Pearl Homes founder and CEO Marshall Gobuty details how his Gulf Coast community is engineered for hurricanes, from added fill and a monolithic slab tied to rebar-filled block to Simpson strapping, taped zip panels, and a standing seam solar roof.
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Sara Gutterman: Hi, I'm Sarah Gutterman, CEO of Green Builder Media, and I have the pleasure of being here today with Marshall Gabelli, the CEO and founder of Pearl homes. Hello, Marshall.
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Marshall Gobuty: Hi, Sarah. How are you today?
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Sara Gutterman: I am great. Thanks for being here for my Front Lines of Climate Action series. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with you, because you are literally on the front lines of climate change and climate action. Can you talk today about where and how you build up that is, really responsive to the changes that are happening and the particular location that you are in?
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Marshall Gobuty: Well, we we chose the toughest location. You know, it would have been a lot easier, of course, to do something inland. But we chose the, on the Gulf, literally on the water in a in a high hurricane zone, FEMA flood zone. And, and the concept was that we wanted to be able to build something. And the toughest condition because we really we knew that, you know, our challenge at first was sustainability.
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Marshall Gobuty: But along with sustainability, when we realized our actual location and and the fact that we had to add such resilience to the house, to the home and how we build it, we really stopped and took a step back with our with our, our general contractor, which is us is an 85 year old guy. That is amazing. And he's given us such insight where we've done things that that just aren't done before and we've taken it to the point now where we actually have, the, the, the procedures, in for a provisional patent and it was accepted in January and hopefully we'll get a final patent within the next eight months.
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Marshall Gobuty: The idea is that you can do better without spending that much more, because code is great and it does keep everybody on a level playing field. But if you don't build to if you build to code, all you're doing is not going to jail. So we've got to think of something better than that. And our, our, our advisor, Rich, he built the Tampa Bay Stadium.
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Marshall Gobuty: So he has a lot of experience. And, you know, we have to keep in consideration, you know, timber, because it's more sustainable for us in Florida. People love concrete block. But concrete block alone is not the solution. Because if you don't have the concrete block connected to our monolithic slab and we fill these concrete blocks that are connected to the slab with rebar and even our our foundation are two times what the code allows for.
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Marshall Gobuty: Like these steps have made the house along with the Simpson strapping like all these components. Like, I would love to say that we invented these things, but we're essentially Mr. Potato Head. We put all these components together and they're working. So it's really it's great that it worked out this way. We anticipated that it would, but there was no trial, you know, unfortunately, you know, fortunately or unfortunately for the world, these last four hurricanes in the last three years, you know, one of them hit us dead on the other one was, like, almost dead on.
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Marshall Gobuty: And and it proved that the homes stayed strong. They stayed, you know, with power, you know, because there's resilience, not just strength if you're building, but if you have a strong building and you have no power, which is a very big a very common factor we have in Florida and heavy rains, the power goes out. The fact that we're sitting in in an environment that anything can happen and the homeowner can have safety in their home, you know, speaks volumes.
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Marshall Gobuty: And when I send it to some of my friends that say, oh, I didn't know you were doing that, they say, well, why wouldn't everybody do that? Which is really the question I posed to you is, is if it works and, you know, the days of having a diesel generator back up that are not clean energy and they make noise and they're, you know, they're not compatible with the future of home building.
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Marshall Gobuty: What we're doing is we've taking all these components, the best ones and putting them together. And fortunately, the models work really well.
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Sara Gutterman: So you talk about taking, elements and putting them together in a very concise manner. Will you share with us what are the essential components of your building system that you are using that are successfully withstanding nature's fury?
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Marshall Gobuty: You you've got to rely on a great engineer. And let's start off at the ground level, because, you know, the the code said that we had to have three feet on our site to be able to meet FEMA levels. And then we said, well, three feet, but that's okay. But what happens if something else happens? And and my, my engineer said you have to add more.
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Marshall Gobuty: And I said in this market this was just, you know, pre metal Covid, you know, fill is very expensive. So he convinced me to add four feet of fill, which was it was $1 million a foot to take the homes to the base level of seven feet. So now it's seven feet. We then added a nine foot garage.
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Marshall Gobuty: So when you walk into the home, you are 16ft above the flood zone. And that's an impossibility, as we've seen that unless there's a tidal wave or something ridiculous happens, that that water would ever enter your home. So starting off with infrastructure, you know, we designed this drainage system that, you know, for Hurricane Milton, for example, at 11 p.m., that was the most water that we ever had on the site.
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Marshall Gobuty: And and the roads were completely full, a foot and a half of water, you could see that they were just cresting the driveway, so not even close to the house, but cresting the driveway. That was at 11 p.m. and then we have a video. I had somebody here all night driving around for security, and and at 11 a.m., the streets were dry.
