N.C. Company Draws Interest in Storm Areas

RALEIGH, N.C. - Roy Laughlin has spent the last year and a half assembling a two-story, 2,000-square-foot circular home near Cape Canaveral, Fla., that proved safe shelter earlier this month when hurricanes Frances and Jeanne roared ashore nearby.

"There's nothing wrong with a rectangular home, unless you live in a place where wind tears them apart," Laughlin said.

The shape of Laughlin's house, made by Asheville, N.C.-based Deltec Homes, allows a hurricane's high winds to whip around the sides rather push on a flat wall. The structure also has extra-strength connections between the roof, walls and foundation.

Deltec officials boast that none of the roughly 1,100 homes they have sold in the past 12 years have collapsed from high winds.

"Due to the fact that we've had so many storms this year ... we have had a lot of inquiries from Florida, the Gulf areas, the Caribbean," said Joe Schlenk, the sales manager for the 36-year-old company.

Laughlin, 52, of Rockledge, Fla., said he and his four dogs not only rode out the storms, but did so in relative quiet _ except for a Frances-spawned tornado that chewed through his neighborhood. Jeanne crumpled scores of trees nearby wind gusts clocked at 120 mph.

Neighborhood homes lost shingles in Jeanne, leading to roof failure and internal water damage, but not Laughlin.

"I got a good night's sleep," he said Tuesday, after telephone service was restored.

Laughlin built his Deltec home for just under $200,000, not including his own labor. And construction did present some difficulties. The irregular shape of the interior walls made it impossible to get an estimate from a contractor, so Laughlin put the drywall in himself. Cabinets had to be custom ordered.

Since Hurricane Andrew wreaked catastrophic damage in south Florida in 1992, researching and building hurricane-resistant homes has been a priority for insurance companies and scientists from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to Florida International University in Miami. Andrew destroyed more than 28,000 homes, damaged 107,000 and caused $15.5 billion in insured losses.

Some Florida homebuilders, such as Mercedes Homes of Melbourne and DiVosta Homes of Palm Beach Gardens, offer concrete-walled houses designed to resist strong winds.

DiVosta, a division of Michigan-based homebuilding giant Pulte Homes Inc., completes two to four homes a day in each of eight subdivisions around Florida, almost all using poured concrete walls around reinforced metal bars, spokesman Mike Brown said. Prices range from $200,000 to $600,000, he said.

Deltec's round homes also sell well in snowy areas in the Rockies and earthquake zones in southern California, president and chief executive officer David Hall said.

Though he declined to discuss the company's annual revenues, Hall said Deltec Homes will ship more than 240 home packages this year costing $25 to $50 a square foot, or $25,000 to $150,000 each. That's about a 20 percent increase for the 65-employee company from the 200 home packages sold last year.

"We're a company that's growing rapidly. We're adding employees in a day and age in which manufacturing isn't doing well," Hall said.

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On the Net

Deltec Homes Inc.: http://www.deltechomes.com/content/default.asp

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