Slashdot Mirror
Building the Ultimate Safe House
Hugh Pickens writes "Candace Jackson writes that an increasing number of home builders and buyers are looking for a new kind of security: homes equipped to handle everything from hurricanes, tornadoes and hybrid superstorms like this week's Sandy, to man-made threats ranging from home invasion to nuclear war. Fueling the rise of these often-fortresslike homes are new technologies and building materials—which builders say will ultimately be used on a more widespread basis in storm- and earthquake-threatened areas. For example, Alys Beach, a 158-acre luxury seaside community on Florida's Gulf Coast, has earned the designation of Fortified...for safer living® homes and is designed to withstand strong winds. The roofs have two coats of limestone and exterior walls have 8 inches of concrete, reinforced every 32 inches for 'bunkerlike' safety, according to marketing materials. Other builders are producing highly hurricane-proof residences that are circular in shape with 'radial engineering' wherein roof and floor trusses link back to the home's center like spokes on a wheel, helping to dissipate gale forces around the structure. Deltec, a North Carolina–based builder, says it has never lost a circular home to hurricanes in over 40 years of construction. But Doug Buck says some 'extreme' building techniques don't make financial sense. 'You get to a point of diminishing returns,' says Buck. 'You're going to spend so much that honestly, it would make more sense to let it blow down and rebuild it.''
It is illegal in some jurisdictions to build fortified homes. Many of the techniques listed would fall under that category. This is for the protection of the police and safety workers of course.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
YMMV.
I always thought the teletubbies' house looked pretty hurricane proof.
http://i.imgur.com/rh8Vu.png
You don't need a nuclear bunker design to weather even a 180 mph hurricane. Less dramatic design techniques have been around a while.
Is friends far away and the means to get to where they life.
The home may survive, but if it's beachfront, you may find the distance from your bunker to the waves is a lot less when you emerge after the hurricane.
Go old school and build a concrete dome. These are nothing new, very strong, and energy efficient.
You're going to spend so much that honestly, it would make more sense to let it blow down and rebuild it.'
Or simply not live in those environments.
Apparently by simply not building a square house you can weather pretty intense weather. http://www.domeofahome.com/dome_advantages.html
'You're going to spend so much that honestly, it would make more sense to let it blow down and rebuild it.''
Naturally, a bean-counter and an actual occupant might have different thoughts about that... :p
... my refurbished nuclear missile silo behind 2000lb steel doors over my cold, dead, zombie, body!!
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Such a structure needs to provide for the 10 - 30 days. So some sort of constant energy supply for heat, cooking, electric at basic comfort levels should be part of the design. The design should also be unobtrusive or there will be a lot of people begging at your door after a disaster.
Reinforced concrete easily beats wood-frame in strength, fire, and flood-induced mold-resistance. Find a specialist to use GFRP concrete reinforcement if you want it to last centuries. Insulate with foam for water resistance, or mineral wool if you can find a contractor for it. Look at composite or metal form deck roofing for concrete strength above your head, too. You probably want a commercial contractor if you're going all out. Find an architect that knows what they're doing. For windows, you'll want them with a minimal length in at least one dimension - short in width or height, to be secure in hurricane conditions. Even then, you'd need a specialty product if you want to resist a 2x4 flying edge-first into the window. And of course, you need high ground, a well, and a generator.
Park it in the backyard, or in the front yard, if you want to annoy the neighbors. Ride out the calamity in there. If civilization is still around, you will survive when you crawl out. If not, you probably won't want to bother to stay around much longer anyway. As the summary suggests, you might just as well plan to build a new house. Or, how about moving to somewhere with a safer climate to begin with . . . ?
Oh, and make sure your tank has Reactive Armor.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If you have a choice of where you live, staying away from the coast, and not near an active seismic zone, and not next to a river can help.
(also some areas are less prone to tornados too.
I think if Obama is reelected there may be more missile silos up for sale too.
