2004, Hurricane Summer, Our Story

I had only just moved back to central FL in July of 2004. I was house sitting for some friends while I waited to get into my new apartment. Their house happens to be a manufactured home in Polk County, FL. All my stuff still in storage boxes at a warehouse. The day that I finally got access to my apartment was the day we picked my friends up from the airport. This also happens to be the day Hurricane Charlie took that sudden turn and struck Florida further South than predicted. Well, we got our friends home and helped them put up some plywood as tornadoes started touching down in Polk County. These friends headed for an emergency shelter as we headed for my apartment in Orange County. Now thinking about the possibility of spending three days without electricity or water in our new apartment with only our suitcases, an ice chest only minimally stocked, and a pillow and sleeping bag made me think twice.

Luckily the other half has a place up in North GA so we loaded up what we had into the car and headed North. Wow, the roads were empty, well that makes sense and the storm was upon us by then!!!! Tolls were abandoned and we were lucky not to be blown from the road or sucked up by a tornado. We made it to North GA and hung out there for a few days and returned to central FL to find that the empty apartment survived and we were able to get the storage boxes delivered with the furniture and other Stuff. Guess what, two more times that summer/fall we made that drive up to North GA. One of the times, during Francis I believe, the other half actually had a job up there so it wasn't a complete loss to have to leave town.

Anyway, during Francis, I had nothing to do while the other half worked but I was able to sit in that shop's CAD office and surf the net. The other half (who I am about to start indicating with TOH) had indicated that he wanted to build a Dome Home. He had seen something about a company in central FL that made geodesic kits that were skinned in concrete. Well I had the time to start doing some research. I discovered the Safe Harbor Dome site. That site walked me through much of their construction process and prompted me to find out more. From there I went on to devour the Monolithic site.

I showed TOH all about these wonderful Insulated Thinshell Concrete houses and he did agree. This might be the way to go for building our house. Too bad there wasn't any proof yet that they could deal with a direct hit from a major storm. (At that time we did not yet know that Francis had hit Safe Harbor Dome.)

By the time we drove up to North GA for the third time, we had decided to look into building a Thinshell home for ourselves. That fall, Monolithic added an extra dome building workshop to their schedule to handle all the extra interest all the storms caused. Having a weather crew in Dome of a Home during Hurricane Ivan made for some great publicity for these structures. We went to that extra Dome building workshop.

I really can't say the rest is history though since most of it has not happened yet and we are only at the beginning of our homebuilding road. We have a design from Cloud Hidden Designs, LLC and I own the property we plan to build it on but that is only the beginning of our future story.

The Monolithic Dome Institute is a wonderful place with great people trying to change the world one dwelling at a time. I went there in the fall of 2004 for one of their workshops on dome building. I got to try my hand at spraying shotcrete and everything! The web site is Great, they share information freely and explain this method of construction very well.

ITSA is the Insulated Thin Shell Sculpted Architecture Web site. It is something of a gallery site for this type of construction and it has many wonderful photos of thinshell structures.

Dome of A Home is the web site for Dome of A Home in Pensacola Beach, FL. This is the home that got the Major Hit by Hurricane Ivan and survived just as it was designed to do. It is a vacation rental so if you are interested in seeing what dome living can be like, here is your chance. The site also has lots of pictures and info from hurricanes.

Safe Harbor Dome is another site linked to a particular Home. This one in Stuart, FL. The owner/builders of this one have done an incredible job documenting the whole process. They also got direct hits by hurricanes.