Greenhouse: Building a geodesic dome greenhouse, 1 by tropicalaria

tropicalaria wrote:
Topside. I was using extra long staples to be sure that the seams would hold. The electric staple gun allowed me to easily place all of the staples at full extension, but because of the 9/16 staples they didn't fully penetrate the wood unless I really held the gun tightly to the surface. For this reason, I had a hammer up there to pound in anything that wasn't flush. I can't imagine only doing this with the hammer, though, since I generally had to keep two plastic surfaces in tension (opposite directions) under a tensioned plastic lathing strip, and I could not have done this if I needed both hands in order to place a fastener with one and use the hammer with the other. The hand clamps were in constant use and I occasionally tacked a bit of plastic in place with a single staple to keep it there while I held an overlapping piece.

You may be able to see on this picture that the plastic lathing at the ends of each strut is attached on either edge. This is to go around the metal straps that hold the struts to the hubs. Since the edge is thin and weak here, I used more staples. In fact, I used a lot of staples throughout. We've had quite a few wind storms (this area is famous for them) and nothing has loosened in the 65mph gusts. I will also mention here that the plastic quite nice to work with--much sturdier and more resistant to creasing and kinking than any other flexible poly that I've used.