The recent overblown(cough,cough) news coverage of the hurricane brought back something I remember seeing. Seems there is a Japanese architect who designed his house to withstand all that a hurricane can pummel it with. To wit, the house is essentially suspended on a string (well…not a string, but you get the idea) between 2 sections of either cliffs or mountains. When the wind blows, the house sways. I don’t remember anymore details than that (like what the heck did he do with the plumbing or electricity?), except the vague impression that there was alot of glass in the house for the oceanview.
Some of the photos that I saw in the newspaper showed your basic square box on really tall wooden stilts. Wouldn’t that just give the wind more surface area to beat upon? To me wooden stilts would better serve in a flood plain. I was thinking that a better idea would be a triangle/pyramid, with the acute angle in the direction that hurricanes normally come from.
Then I started thinking about tornados. Wouldn’t underground houses be better off in Tornado Alley than traditional buildings? Would a dome shape work in a tornado or hurricane equally as well? And how does one build for a typhoon or earthquake?
Any thoughts?
This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
Replies
Plantlust is a thinker.
Only because I haven't gotten into the whole Talk Like a Pirate holiday spirit, I'm not busy running away from a really BIG weather phenomenon, I really don't want to make that phonecall to the vet AND I don't have a date for tonight.
It's also too dark to do any gardening outside, tho the weather is stunning, 'cause I don't have a miner's hat (which would probably get the neighbors to call the cops on me) and I'm steeling myself to do some stripping/sanding/painting of garage trim. *sigh*This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
I don't know about the sanding and painting part.
I ponder the reasons why we have such a love affair with a box that sits on the dirt. Totally exposed to the elements. Winds hitting a perpendicular wall.
Think it must be a carryover from the log cabin days when there wasn't much of a choice.
Here's one. American homebuilding. Vinyl siding on insulation board with 7/16 osb in the corners. Rolled fiberglass between those 2x4s and drywall the inside. How about trying some 15 yr fiberglass shingles on 7/16 osb and stick in on the top of a knoll.
Oh well, guess it beats 2nd floor apartment living.
I have thoughts. Just sitting here listening to the wind howl.
I think the root of the reason is basic human nature, which is unchanged through all of human history. Why do people live in homes that are not built for the environment? Some don't know they are and have trusted the builder to know better. Some know and don't care (same behavior as people who smoke, or eat like pigs yet know they shouldn't). Some don't want to spend the money, rather spend it on more instant gratification. Some don't have the money.
The exotic homes like the one in Japan are just too expensive. But, yes, building underground would be much safer in tornado alley, but people choose having comfort (nice views, pretty homes) over protection from a risk they perceive as small. It's natural to balance risk vs. pleasure all the time. Also, many people just do what everyone else does.
I've always been puzzled why basements are ubiquitous in the northeast, but largely unknown in the midwest and south. True, you couldn't build one on a beachfront, but why are they so shunned elsewhere, given all their advantages?
As far as triangular homes, they are much more expensive to build, and wouldn't work anyway. The wind direction changes as a storm passes. As an example, consider a home in NC 50 miles north of the track of a hurricane. As it approaches the wind comes from the East, then from the South, then from the West as the storm departs. I think it would mess up your mind to live in a triangular room, too.
Building a home to resist an earthquake is actually quite easy. It's very widely understood technology. It adds very little to the cost. It's done all the time.
>> I've always been puzzled why basements are ... largely unknown in the midwest ...
Don't basements correlate pretty closely to a deep frost line? Once you go down some X number of inches, the marginal cost of going down far enough to add a basement isn't that much.
I talked to an ex-colleague of mine who was originally from the Chicago area, moved to Phoenix and then moved back to the Chicago area. His reason for the following was also corraborated by a taxi driver in Austin.
The reason they don't build basements is that a hole would need to be blasted in order to get a basement. It makes a house much more expensive, so people don't add the basement.
Edited because my clarity stunk.
