When Debbie and Forest Bean decided they wanted a round home, they chose a Deltec Home and then opted to design the interior of the home themselves. See why they decided to go with Deltec.
Debbie, who sells kitchen kitchen cabinetry, and her husband, a retired tool and dye maker and jack-of-all-trades, built their dream home in 2004 outside Gifford, Ill., 125 miles south of Chicago.
They chose a Deltec model called the Windsor, with 2000 square feet per floor and an attached 800-square-foot round garage.
Debbie designed the 2,000-square-foot home with the kitchen in the center of the home with everything radiating off of it like spokes on a wheel. The home includes two large bedrooms and two baths and a huge great room which includes Debbie’s office, a family room and living room. It takes up about half the interior space. They finished the interior with Australian Cyprus and hickory.
“The reason we went with the Windsor, which at that time was the largest model, was to make the rooms as spacious as we could while still fitting in the rooms we wanted,” Debbie says. “Half of it is the great room so it was just a matter of determining the outside wall space for each room and locating the windows.”
Forrest and six of his friends constructed the shell of the 2000-square-foot home, which is built with 20 eight-foot-wide wall panels. They also built the 800-square-foot round garage with a 12-by-12 breezeway connecting the two, along with a woodworking shop in the basement.
The couple has been very happy with the home’s energy efficiency. With a heat pump and backup propane furnace, they have found it is easy to keep the home warm in the winter and cool in the summer despite ceilings up to 14 feet tall and many windows.
“It is very economical on heating and cooling — our bills are less than just about anyone I talk to,” Forrest says. “Most people we talk to use almost twice as much fuel as we do.”
Deltecs are legendary for their ability to withstand high winds, tornadoes and hurricanes. That’s another plus for the Beans, who live near what he describes as “tornado alley.” A year after they built their home they had to deal with a severe windstorm. It knocked down trees up to 14 inches in diameter and tore the shingles off nearby homes.
“It got so black it looked like night,” Forrest recalls. “We lost three shingles off the roof and that was it. Our house had less damage than anybody in this whole area.”
Deltec Homes is the leading worldwide builder of circular homes that are energy efficient, simple to construct and built to last. Since 1968, Deltec has been building unique, Earth-friendly homes that are legendary for their ability to withstand hurricanes. Deltec homes feature spacious, open interiors for an infinite variety of designs and views that showcase their natural surroundings. Deltec builds the next generation of Green homes from components precision-engineered in its factory in Asheville, N.C., using 100 percent renewable energy. For more information, please visit www.deltechomes.com.
Read Part 1 of this article here.
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