I actually think they are neat, so I suprise myself by being a wet blanket:
You say resale issue is moot, as you intend for this to be your last home.
1)You’ve never lived in a dome home, so that intention may well change. Beyond that, At some point you or your spouse may be forced to move due to health, etc. At that point,
a “wierd” house is a less liquid asset than a “normal” house.
2)Beyond first mortgages, it may be difficult to get second (home equity loan) on a difficult
to appraise, slow to move structure. Seconds have great tax advantages for financing whatever.
Even if it is you last home, your estate will be left to deal with a (possibly) white elephant. Certainly not your problem, but may bother you to leave a problem for your hiers.
I thought about building one in the late 70 and a friend in the construction pointed out a couple of things that kinda took the gleam off of that coin.
First, the walls slope inward. This means that you loose a lot of square footage behind your sofa, chair etc. (yes you can build a short vertical wall and then go dome)
And the killer for me was his comment that the sections for a dome don’t corespond to what can be cut from a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood with a minimum of waste. You wind up wasteing close to a half a sheet, every sheet.
YMMV
In eastern massachusetts, a 1960’s era developer built several dome buildings. they were of concrete (gunite) with added vaulted structures radiating off the dome (like the spokes of a wheel). I went into one(before it was demolished). The spaciousness of a dome is unbelievable-you used the cental dome as a living area, with the side structures as bedrooms.
Unfortunaely, people here do NOT like modern, practical structures! They want houses to look like they were built in AD 1600!
When these dome houses were demolished, they were found to be so strong, that it cost 5 x the wrecker’s estimate to tear them down!