This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
Edited 9/20/2003 12:04:42 AM ET by PLANTLUST
My area of the Midwest, it takes dynamite or slave labor to make a basement. So much limestone and rock with clay soil that its just cost prohibative in most building sites.
as far as hurricane and torando resistant housing, look to ICF walls. But in the end, if mother nature wants a house she WILL get that house.
Thanks for the storm info. I'm just used to the vicious wind/thunderstorms that pop up periodically here. The last really nasty tornado jumped over my town and nailed Plainfield.
There is a house near here that is sortof underground. The front of the house faces south and is built into a hill? Hard to describe. When you drive down the street(east) past the house, you get a glimpse of the driveway and part of the front. Then the moment passes and it just looks like a field of grasses.
And I remember reading about a house in Arkansas for sale (millions of dollars) that was built in a cave.This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
There is a house near here that is sortof underground. The front of the house faces south and is built into a hill? Hard to describe.
You described our place. Isabel went directly overhead. I spent yesterday clearing trees across the driveway. Anybody need some wood? Two substantial trees came down behind the house. With a 2' dirt cushion and a 240 ton inert mass between them and us, we weren't concerned. That was part of our thinking when we built and left all the trees that we could, generally 80' tall.
As 4lorn noted, forest fires aren't much concern either. When we applied for home owner's insurance the underwriter insisted on a visit to understand what we had. Next came a phone call wondering why in the world we had any interest in fire insurance. Seems that's how they view HO insurance. We have a very different view.
I met a guy who found our place by accident. He was following, and clearing, the logging roads on the ridge of his employer's property when suddenly he saw a stove pipe sticking up out of the ground. Figured he must have strayed off onto somebody else's land. Don't think he actually got his tractor on our roof, but I do.PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
"...I've always been puzzled why basements are ubiquitous in the northeast, but largely unknown in the midwest"
I can't speak for all of the midwest. But here in Illinois I'd say that 90% of houses have basements. It isn't premarital sex if you have no intention of getting married.
With so much of the general population aging, basements or anything that requires going up or down steps will be a hindrance for every day living, on the odd chance of a disaster happening.
We have a basement here but will build the new house with a "safe room", supposedly tornado proof, not another basement.
Our basement, built in 1936, is bone dry but several of our neighbors flood regularly. Maybe they were not built right, but if so, there sure were many bad builders around here in those days.
A friend just built a house on the edge of the canyons, on a rock ledge, so they didn't put in a basement that would have needed to be dug out of the rock, but have a "safe room".
"'ve always been puzzled why basements are ubiquitous in the northeast, but largely unknown in the midwest and south. True, you couldn't build one on a beachfront, but why are they so shunned elsewhere, given all their advantages?"
Where in the hell do you think that the midwest is!
I am starting a new thread in the tavern.
Bill
PS, I am in what some call the midwest, but I don't. My house is on a slab, but I also have a basement.
Edited 9/20/2003 11:49:59 AM ET by Bill Hartmann
Oh drat. I thought this was going to be a mobile home thread. ; )
Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Snort.
We already know that mobile homes emit magnetic waves which attract any possible tornado within a 10 mile radius. Must not be putting enough tinfoil under the roof or something.
And that brings up another point.
In Tornado Alley, so far knockonwood, there hasn't been a really bad earthquake in awhile so the only real disaster to be expected would be the tornado or a really bad thunderstorm. A tornado or really bad thunderstorm knock out electricity because the electric company puts the wires on POLES. Wouldn't it make more sense to bury the lines, maybe in some type of large tunnel with access holes every X yards/feet/miles? Think of all the overtime and material replacements costs that could be saved...This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
It costs roughly three times as much to put the power lines underground so the life expectancy gain has to approximate the same as above ground plus maintainance costs. In some places this happens. I know of a run in eastern Colorado wherre various storms wiped out the same line three years out of five and it finally went underground. Heat disapation is another problem with higher currents too.
In cities, it becomes more efficient to gfo underground because of higher pop density and repair access problems are mitigated considering traffic and all..
Excellence is its own reward!
It costs roughly three times as much to put the power lines underground so the life expectancy gain has to approximate the same as above ground plus maintainance costs.