... and then you catch a deadly tropical virus off one of the cashiers at Costco and die in agony as your insides turn to liquid.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
He told me how they used reinforced concrete (iirc, rebar laced/laden), & the wildest part that got me, was they didn't use bolts to anchor the wall frames, but rather some sort of straps (personally, I'd have used BOTH, but money talk$).
(This was done in the interests of withstanding tropical storms...)
* Operating from memory on this, but that's what I recall from the conversation...
What "blows my mind", is this: I've been to Europe & saw castles that have stood for 2-3 thousand years, & touched their mortar. Guess what? It's STILL solid as the day it cured & dried... tells me a lot, right there - they didn't "skimp" on using the right amount of lime in it (vs. overdoing the sand part to save a buck).
The homes I saw in Poland were amazing too - they aren't little "wooden toothpick boxes", but instead, built almost SOLELY of cinder blocks filled with stones & concrete - then, they are overlaid with foam insuluation from the outside ontop of that, then a coating of some sort of veneer (cement type).
I walked around and unlike homes in the U.S., where the floors 'shudder' when I walk (I weigh ~ 220 lbs)? These homes were SOLID AS A ROCK - no perceptible movement @ all, even in the UPPER floors!
They are just built, better... better than most homes I've seen in the USA, including mine.
APK
P.S.=> He's been a "journeyman" carpenter in the unions for 18++ yrs. now...
... apk
Using brick instead of wood may help some. Nothing high tech about that.
there's a type of vedic architecture principles called "vaastu", the other word used is sthapatyaveda - it's thousands of years old. a temple built according to "vaastu" architecture principles has withstood tornados and wind speeds of 150mph. i believe golden mean ratio is used extensively, integrated into over *1,000* measurements of the building's dimensions and proportions.
the exact effect this sort of integrated mathematical design has on the weather is just astonishing. that california brush fire in 2003 swept across a series of plots built according to sthapatyaveda: i heard that the only homes which were damaged were those where the people who "broke the rules" by putting in a swimming pool had the fence singed. http://www.wereldvrede.nl/sthapatyavedafantastic.htm
think about it, though: these people attribute "desire" to the "weather", but i believe there's a much more rational explanation: the extensive use of golden mean ratio in the proportions of the building setting up resonance patterns in the wind as the brush fire approached, causing pockets of air surrounding the building, against which the general direction of the fire *literally* had no quotes choice quotes but to change direction. i think it will be the same thing with that temple in india - the one that withstood 150mph winds.
of course, these days, for anyone in the building trade to quotes believe quotes that this is even remotely possible would require supercomputers and fluid dynamics analysis, none of which i believe any modern building company would of course be even slightly interested in doing, because they couldn't claim it was "their technology" with "their patents" on it. muuch better to make buster-bunker style buildings of course :)
I used to work for a startup company that created an amazing new block design, lays up like standard masonry and has the beauty of masonry.
http://onestepbuildingsystem.com/what-is-onestep.html
Has an integrated cavity that is filled with concrete and rebar, so is ridiculously strong. And the insulation seals it against water penetration (not as well as the original design which had more internal plastic, but in the water penetration testing it stood up to hurricane force driven water without leakage.)
Also has great sound insulation, has thermal mass to the inside which drops heating and cooling costs significantly, and maintenance is fairly inexpensive.
Not sure what choice you'd use for windows, I recall seeing some that were quite amazing 10 years ago, when I last looked, but I'm sure the market has devised some even cooler stuff since.
This really reminds me of the three little pigs and who's house survived the huffs and puffs of the wolf. I am pretty sure his house was not built out of wood. He was probably also the rich pig in the family ;)
The problem with many homes is poor location, poor choice of construction material and poor choice of architecture. We need to respect the potential fury of Mother Nature when she decides its time to remind everyone of her presence, and build accordingly.
The first thing you do is not build your house on a spit, something which is very volatile in terms of land. Neither should you build on flood plains. If you know there is some chance of hurricanes, then concrete is going to be the better building material. We can see in Japan the buildings that survived the tsunami were all built out of concrete or on higher ground. We also learnt in Thailand that you are better off putting mangroves than house on a beach front. In terms of architecture stilted homes make more sense, in flood prone areas since they will be above the flood level and therefore the damage, if any, will be much reduced.
