Local Permitting

If you set your site up as a temporary camping site so that everything (including the dome and platform) could be easily taken down tomorrow if needed, you may be able to avoid needing to get building permits in your area. Please check with local laws and govt to ensure you don’t get a citation or worse. Our platform sits on temporary blocks as support and is not on a concrete slab or permanent structure. We could move our entire site to another location and leave no trace at the site. This becomes a bit gray when setting up electrical connections and any plumbing connections, but local licensed contractors can help you navigate this and make a legal plan for execution. If you’r running your dome as a rental, you’ll want to consider income replacement insurance as well in case anything happens that prevents you from being able to rent the dome out and continue your business.

Toilet options

The easiest and best option is to have sewer or septic hook ups ready and a traditional toilet in the bathroom. If this is not possible, there are a couple other solutions to consider.

1. Compost toilet: Durable and simple to use. They require some regular emptying and cleaning, so please watch a video showing how this is done before committing to this solution.

2. Incineration toilet: Require electricity hook ups. These do not smell and do not require frequent emptying. They are incredibly expensive and not always intuitive to use. We do not recommend these for short term rentals due to our experience with guests confusion and subsequent messes.

3. Porta potty: These can be rented and serviced by a 3rd party weekly, but availability depends on your location. This is a separate unit from your bathroom unit with the shower and sink.

Water and electricity

We’ve found that it is fairly essential to have water and electricity onsite if you want to stay in the dome for more than a day.

Drinking water: 5gal jugs are available at Home Depot and other supply stores for a fairly cheap price and get reused when you return the empty ones. This is a very easy solution for ensuring clean drinking water is available. We also like Life Straw products for filtering water to enable safe drinking.

We have not tried solar showers but think that could be a good solution for warm weather locations that get enough sun. Solar showers use solar energy to heat water in a small storage tank that is nice and warm when you’re ready to use it. They can be placed inside or outside.

Internet

Starlink satellite internet service has been the best solution for our off-grid, in the woods location. Service is spotty when there are large clouds overhead but generally it is good enough and even fast a lot of the time. We set up a ring cam to monitor the outside / driveway of our site and this is solar powered and connected to our Starlink internet. This has worked well.

Insurance

Your dome is typically considered personal property by insurers and thus would be covered similar to any property kept outdoors. For rental properties, you can find insurers that specialize in rental insurance. Ask in landlord groups in your local area for referrals.