Hi Kevin,

I have some great advice for you for securing your "skin" over your dome structure: ZIPTIES! Buy way more then you need of plastic zipties at your local hardware store. There is absolutley NO NEED for you to lug cumbersome sandbags to the playa which could endanger your back and/or your vehical.

You will never seal out all of the dust- which is of the very fine, silt-like variety. it coats everything. Everything. (everything) What you will need to do is to provide strong windbreaks to protect you from flying dust during high wind storms. A securly battened down dome structure with guide lines & massive doses of clearly marked rebar will keep your structure upright & you happy inside, shaded & free from dustlash.

Do your best to seal up your electronic equipment as well.

You best friends out there to protect from the dust will be tarps, zipties, rope, bungee cords, ducttape, tents and *a carpet to keep the ground dust down.*

The dust itself feels very clean- unless it is wet. Don't obsess about every little gap in your structure. Some nights I sleep in a semi- open air structure ( a 3 walled costco carport) - the playa can be beautiful. When it is crap-ass, I crawl in my tent (which lives inside the carport) & zip it tight.

Oh to be a virgin again.

No doubt about it, you'll get dusted. Still you can minimize the amount of dust in your dome by doing a number of things:

1) If you can, place your dome behind other larger tent or dome structures, so they serve as a windbreak to yours. During the day the dust storms come from the north and travel southwest. Kinda neat watching the dust devils swirl down the playa. At night the winds blow really hard from the southwest to the northeast. Some days (and nights) the playa is just choked with dust. Last Burn the winds (at night) reached about 43 mph. The BM website and literature say the winds can reach 70 mph on the playa. So be sure to bungee cord tight anything that might flap in the wind. And pound your rebar in and make sure the bungees connecting them to your dome are taut.

2) Some pictures of parachuted domes I've seen online use a two-parachute system: a top and separate sides.

3) Place large carpets or straw mats on the floor. Or floor your dome with tarps and mats. You can use tarps to overlap the dome sides and help seal out the dust that might come in under the parachute.

4) Whenever you leave your dome, check the bungee cords for tautness and close whatever openings you have. Even on really nice, hot days, dust will swirl around and enter an opened structure.

5) Bring a small hand broom with pan or portable hand vacuum cleaner. You can dust yourself off with it before you enter your dome as well as sweep up whatever dust you find inside.

6) Instead of a parachute, you can use silver tarps.

7) Join the geodesic dome tribe and ask them what they do.

My tent structure is square. For this Burn I'll extend it another 10 feet so I can fully park my rental van inside. The silver tarps from Canopy Masters are better at keeping the temperature lower inside my structure than the Costco blue/silver tarps, maybe by 20 deg. F.

BWAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!


Dust control at Burning Man..that is a good one!!!!!

I came back upon this posting, and realized I never thanked any of you for your help and advice. So, thank you so much! That year, I realized I had way more research to do on geodesics before building for an event I hadn't even been to, with weather conditions I hadn't experienced. I ended up going with the Costco carport, and putting a tent inside. We kept the tent sealed at all times, and found our sleeping to be pretty much dust-free, save for the dust on our bodies.

I have built other structures since then - more structurally sound, and able to keep out alot of the dust. So again, thank you!