One construction approach I had thought about as a compromise would be in a typically wooden house, was a raised concrete core, where people cold hide and keep the most precious possessions. The idea being even with damage to the outer structure, they would be above the food level and within a structure that stands a better chance of survival.
All that said, I believe we should be regulating building and insurance to discourage people building the wrong type of housing in the wrong geography, since in the end the tax payer pays every time.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
And don't forget to get yourself a kangaroo boyfriend.
Use them you american weirdos.
This guy should almost work for Slashdot. Have you noticed the enormous effort that he puts to writing submissions?
Or, how about moving to somewhere with a safer climate to begin with ?
Geologically and climatologically safe places are almost always boring, empty and low-value.
Fertile soil means flood-plains, which means floods. (Hell even deserts flood every few decades.) Too flat and you can add tornadoes. Forests and parks means fire risk, trees falling in storms, etc. Good views of the sea means storms, up to and including hurricanes, along with coastal erosion. Good views inland usually means hills and mountains, which means landslides, probably earthquakes. Rivers and valleys means floods, landslides, and wild-fire funnelling. Then you've got ice storms if you're too far north, blackouts from too many air-conditioners if you are too far south, resulting in heat-deaths. (Northern hemisphere).
And, even if you pick well, you've only got a few decades of in-your-lifetime awareness of weather events to go on. A century or so if you make an effort to go into the records. That still leaves you fucked if you get a once-in-a-century (-or-three) event. Or if climate changes and makes your previously low risk site suddenly higher risk.
And that's just nature. Then you've got people. Home invasion, riots, arson, government falling, invasion, zombies...
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Right - I grew up in a home built on the SAME principal: Dual Brick walls with a 2 ft. thick "air-gap" for insulation. The home was built right after the Civil War & is EXACTLY 100 yrs. older than I am. It was, to put it simply, pretty amazing (the folks that bought it from my father afterwards even took it farther, improving it, for the last 33++ yrs. now).
* You've got 1 thing right - in the USA? The "Holy Dollar" speaks, & these "tract-building" contractors are NOTORIOUS for "ripping off" their own staffs too (hell, one guy I know? His brother is a MULTI-MILLIONAIRE from it, & he owes his own BROTHER $4,000 still, for almost a 1/2 a decade (that I know of @ least), now...)
APK
P.S.=> I can see doing that approach for cars though... why? Well, when I was a younger guy, & not too "economically saavy" as to how "the real world works"? I asked my father (a 45++ yr. tool & dye maker + engineer/designer) this question:
"Dad, how come the USA's car makers can't build something as durable as a Mercedes?" (which has MILLION MILE engines & cars out there & more mind you)...
He said: "Son, we EASILY could - but then, I'd be giving you my car, & you'd end up giving that same car to YOUR boy & who KNOWS how long that'd go on if the vehicle's well-maintained... the problem? How would they sell more cars, & keep people working + paying taxes?"
Made sense - product obsolescence & all that!
However, I can't see APPLYING THAT line of though to homes (the single largest things folks typically buy in a lifetime)...
Imo @ least - homes SHOULD be built well as possible!
Yes, there is cost involved IF you don't "do it yourself" - BIG cost!
My late grandfather & father built my late grandma's home & it was BUILT RIGHT - but, they did it, themselves & it's built like those homes in Poland I saw - it'll stand more than 150 yrs. is my guess, WITH EASE...
They built it themselves, I saw it going on when I was like 2-3 yrs. old, "hanging out" while the men worked (Yes, I still remember it, & I was trying to be "one of the men working", lol).
They ended up saving on the "ripoff factor" that contractors would otherwise HIT you with, IF/WHEN you cannot do it yourself of course)...
... apk
That with a normal house above it should be fine for anyone, even if Apophis comes back to try enslave humanity again.
Just make sure you have the materials to build a Stargate in an emergency.
The most effective and cost-effective thing you can do to protect yourself in the case of some disaster (natural or man-made), is to be a useful and well-regarded member of your community, your neighborhood, your block and to look out for the people around you.
