Conduit Dome Staking Technique

[beer goggles]

I was doing maintenance on my shade shelter (24' 3v dome) when I noticed several struts that had been kinked & bent by driving in the rebar stakes a little too deeply. I made replacements and set about trying to figure out a way to prevent this from happening again. I don't know if anyone else has done this but I'm going to try replacing the bolts along the bottom run of struts with eyebolts and drive my stakes down through the hole in the eye. This ought to work just as well at tying down my structure while preventing any strut damage.

[Jackass]

Sounds good to me.

[BAK3R]

Ive been thinking the same thing. My thought was 5 eyebolts following the vertices of the top pentagon would equally distribute the anchor points.

[some seeing eye]

I wouldn't to that. Eye bolts are not designed for shear strength. Maybe make some loops with wire rope that go around your ground vertices and staple the rope loop to the playa. Sure the playa engineers can suggest more ideas.

[beer goggles]

Eye bolts are not designed for shear strength.

True, eyebolts don't like being loaded at 90 degrees but as long as I keep the "necks" short and put an eyebolt-anchor at each vertex (15 total) then I don't see any problem. Even taking the large surface area of a dome into consideration, the horizontal wind speed / lifting force required to cause catastrophic failure would be enormous.

[Bob]

What I've seen in extreme wind storms is that domes POUND up and down as well as try to translate sideways. Might break the bolt head. Consider crossing a pair of stakes at an angle at the vertices and wrapping to the dome w/ cord or light rope. Or ask someone at Pacific Domes up in Oregon what they'd recommend, they've sold a lot of large domes to Burning Man types.

[melodiousdirge]

What do your stakes look like? I have the tops of mine doubled up and candy caned - I haven't kinked any struts pounding them in but I guess I can see how you could. When done like this, these guys are very hard to put in too far because the last 2-3" is much, much harder to drive in than the rest of the stake.

[melodiousdirge]

Eye bolts are not designed for shear strength.

True, eyebolts don't like being loaded at 90 degrees but as long as I keep the "necks" short and put an eyebolt-anchor at each vertex (15 total) then I don't see any problem. Even taking the large surface area of a dome into consideration, the horizontal wind speed / lifting force required to cause catastrophic failure would be enormous.

I tend to agree with this. The thing with a dome is as long as you can prevent most of the wind from getting underneath, the lift shouldn't be too bad. Stresses large enough to break off 15 eye bolts would likely shred your canopy and bend all the struts first.

[Bob]

Those stakes look decent, though I like pairing stakes at opposing angles for the same reason drywall installers often pair nails when rocking a ceiling.

A 60-ft dome with a fitted vinyl cover eggshelled in a storm in 2000. Huge 20-ft dimple on the windward side. By the time I got there, the thing was repeatedly lifting ~6 inches and pounding back on the ground, and they were struggling with adding stakes and throwing guy lines over the top. The original staking was pretty minimal, just 1/2" rebar as I recall. After that incident, the company that made the dome (Pacific) also upgraded from 3/4" to 1" minimum conduit for domes that size.

[melodiousdirge]

Those stakes look decent, though I like pairing stakes at opposing angles for the same reason drywall installers often pair nails when rocking a ceiling.

A 60-ft dome with a fitted vinyl cover eggshelled in a storm in 2000. Huge 20-ft dimple on the windward side. By the time I got there, the thing was repeatedly lifting ~6 inches and pounding back on the ground, and they were struggling with adding stakes and throwing guy lines over the top. The original staking was pretty minimal, just 1/2" rebar as I recall. After that incident, the company that made the dome (Pacific) also upgraded from 3/4" to 1" minimum conduit for domes that size.

Yeah 3/4 would be a bit flimsy for a dome that size. I hemmed and hawed about using 1" for my 24 foot. I'm glad I didn't because of the expense, weight and added PITA of forming and drilling it, but quite a number of my 3/4" struts are no longer arrow straight due to me climbing on them.

[beer goggles]

What do your stakes look like? I have the tops of mine doubled up and candy caned

My stakes are essentially the same as yours except for the doubled tops. My buddy volunteered to drive the stakes and he put them in the center of the bottom struts. After a couple of days, he took it upon himself to go back and snug them up, this is probably when they were damaged.

BTW - I saw the pics of your dome in another thread and that cover you fabbed is beautiful. I'd like to see some more detailed pics of it and also the method of attaching your platform.

[melodiousdirge]

BTW - I saw the pics of your dome in another thread and that cover you fabbed is beautiful. I'd like to see some more detailed pics of it and also the method of attaching your platform.

Thanks very much I sent you some info with the eplaya email function. Let me know if that doesn't work!