How I built a 9-foot igloo
I built this igloo in the winter of 2021 over the course of several days. The inner diameter of the igloo was nine feet, and the total height was over six feet tall. The walls were about one foot thick and made of highly compacted snow.
Where I live, the climate does not provide enough snow to build a traditional igloo (out of snow blocks pulled from several deep feet of prior snowfall). I was able to get around this problem by compressing snow into heavy-duty plastic storage bins; the compacted snow formed relatively sturdy blocks of ice. Before I built the igloo, there was a snowstorm (about 2.5 feet), that provided enough raw material to work with.
I began building the igloo by hammering a stake into the ground with a 4.5’ length of string tied to it. (As I wanted the igloo to be 9’ in diameter, this string represented the inner radius of the igloo.) I walked in circles for many minutes to compress the fluffy snow where I planned to build the igloo. I then placed dozens of blocks of snow in a circular pattern, using my piece of string as a guide to keep everything round. I tightly filled all of the seams between each block with snow to act as a “glue” to keep everything held together.
Igloo under construction
After placing the first ring of blocks on the ground, I made sure to stagger the seams of the next layer so that it was not aligned with the previous layer; this made the igloo much stronger. I placed row after row of snow blocks in a spiral pattern, using the length of string as a guide to indicate the inward angle of the successive layers. I used a small saw to cut a slight angle into each successive layer, so that the igloo would be a dome shape and not a cylinder. Eventually, the angle of the upper blocks grew very steep, so I used a broomstick wedged between the ground and the unstable blocks to hold them up until I could place the next layer. Once I placed the final “keystone” block at the top of the igloo, the structure became very strong, and using the broomstick was no longer necessary.
Holding up the igloo ceiling with a broom
As finishing touches, I cut a hole in the base of the igloo for a doorway, and I also poked several small ventilation holes at the top of the igloo so that there was enough air to breathe inside. I also built a door/tunnel to complete the igloo look*.
The thick walls of the igloo provided insulation, and they cut the chill of the wind, so it was warmer inside than outside. The igloo was also incredibly quiet inside, as the snow dampened the majority of noise from the street. The igloo was surprisingly spacious; there was enough room inside for me to stand up (I’m about 6’ tall), and also room to spare for two other people and a dog.
(*A more functional/traditional igloo would have a tunnel that requires occupants to go down into the ground, and then back up to enter the igloo. This was not possible to build with the level of snowfall that I received, so this limitation made my igloo slightly less warm than it could have otherwise been. This compromise was necessary, as I don’t live at a northern enough latitude to build a partially underground igloo.)