You might lay out hundreds of thousands on the sturdiest house possible and get run over by a beer truck on your way to the corner store. Or maybe no disaster ever occurs and you've spent all that money needlessly.
But being an integral part of a community and making sure your neighbors are doing well will not only keep you in good stead in case of an emergency, but will pay dividends even when there is no catastrophe.
Did nobody read the story of the Three Little Pigs? Don't you remember how the little piggy who built the sturdy brick house ended up getting jacked in the back of the head by the other piggies when he went to the corner store to pick up snacks and he ended up dying in the street because everybody hated that selfish sonofabitch?
The lesson being, if you really want to be happy and prosperous, take care of those around you and stop thinking only about yourself.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Are there any European-style brick houses in New England (or anywhere else) with extreme weather? (More extreme than Europe.) Are they robust enough?
Every house I've ever lived in has been built from two layers of brick, with either an air gap (older) or fibreglass (you call it mineral wool then?) or similar between, for insulation. I live in England, so we don't need shutters, but they're normal in some places -- generally for temperature control rather than protection. A tiled roof might not do very well in a hurricane. Some small changes (strong shutters, better-attached roof) and you're almost there...
TV reports of a house fire in Europe generally show a house with soot marks above some windows, and possibly a burnt and partially collapsed roof. They have to burn for a *long* time for walls to collapse. Flood damage means replacing all the ground-floor carpets and making sure the space under the house is dry, to avoid damp/mould. Wind damage usually means replacing a missing roof tile, but we don't get wind like America.
(For that matter, how are the big buildings in Manhattan? They're brick or concrete and presumably don't have shutters.)
As someone still without power after five days that's all I've been thinking about. Its very cold this morning and I'm going to have to go out and find a charge soon. Next place I live will have solar power for sure.
"it would make more sense to let it blow down and rebuild it.''
When is that ever the sensible thing to do? You pay the money so you don't have to rebuild so your family and things are safe, plus what if there is nothing left to rebuild with?
I'll take the indestructible fortress over planning to "rebuild".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A circular house that transfers load to a central pillar has been done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house
It's pretty awesome, but you pretty much have to go custom for all of your furniture, counters, bathroom appliances, etc.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
WHen the revolution comes, the 0.01% who can afford these things will need them. Storms, earthquakes, phsaw... they're looking to keep out the rabble with pitchforks and flaming torches seeking to hang them from the lampposts.
In the entire article, just one mention of a low budget thing (extra layer of plywood) and that's nothing new. these guys are all about writing off the cost of their house as a business expense, because it's a "showcase" for their (no doubt patented) designs and expertise at building impregnable hoi polloi resistant houses.
Those two by fours will be going a lot faster than 40 mi/hr in a tornado. But I doubt an angry mob will be able to heave them that fast.
You're going to spend so much that honestly, it would make more sense to let it blow down and rebuild it.
Because people who are rich enough to own homes like that wouldn't ever have anything inside that is as valuable as the house, and maybe more (paintings, artwork, stuff like that).
Not to mention emotional values.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
When you say that, I immediately think of Dengue fever. It's a hemorrhagic fever with four serotypes: fun for the whole family. Unlike most diseases where catching one variant grants immunity to the others, with dengue you end up with *less* protection from the other variants. I like to think of it as "Ebola Lite", except by the time you've had it a couple times you may not appreciate the distinction.
You can get worse things without having to make the trip to the tropics: MRSA will make your insides become your outsides at a shockingly rapid pace, and tends to cause permanent scarring in survivors. It's commonly found in hospitals! Fun fact: About half the US states do not require hospitals to report statistics on Hospital-Acquired Infections.
I've had both (within the last year or so -- may you live in interesting times). MRSA is worse, and lots closer to home. For all the hue and cry about salmonella, only about 30 people die per year from it. In 2005, over eighteen thousand people died from MRSA -- it has a greater annual death toll than AIDS.
If I had to pick which infection to get again, I'd probably go with "Ebola Lite". That should tell you something.
