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Construction Prologue

By TCLynx

Last Updated 

I could say "And So it Begins"

But I realize that isn’t quite right. It really began in summer 2004.

Some may remember 2004 as the Hurricane Summer here in Central Florida, three hurricanes (Charlie, Francis, and Jeanne) crossed through central Florida that summer and then Ivan (was a huge storm in the Gulf) that hit the pan handle of Florida and we also had a tropical storm Bonnie go through affecting Florida that season too.
Partner John and I Headed for the Hills 3 times that season (He had a house up in the Mountains in GA at the time.) We had just gotten an apartment in Winter Garden FL but had been house sitting for friends. There was NOTHING in the apartment yet and we had just picked our friends up from the Airport the morning Charlie took the right (wrong) turn. They headed for a shelter and we got in the car and drove out during the the storm.

Some of the Stories and headlines that season.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6011773


http://www.mthurricane.com/hurricane_ivan.htm


https://monolithicdome.com/hurricane-ivan-and-the-magenheimers-search


https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjg6mf This link has video from Dome of a Home During Ivan.


Lets just say that by fall that season, we had discovered Monolithic and we went to an October workshop in Italy, Texas about building Monolithic Domes. https://monolithicdome.com/homes

eye of the storm

Within a year I had purchased a property to build on and was actively researching home designs and devouring the Monolithic dome building Bulletin Board. My how times have changed since then, it used to be you would go to forums to learn all about how to do something. Now so many of those are inactive and you have to go to a Facebook feed but those are so disjointed (because they don’t leave comments in order but rather show them to you based on some sort of popularity algorithm that I don’t understand) and there is seldom more information to go along with the pictures. Anyway, We worked with Jim Kaslic of Cloud Hidden Designs LLC to come up with our wonderful home design in 2006.

In 2007 we moved to a small house in the neighborhood near the intended building site. In 2007 it was still incredibly difficult to entice lenders to take a chance on writing a loan for a super energy efficient, disaster resistant home, let alone a construction loan to build it. We were still seeking financing when the bottom fell out of the housing market and basically any chance of getting any sort of construction loan evaporated.

Fast forward another 5 years, we had been chased out of our Residential Neighborhood for farming/gardening too much. Some elements of the neighborhood seemed to think it was unsanitary to eat food that was grown outside or to have chickens. They kept calling code enforcement on us. I got fed up and bought a Farm in 2012. We sold the small house and the construction lot since we didn’t think there was any chance we would be able to build our design in that neighborhood and the Lot was just NOT big enough for the farm/garden.

So we have been living in the Apartment in the barn on our farm for the past 11+ years and it is finally time to build with financial support of Family. In the beginning of 2023 we found a local General Contractor, Eco Construction LLC that got excited about the construction method when we brought the designs to them. They recommended that we talk to Climate First Bank as being a lender that may be excited to lend on a super energy efficient and disaster resistant construction project. We Have hired South Industries as our Shell Construction Specialists.

Since we were no longer building on the original Lot, I had to “flip” the design to work on our new construction site at the farm. We had to get engineering done for the designs ZZ Consulting took care of us there. Monolithic is manufacturing our custom airform for the build.

Financing secured in September 2023. It then took 4 months to get the Building Permit.

It is now January 2024, less than a year shy of the 20 year anniversary of Florida’s “Hurricane Summer”.
We have actually started Preparing the Site and construction is soon to be starting.

South Industries Estimated 5 to 6 weeks for their crew to do the ring beam foundations all the way through to finishing the Shell and departing the site. Originally they intended to start mid November and would have been done in 2023, but the lack of a permit nixed that plan. Now we are hoping to have the shell finished before the heat/humidity sets in this spring.

Update again as of June 8, 2024, we were not able to Get South Industries here during the “cold” months as originally planned. Equipment started Arriving in May, Site Super arrived June 5th and “crew” arrived June 7th and actual Ground Breaking was that afternoon. Initial Blog Posts with pictures now posted.

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