These pictures are of that dome and another building using a $50,000 Thermograph camera. This camera is designed to take pictures showing the amount of heat in the photo.
The -25º temperature shows up as black. The warmer temperatures show up in various colors and the hottest is the red.
In a quick look you can see that the heat loss from the Monolithic Dome is virtually zero except through doors and or other openings. This verifies what we see when the last snow that melts will be on the north topside of a Monolithic Dome.
We advise our clients to ignore heat loss or gain from a Monolithic Dome when sizing HVAC equipment. The activities within, the windows and doors, the lights, all else are far more important for determining how much equipment is needed for the heating and cooling. We have had engineers check the building by actually measuring total energy consumption methods. In all cases the Monolithic Dome shell is shown to have an equivalent “R” value of more than 60.
These Thermographic pictures give us a great visual picture illustrating this phenomena. Between the mass of the concrete and the spectacular values of the urethane insulation for all practical purposes there is no heat loss through the shell of the Monolithic Dome.
More thermograph images can be seen in the article The Monolithic Dome: A Green, Micro-Energy User.