The question of why MRSA gets less press than other diseases is left as an exercise to the reader. Support legislation on hospital infection statistics!
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
If you have a choice of where you live, staying away from the coast, and not near an active seismic zone, and not next to a river can help.
The big city and the well-paying job tends to found where where trade, transport and communication is easy and affordable.
The Erie Canal linked an ambitious and prosperous New York City to the Great Lakes and the Midwest. New Orleans had the Mississippi, the Missouri and Ohio to draw upon.
If your interests lie in grain and cattle and you will likely be thinking about settling the Great Plains. The miner heads for the mountains. The fisherman for open water.
A square house made of sticks does not stand up to high winds. For that you need a concrete dome made by the folks at Monolithic.
What happens when that master key gets out in the wild? It's bound to happen eventually...
From the fine wiki article:
Some building managers wire Knox Boxes into their burglar alarm systems so that opening the box trips the alarm, negating their use in facilitating clandestine entry.
Perhaps you've seen this before yourself: Ever see a house that gets abandoned? For SOME reason?? To me, @ least, it seems like the house "dies faster"... that's right. I've got 1 that got abandoned @ the bottom of my land, & for the 1st year or so, it seemed to "hold up" pretty well - however, after that??? It 'went to shit', really, Really, REALLY fast!
* It's almost like the house "loses something" when it's no longer dwelled in... & I don't mean just "regular maintenance either (kind of hard to explain unless you've seen it yourself).
I think that when a home's dwelled in, it lasts longer (mostly maintenance, but it's almost like it has a 'spirit' when it has people in it too).
APK
P.S.=> I think maintenance and people living in homes helps, but in the case of those castles (1 that I saw AMAZED me in Poland - it LITERALLY had 365 rooms in it, & the guy that built it was supposed to be more-or-less, as wealthy as Mr. Bill Gates is today, albeit in those days) - I'm going to go YOUR way on it! Just massively BETTER construction... granite blocks the size of automobiles sure help!
I guess You have to SEE these castles to TRULY appreciate them!
2 of the 1st things I look @ in homes? If stone/brick?? The state of the mortar between them, AND, what kind of wood is beneath the flooring (thicker the better, & if possible, steel support beams) in ANY type of home. Then, I go to the exterior & check if its AT LEAST aluminized (better yet, vinyl siding) & that the eaves over the edges of the roof don't let water FLOW down the sides of the house (I see a LOT OF THAT in "modern homes" in these large newer housing tracts)...
... apk
I personally have been involved with reinforced concrete construction for houses since the mid-1990's. It's called Insulated Concrete Forms -- blocks of EPS which you stack like Lego, add rebar as you go and then fill with concrete. Your reinforcing schedule is per standard ACI schedules (here in the US; I'm sure there is an EU equivalent). The EPS stays in place and provides thermal insulation. It may be stuccoed, or panel products (drywall) can be attached. Concrete core thicknesses vary from 4" (10 cm) to 15" (38 cm). About a decade back Texas A&M University was given a research grant to develop a "tornado safe room" for homes and their final design used ICFs with as I recall a 6" core (but may have been 8"). They tested the construction by firing dimensional lumber at it with an air cannon.
ICFs are a very superior construction technology, but they are not without their unique challenges. An architect who is not familiar with them will make a mess of his first design or two, because they *do not* go together like a stick-framed wall. It can be done, but will cost -- in 2005 I built a multi-family house with 31 corners to its footprint, 8 of those 31 were right angles all the rest were odd. Additionally, the resulting envelope is *extremely* tight, which presents HVAC challenges not found in most houses. There is also a rather high first-cost, not only is it a slower process than banging together a wall with nail guns, but the materials are pricey. The flip side is that climate conditioning costs will be far less (heat or A?C) and it is literally rock-solid structure that will not blow away.
It is easy to design a house to withstand multiple types of disasters.
However, the pampered rich will not buy them.
If you entertain, you cannot have a long entryway to repel home invaders.