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Marshall Gobuty: Our dry retention was 55% full. So there's elements in not just the home building component, but also in the engineering of your infrastructure. It's really important that you have the correct drainage and you build higher than you expect to build, but it's costly. It's not free, but it does give you like if I could do it all over again.
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Marshall Gobuty: Now, of course I do it because if we had not have added the four feet of fill the garages may have had one foot of water. Now that's not the end of the world, but it's certainly better than having no water whatsoever. Enter your home. Then we go to let's talk about pouring our pad so we have a monolithic pad, meaning that everything is connected.
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Marshall Gobuty: So aside from the traditional footers, which we've doubled the size of code, and added more rebar when the pad goes in, we then add the block the concrete blocks to for our first level. And those concrete blocks are connected internally with rebar. The the the rebar inside the concrete blocks is connected to the monolithic slab. And once we pour the concrete into those concrete blocks, it now connects the concrete blocks to the monolithic slab.
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Marshall Gobuty: And it's one big piece. And that's what really gives us our base of strength, because we we're talking about winds that were going down our street of over 100 miles an hour, and the homes like we're not. We didn't have one insurance claim through four of these material hurricanes. So then we take I'm going to jump around a little bit the success and how we got there.
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Marshall Gobuty: And then we take the something called Simpson Strapping, which has been around for a long time. There's steel straps that connect the the first level, which is the concrete block level, to the second level, which we because of our sustainability concerns and our lead concerns, we use timber, because it's, it's it's very much a very sustainable and available product here.
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Marshall Gobuty: But instead of doing two by four for framing, we did two by six inches. And what that allowed us to do is fill each cavity with six inches of filled foam. So and not just the, the roof, not just the walls, but the ceilings and the floors. So it's almost like we've turned this into a complete tight unit, like I've called it.
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Marshall Gobuty: Like, I used to call it a Walmart cooler, but I've been told Yeti is a better word. Yeti cooler where you have your exterior. For us, it's our, you know, hardy concrete hardy board, cement hardy board. And then we have our zip panels, which are taped five eighth of an inch wood, which again, you could also just put Tyvek, but that's not the same as zip panels that are taped.
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Marshall Gobuty: And then behind that you have your six. We have our six inches. And in every one of those cavities is completely filled. So the Simpson strapping then connects everything together. So it's one it's essentially it's almost like the roots of the home are so far in the ground, and the strength of the trunk keeps the home up. And we really had some interesting, we really had some interesting, wind effects where normally you expect, rain to be coming down vertically.
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Marshall Gobuty: But in, in the last two hurricanes, they came horizontally. They're hitting the house at the side. And so we've really proven the fact that to use zip panels to keep the water out of your house is really important. So that's something I would really suggest everybody spend the money, do the zip panel, have it taped. And then you are assured that if any penetration comes through, you've got your zip panel to protect you.
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Marshall Gobuty: They also help with the wind sheathing as well. Then we go up to our roof, which, you know, we we looked at different models of how to attach our solar panels because, a year and a half ago when we first got we're getting our insurance quotes, some of the carriers said, well, we don't cover our homes with solar panels.
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Marshall Gobuty: And like, what are you talking about? Like, you have to cover solar panels. And until we explain to them that we use a steel standing seam roof that allows for the solar panels to be clipped and without having any, you know, without have any penetrations in the roof, it not only adds for the strength and takes away any uplift, but it also the penetrations.
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Marshall Gobuty: Because water is our biggest enemy in any, in any, in any climate, water is your enemy. So the less penetrations you have. So you imagine if we had this many panels on a traditional roof, it would have to be fixed into the roof and there would be penetration. So spending the money on a standing seam steel roof is very important.
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Marshall Gobuty: And and that allows for the strength of the home. And it also allows for the continuance of, of of that top down strength and bottom up strength.
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Sara Gutterman: Thank you so much for your time and your insights today. Thank you also for your leadership in resiliency and sustainable building. We have so much more from you. Wonderful insights and wisdom. You recently participated in our Resiliency Panel for our Sustainability Symposium 2025 A Force of Nature. We'll provide a link to that, where people can learn more from you.
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Sara Gutterman: But again, thank you for your time today. And, thanks for your wonderful work.
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Marshall Gobuty: And and thank you for getting the message out, because if if it wasn't for you and your publication, really people that are in my position wouldn't really know to do that. And it's a very small and tight homebuilding world, as you know. I even know better than I do. So the more people can read and not feel like they're listening and taking advice from someone.
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Marshall Gobuty: When everybody knows better than the next guy. We're very open to sharing this, and thank you for doing that because it gets the message out.
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Sara Gutterman: Absolutely. Well, it's a pleasure to work with you. And thank you so.