This Unique DIY Dome Home is a House Inside a Greenhouse
This DIY dome home in Norway is a work of beauty and environmental sustainability rolled into one. It’s located near a beach, providing great views and easy access to swimming.
Ingrid and Benjamin built this “Nature House” for them and their family: A Nature House is a house that reuses its own water, creating an environmentally sustainable lifestyle. In the case of this dome home, the water that the family uses is recycled and then goes into tanks below the basement, where it is treated and then pumped back to the trees, which provides the family with food. They eat fresh cherries, grapes, apples, and tomatoes that they grow themselves, from the greenhouse plants and trees that are watered in this manner.
The house is built inside of the dome-shaped greenhouse. It is built of cob, which is a mix of straw, clay, and sand. This made the house cheap to build, and it also provides thick walls that act as their own form of insulation.
Benjamin had no construction experience before they started their DIY dome home, but after going to a workshop to learn how to build and to use cob, he proceeded to build their house and most of the furniture. Some of it was hard to design, like kitchen cabinets and counters that had to be designed for a natural-shaped, curvy room, that doesn’t have straight walls and right angles.
In this video, Benjamin and Ingrid detail their design and building process, and share some of the elements that make this home so unique:
This DIY dome home is located within a greenhouse, which gives it protection from the elements. Underground pipes bring in the sea air, with a cooling effect in the summer and a heating effect in the winter. This is extremely important because the home is located in Norway and doesn’t see the sun for three months a year.
DIY dome home
Through creative design and a commitment to the natural world around them, this Norwegian family has built a beautiful home that is both environmentally sustainable and comfortable.
For more alternative living stories, discover this tiny straw bale house made of hay or this hand-built, off-grid cabin inspired by mushrooms.
To see more videos, check out the Tiny House Giant Journey YouTube channel.
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