If you want a view of the water or mountains or whatever, you need to carve holes in the sturdy walls in put in windows that _will_ fail when the wind gets strong enough. And most emergency preparedness is not a one-time thing. It is the maintenance of keeping batteries charged and an emergency food supply up-to-date and having sufficient -liquid- gasoline (it jells over time).
That said, those homes will sell for the same reason folks bought/built nuclear shelters in the 1960s. Fear and lack of foresight. (And the homes will only -appear- to withstand multiple disasters up until the time one actually occurs because they will have windows that fail and homeowners who don't understand generators and a house staff that will stay at their own homes instead of show up during a disaster to take care of white folks who probably vote Republican.)
When I see pictures of the storm damage, I notice most houses in the USA seems to be built of wood. No wonder they are not storm resistant, did they forgot the story of the 3 little pigs and the wolf? In the part of Europe I live almost all houses are built of stone, storms do cause damage but you never get complete villages completely crashed. Wood is used for garden small homes, not for the house you normally live in.
You don't need to go nuts to get a home that'll survive massive destruction.
Wood-framed homes are plenty strong to survive massive destruction. The failures happen where the various frame pieces join together, hence the Hurriquake nail designed just for this purpose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HurriQuake
Secondly, I've seen the aftermath, and heard from residents, and you get a pretty clear map of what works and what doesn't... The houses destroyed are the ones that didn't have steel shutters... all the the surviving houses have steel shutters on them. Those big pieces of plywood you see people attaching just aren't nearly strong enough (without extra framing), and your home is long gone the instance the envelope is compromised.
Build your home with hurriquake nails, and have steel shutters installed, and your home will handle immense forces, without needing massive design compromises that make the resale value about zero.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Cities should provide heavy funding for Solar Panels on every roof-top, saving cities $Billions of dollars.
FEMA & Governors should get together to create State-to-State storm drains, preventing states/cities from floods.
Creating storm drains from city to pond or local lake isn't going to resolve Super Storm and Hurricanes that
is as big as a State.
The Mississippi river should also be channeled to mid-western states
during Hurricane season(s), saving states/cities from floods.
Instead, the government compels insurers to cover them anyway.
Actually coastal insurance is government subsidized as well as subsidized by regular insurance buyers. Gotta take care of them rich folk with oceanfront property, ya know.
It doesn't have to be expensive to build a house than can withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, fire, etc. Nor does it have to be very large. Our family's home cost only $7K to build and is a comfortable 252 sq-ft for five people. We built it in two months by ourselves - just about anybody could do it.
As an added bonus, our house's 100,000 lbs of masonry (stone, brick and concrete) stores heat very well so the house is cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Even without auxiliary heat the house stays above 45ÂF in the dead of winter here in the mountains of northern Vermont when it is -25ÂF outdoors for extended periods. We burn a mere 0.75 cord of maple hardwood a year in our wood stove to bring the cottage up from that to a toasty 70ÂF for my wife who likes things a little warmer.
Another advantage of this construction is it is virtually maintenance free. No painting, no roof to repair or reshingle (the roof is a concrete barrel vault), and the house can be earth bermed for even better performance and to make it blend with the landscape.
Because the house has such a high thermal mass we are able to have a lot more windows than a conventional house without overheating. Our east, south and west walls are virtually all windows. Shutters can protect the windows during bad storms - a simple, traditional method of quickly closing up.
Our house will also probably last hundreds to thousands of years. Far longer than conventional stick built houses.
Frankly, there is no good excuse for building the fragile stick built houses.
Location is also important. Don't build where it will flood. That land is better for forests, fields and crops or just wildlife.
If you are curious and would like to see our house visit:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottage
where you'll find pictures and articles about how we built it.
Hurricanes you can see coming. But having some malicious person report you for being a terrorist, or possessing child porn, is all it takes to get your door smashed in, your family terrorized, and your house ripped apart.
I piss off bigots.
On the 'hurricane straps' & the "WHY" of why they're used in these homes in Florida!
From the sounds of it? You've got experience here - Sounds like an engineering/physics standpoint almost.
(I'm no builder by trade, so I can use whatever feedback I can get here on this note... since, to be honest? It just made sense to me to use both! Guess there's times when "common-sense" can FAIL you, & this appears to be "one of those times"!)
