The view from the property was so good that she came up with the idea of building a circular home, with each room offering a unique view of the beautiful landscape. Rodriguez started researching designs online and soon stumbled upon the website of Deltec Homes, a North Carolina company that builds prefabricated circular homes. As she scrolled through the company’s marketing materials, Rodriguez realized the best part: The structures, which are sealed with a roof and walls and anchored to a foundation, are designed to withstand hurricanes. “It was like finding a gold mine,” she says.
It took years and a lot of headaches with local builders and contractors, but her home was finally completed last year. It wasn’t cheap. The Deltec wall sections, roof, and other core components cost nearly $360,000, and the Rodriguez family spent another $980,000 on permits, foundations, fabrication, plumbing, HVAC, finishes, and fees. Rodriguez emphasizes that a lot of hard work and savings helped the family achieve this. Building such a home in their dream location has become a “life goal” for the couple.
Hurricane Ian struck while the house was still under construction. The building was undamaged, but one of the patio doors was ripped off its hinges. The real test was Idalia, a Category 4 hurricane that arrived in late August 2023. As it approached Florida, universities and airports were closed, members of the National Guard were mobilized, and the Cape Canaveral space launch was canceled. The Rodriguez family dragged everything they could upstairs in their new home, loaded up their car, and drove to a hotel in Orlando.
Their home didn’t lose power during the storm, which meant Rodriguez was able to watch the hurricane’s impact as it approached. The nighttime outside was initially dimly lit by security camera lights, but the sun rose and the hurricane’s full force reached about 7:45 a.m. By then, Idalia was about 180 miles to the north.
“We could see the floodwaters coming into the garage,” she recalls. But overall, the live feed didn’t look so bad. It was a relief. As they drove back to survey the aftermath, they passed neighboring homes that had lost pieces of siding or large sections of roofs. The Rodriguez farm was relatively unscathed. The floodwaters downstairs receded quickly, and the family lost a few belongings they had stored there, but the house itself recovered from the flood exactly as designed.
“We’re OK. We’re going to be OK,” Rodriguez remembers thinking the morning she evacuated. “And we were OK,” she says.
Rodriguez explains that the steel reinforcing bars, or rebar, start at the foundation of the house, run through the walls, and into the roof. The balcony floor joists run right into the core of the building. And the windows, made by Marvin, a door and window manufacturer, are designed to withstand hurricane-force winds and rain.
“Our survival rate is 99.9 percent,” says Steve Linton, president of Deltec Homes. “We’ve had two homes in our history that have had structural damage.” One of them was built decades ago to a somewhat lower standard, he explains. The other “had some builder defects” and was damaged by a Category 5 storm. To date, the company has built more than 5,000 properties, most of which are manufactured in the U.S. and some in 30 countries around the world. The walls and roof sections are prefabricated. At our North Carolina factory We can ship virtually anywhere.
