Description for my Building

Dome of a Home

            Built by Mark and Valerie Sigler, “Dome of a Home” is a architectural masterpiece.  This 6,000 square foot home, designed by Dragon Speed Design Group, is built to withstand great forces of nature and at the same time, has some of the most advanced design features inside and outside the house.

            Located on Pensacola Beach, Florida, this magnificent house have fantastic views of the Gulf of Mexico and Santa Rosa Sound.  Standing just hundrends of feet off the beach, it is known that the Dome will take tropical storm damage almost on a yearly basis.  In 2004, when Hurricane Ivan hit the coast, dozens of houses around Pensacola were destroyed.  The Dome, however, suffered no structural damage.  And in 2005, as many home were still recovering from the tropical storm season the year before, Hurricane Dennis came and again destroyed the community and left the Dome with zero damage!  All of this is partly due to the Dome’s front staircase that was built to “give away” when winds and conditions turned bad so that the house would not suffer any structural damage.

            The shape of the Dome is just enough to help the home withstand winds from a force 5 storm.  Hurricane Keith, a force 4 storm was off the coast of Belize for three days and did not damage any of the domes there.  Since the walls of the Dome are rounded they are four times more wind resistant than flat walls.  The Dome can withstand over 2000psf, and to put that in perspective, a tornado with 300mph winds only creates 400psf.  Even if an object put a small hole in the Dome, it would be very localized and easy to replace, and wouldn’t cause the rest of the building to collapse.  Also, the building has no singles or gutters, so when the tropical storms come, they do not have to worry about replacing the roof every time.

            The Dome is build out of concrete.  Because of this, there is no wood in the house, which reduces the chance of fire down dramatically.  Also, since there is no wood, and the walls are made out of concrete, there are no places to termites and other infesting bugs to live, as there is no air pockets or spaces in the walls for them to live.  Even earthquakes cannot shake this house; it would take an earthquake of record magnitude to shake this house down to the ground.  Also, because of the concrete walls and basically airtight building, the Dome has no hot or cold corners in the house and heat and air does not escape through the concrete like it would in wood.  This results in significantly lower heat and air conditioning bills at the end of the month.  In Alaska, there is an 8,000 square foot dome building and its heating bill was $72.  With rising energy costs, the Dome definitely can lower energy expenses over the years.

            These are just some of the great design features that were put into the house.  The Dome is beautiful with large, curved edges all around it to not only defend against tropical storms, but to catch the eyes as you look around.  It is very hard not to notice this Dome of a Home.