[flaja]

Anyone here have any experience building with thermal mass like stone, concrete or earth? A company in Texas, the Monolithic Dome Institute, builds domes by inflating a giant balloon, spraying the inside with foam insulation and then spraying the foam with concrete. Supposedly the concrete stores heat which keeps the inside warm in the winter and cool in the summer. This is supposed to save energy, but these domes are found mostly out west or in desert locations where the outside temperature can swing 50 degrees or more from day to night. I live in Florida and our humidity does not let us have temperature swings this large except for a very few days a year. My house has a concrete slab floor and I have to have heat into May, when outdoor temperatures have already seen 90 and I have to have the AC well into October when nighttime temps are already in the 50s. I cannot heat or cool the air in my home until after I heat/cool the thermal mass in my floor. I wonder if the heating and cooling costs for a dome or any other building with thermal mass in other parts of the country are really lower because of the thermal mass, or is what you save in cooling or heating made up for in you spend for the other?