Gadgetopia

Dome Home - Pensacola Beach: Here’s a site about a “dome home” in Pensacola Beach, Florida. No, not the geodesic dome houses which never really caught on (but which I still love). This is an actually smooth circular dome house built to withstand hurricanes.

After several years of repetitive storm damage, Mark and Valerie Sigler applied for and were awarded a FEMA grant through the Flood Mitigation Assistance Program. Because of the frequent and repetitive damage, the Siglers have been out of their residence for over 14 months.

In 1995, after Hurricanes Erin and Opal severely damaged their home, Mark began researching building techniques that would alleviate such extensive devastation.

First of all, hats off to the Siglers for trying something new. I get a little perturbed with people whose homes get destroyed by natural disasters and they just blindly rebuild the same house in the same spot, hoping it doesn’t happen again. (Especially when National Flood Insurance pays out every single time it happens…)

Check out the progress page and you can see how it was built — they inflated a big ballon, and sprayed with with a “thin polyurethane-type coating on the inside of the dome” and then lots of concrete.

It’s like when you made a head out of paper machee over a ballon in art class. Only wa-a-a-a-y more expensive.

So, what happened when Ivan rolled through?

“You have a one-piece concrete house with five miles of steel in it,” he said. “The house did exactly what it’s supposed to do.”

The Gulf’s water washed neighboring houses out to sea, but caused little damage to his.

Rock on. Via MetaFilter.