Contact Sue Smyser at ssmsyer@jg-tc.com or 238-6864.
What in the world is a dome home?
The dome idea has been around since the early 1900s. Walter Bauersfeld of the Zeiss Optical Works in Germany invented a dome idea in 1922 for a planetarium on a roof.
But a man in America took it a step further. The late R. Buckminster Fuller is credited with his work on the geodesic dome, an idea he developed in the 1940s and patented in the 1950s.
At Fuller's death in the 1980s, his daughter contacted Wil Fidroeff, who she knew was also working on dome-home ideas. She asked if he would be interested in having some of her father's things and when he said yes, two truckloads of items were delivered to his home in California.
Today, Fidroeff and wife Carol live in a dome home at the outskirts of Sullivan. An average dome home would run about $70,000. Theirs is slightly larger than average. Using the same design, it's possible to add a garage connected by a walkway.
Fidroeff said Fuller was the modern-day Leonardo da Vinci. Fuller popularized the dome home, and believed in doing more with less, a philosophy Fidroeff also follows.
-- Sue Smyser
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