* "Live & Learn"...
APK
P.S.=> & yes, that makes sense, as to your explanation of it!
... apk
The catch is that when the house goes down the people go with it. The economics of a structures must not control the quality of the structure. If you take the cost of construction into account suppose that it is 30 years before nature takes down a building. What is the replacement cost going to be thirty years from now?
I am in a zone frequented by hurricanes. I've been through quite a few. But can you imagine what the cost would have been to flee from each likely strike of a storm for the last 55 years? First, you must run early as when others wish to get out it is impossible so one must flee at the first hint of a storm. When the storm is over you need to be home instantly to protect and mitigate damages. Mildew can be a disaster if water has gotten in so you really need to get things done very quickly. Add the losses from not being able to return for a couple of weeks until roads are cleared and planes can land. I would have had to sponsor an evacuation at least once every year and it would be rather distant as hotel rooms closer to home sell out at first hints of a storm. Figure at least $1800 per year for each evacuation and an additional $5,000 in repairs for not being at home to protect and mitigate damages. Then consider the loss of personnal effects, your hobby items, motorcycles, boats, clothing, furniture and papers.
The cost of even partial failure of a structure is a nightmare. Having to consume raw materials is a nightmare to nature. A building that functions well for hundreds of years is a wonderful goal.
Fear is the best salesman.
We all knew this would happen. Alas, we did it anyway.
"Attention, Unit DNE of the line..."
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
High above the flood plain. Takes care of most things.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Oh, sorry about that.
it is hard to determine sometimes.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
My home was chosen well. I'll be buried in my back yard 'cause I'm never going to leave.
'Cause, you know, we'll always have that option. There'll always be building materials, money worth something, a functioning economy and plenty of energy. Yeah, no worries. La de da. The only sense you'll ever have to worry about is financial, now go back to sleep, sheeple.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Funny that this is both on-topic and incredibly insightful yet is moderated down. Good job Slashmorons!
Or they could just build a monolithic dome for an 8% premium and get all the benefits and more.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
"it would make more sense to let it blow down and rebuild it.''
This does not take into account at all the major life disruption that happens when a family loses their home, nor the potential lives saved by "fortress" construction.
If my kids do not get killed in a hurricane and we don't have to live like refugees for several months while struggling to find or build a new home, what's that worth?
In Reason We Trust
http://disastersafety.org/wp-content/uploads/FEH_HURR_designations_IBHS.pdf
If you read through the standards (from BRONZE, to SILVER, to GOLD), "Fortified" pretty much means only that they're following reasonably standard levels of construction. For example "GOLD" requires "a continuous load-line from the roof to the foundation" and "chimneys be adequately anchored". I think it was BRONZE that '"studs have to be less than 24" (61cm) on center"? Seriously?
I'm in MN, and very little of the 'fortification' is anything more than the standard methods used in construction in the parts of the country where we have seasons.
If we built our homes to the (apparently) sub-Bronze 'standards' they've been using, that wouldn't be considered a 'home', it would be a playhouse or a shed.
-Styopa
I've heard that, in addition to smoke removal, fresh air (or water) lowers a room's temperature and can prevent flash-over. There must be an optimal solution among the inputs -- people get degrees in this stuff.
Odd you should mention geese. There are actually U.S. Army bases that use geese as alarms, placing them between fence lines surrounding the base. They make a lot of noise when unauthorized people are in their space.
As for geese attacks, I'd tend to discount that. Yes, they will do that. I've been attacked several times; I used to be a photographer and would often shoot wedding portraits at a lake with geese. I've seen several brides and grooms attacked without much damage as long as they moved fast enough to prevent the goose from latching onto clothing. They got some good stories to tell, though. I've been forced to kick a couple but that seemed to make them think twice and they appeared none the worse for wear.
Fortified homes only defend against what you expected to be up against when you built it.
The best defense against crime is availability of good jobs in your area. The best defense against natural disasters is a well integrated community that can pull together when the unexpected inevitably happens.