They have enclosed portions of the downstairs, adding air conditioning to Gene's small darkroom. And recently they added a waterproof coating to the peaked roof. ''It's white and we noticed a temperature difference right away,'' Gene said.

The Ganns tell a similar story of building what they could afford at the time. They even got a deal from Parker.

Joyce's uncle once lived next to Parker and had the architect design his home. Joyce told him, ''We'd love to have him design a home for us, but we can never afford him.'' Parker told the Ganns that he would be affordable because the home would be so carefully built there would be nothing purchased in excess and no waste would have to be brought to a landfill. (In Florida, construction and demolition debris accounts for 25 percent to 33 percent of the total waste produced each year.)

When the budget was used up, the house still lacked living room doors and a fireplace. So when cold set in the first year, the Ganns used plastic sheeting to try to keep the rooms warm. Doors went up the next year.

The home has three bedrooms and one bath with a central great room. Air flows east to west across the house, and Parker designed clerestory windows and screens on both sides of the house to pull air through. Because Joyce was diagnosed with arthritis at 14, she expected to one day need a wheelchair, so Parker made the doors and the hall a few inches wider than usual. The expectation was not fulfilled, but the Ganns' aging parents realized the benefits of the design.

The great room is the focus of the house, where dining takes place, where company gathers and where, with the exception of this past year when Don's mother died, a neighborhood Christmas party has taken place annually since the family moved in.

Ceiling fans throughout the house run around the clock. The fireplace is the only source of heat, ''but we have plenty of firewood,'' Joyce says. A solar heater provided hot water before Hurricane Andrew, but was not replaced after the storm. They went with an electric water heater instead.

Like the Scotts, the Ganns have air-conditioned a single room: a storeroom where they keep items that could be hurt by high humidity.

COOLING TECHNIQUE

Huge beams in the living room are hickory. Parker gave the flat roof a raised lip to hold water as a cooling technique, and the beams can bear that weight, Joyce said. In addition, the roof is bolted together. In hurricanes Andrew and Wilma, the trees leaned protectively into the house, ''Parker swore that's what they would do, and that's exactly what happened,'' Joyce says. However, because the overhang is four feet wide, one tree fell on a corner and popped it off, then crashed into the storeroom.

Unlike the Scotts' home, this one is built flat on the ground because of the possibility of Joyce's wheelchair use. Parker designed it on a ''floating foundation'' -- the center of the slab floats on soil, but is much deeper around the edges to hold it in place -- and the Ganns had to sign off with the county because of it. ''I didn't worry about flooding because the elevation here is 12 feet,'' she said.

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