Plans and Blueprints for Round Houses and Octagon Houses

Some round houses are actually round, but most of them are made from panels, so they are actually octagon, nine sided nonagon (or enneagon), 10-sided decagon or any other polygon shape.

There are some advantages to houses with more than four sides. They stand up to straight line wind better. An octagon encloses nearly 20% more space than a square with the same perimeter.

Rondesics Rondette Round Houses

I posted about a Round House that is for rent near me. I guessed it might be a Deltec Home, but someone sent me a photo of Rondesics Rondettes. They were already here earlier than Deltec Homes. The guys who started Deltec homes got the idea from Rondesics.

“My brother Wayne and I had noted another local company called Rondesics that built a round house,” Robert recalled. The brothers purchased the designs and Robert started tinkering.

“The design of the house had some flaws we thought we could solve. We re-engineered the roof system and hence Deltec was born,” Robert Kinser recalled.

How Asheville cornered the market on round houses
Dale Neal, Asheville Citizen Times

These photos were in the Vacation Homes issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine of April 1969.

Attractive from any angle, models in the Rondette series of prefabricated homes have from 8 to 12 wall panels that go up in a hurry to enclose a maximum of floor area with a minimum of wall materials.

Vacation Homes issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine of April 1969

This one bedroom efficiency model has 425 square feet of living space. It cost $3840, in 1969. Can you imagine?

This three bedroom house kit was 900 square feet for only $6702. Just wow!

Minimum wage was $1.30 an hour in 1969, so apples to oranges… adjusted for inflation, the small kit would be $32,104.23 and the 3-bedroom kit would be $56,031.92 now. That would be a bargain. Especially since the Rondesics kits were complete with everything; pre-cut rafters, roof sheathing, fixtures and fittings, interior trim, interior partitions, even appliances. These are the kits my Dad was assembling in the 1970s.

Designers West Octagon House Plans

This house plan is available on eBay right now. It builds a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house octagon-shaped house.

The plans included all of the schedules you need to pull permits and build.

Octagon House Plans on eBay >

Historic Round Houses

Round and octagonal houses aren’t new at all, of course. Some of the earliest houses archeologists have found were round.

In the mid 1800s, eight-sided Octagon Houses had a wave of popularity. The McElroy Octagon House was constructed around 1860. It was built of concrete. The walls had a deep “V” groove applied to make it look like brick or dressed stone.

A book recommending octagon houses was a best seller. The writer, Orson Squire Fowler, wasn’t a trained architect. He was a professional phrenologist, you know, the guys that measure head size, shape and bumps. Around the time phrenology was falling out of popularity, he started promoting concrete octagon house construction. He was also an animal rights activist, promoted vegetarian eating and abstinence from alcohol.