We’ve been super busy with our kiddo turning 6 months old and other spring things that needed to be done. That said, I wanted to briefly share an update on how the project is coming along.
I finally got around to installing some electrical upstairs. I quickly realized that I at least needed to get the exhaust fan hooked up because it was already starting to heat up too much to work in the dome while the sun was up. Since the fan and lights are all on the same circuit, I installed them as well.
Up in the dome we’re running all the electrical in conduit and exterior boxes. We didn’t want to worry about the electrical corroding prematurely or getting water in the boxes.
The conduit installation thus far looks like crap. I had a tough time running conduit with only right angle type fittings in a building that has exactly zero right angles, but hey! it works for our purposes. I still need to run the circuits for the interior fans, outlets, and grow lights, but those can be punted down the road a bit.
I am also super stoked that we were able to start the grow bed frames. I did a little space planning with some masking tape on the floor and then cut everything to match. Note that these are just the bare frames, there is a lot more support structure that will go in once we install the plywood. Each of the angled sections will be holding a bit over 500 lbs of water with 9600 lbs for the whole system. I’m planning on over engineering the support structure to make damn sure these won’t shift. Once completed, we will have used more lumber on the beds than we did on the dome itself.
We’re hoping to have the frames complete by the weekend so we can start sheeting, then hopefully the support structure will go quick since we have something solid to work with.