Our 1/2 mile burial was quoted twice the cost of aboveground and our electric coop was dead set against it even though we were paying. When there are (frequent) electric outages, it's NEVER our line. Repair would be no more of a problem than above ground if it's ever needed. Either would've required a substantial hike. And now they don't pay to keep the 40' easement cleared. 40' is a joke, given the size of normal trees here. Seems that there are still several hundred thousand without electricity in Virginia this morning. PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
But the poles with wires are so beautiful! Wouldn't we all miss them? ; )Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Mobile homes are the answer! An awesome idea, well thought out, but like usual, we fat lazy Americans failed to execute the plan well. See for a mobile home to work, it has to be MOBILE, but not good enough for us, we needed a park to put it in, then hang a deck off it, put up some skirting, maybe a garden, let's not forget a shed and a carport. Next thing, bada bing, lets's sell the axels and wheels to the guy down the street to build a race car trailer. No more mobility, bad weather magnet city baby!
What ever happened to just letting nature do it's thing, and get the hell out of the way?
Yup. Even those who like tipis are now into restoration of classic older homes... : )Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Would a dome shape work in a tornado or hurricane equally as well?
It would work better than any other conventional structure. How the engineering handles the different forces can be demonstrated. FEMA has classified the thin-shell domes as providing "near absolute disaster resistance".
The houses on stilts? Scary.
View Image
Ya know, I think about your domes now whenever I go to the beach. I know you really know what the stilts are for, and how they usually fare in a hurricane.
Pretty obvious a storm would roll right over a dome on an on grade slab, but how do you think it would handle undermining from the storm surge? Would that be where the "near absolute disaster resistance" comes in?
And, can you shingle side one of those suckers? EliphIno!
Domes, at least those that are well designed and located, have a long history of weather resistance and efficiency. The ferro-concrete versions are also fire resistance if landscaping is maintained and openings are secured.
Homes located mostly or completely underground, assuming they don't flood, also have a bonus in resistance.
Flip it over... Ya got yourself a boat of sorts.
Who ever invented work didn't know how to fish....
a boat of 'snorts? That's scary<G> EliphIno!
Here's one right on the Atlantic designed with storm surge in mind. The cutouts along the bottom allow a complete washout of the "basement". The upper floors are suspended from the dome, rather than bearing on the soil.
View Image
Even though I'm rather fond of them, we still need intelligent design. My window wall would be an invitation to disaster in hurricane or tornado regions, for example. A low, squat one in a flood plain is silly. But a nice thing is that we don't have to bury them to get effective protection from elements. And it's also nice that they are pretty much equally energy-efficient above or below ground, so you don't sacrifice anything by building in the manner that best suits the land. Plus, it's really easy to berm them.
I like that one. Is it your design? How are the piers set (they are piers, aren't they)?
And are you talking about a window wall in your own dome, or the one in the pic? I saw some great storm shutters in the Bahamas, a sort of bullet proof clear plastic. Be a neat way to see a hurricane.
Mrs 'Snort and I will be moving to some coast or another and I'm getting to like domes more and more. Seeing one in the dunes is great, fits right in.
EliphIno!
This one pre-dated my design adventures. But the guy who designed it and built it for his parents did the building of my dome shell. We stayed there with them one weekend, and it's probably my favorite house of any I've ever seen. He built it on pilings driven into the ground. What you see between the cutout openings really aren't piers, but just the "column" space left when you cut two holes that close together. Beneath then is a continuous ring beam (footer) tied into the pilings. The weight is evenly distributed on the footer.
He does have hurricane shutters hidden up above his windows. My window wall is 30x16 and rated at 100 mph in a 70 mph zone, so I'm not taking extra measures.
It's a lot more fun watching storms when the building you're in is rock solid and not shaking in the wind.
Edited 9/22/2003 7:22:27 PM ET by Cloud Hidden
Yer right, just looking at your pic pleases me, and I think that's what design is all about...I don't see anything awkward.
Are there only perimeter pilings? You've got me stoked...but let's get thoese window walls up to 200MPH, no sense screwin' around, right?<G> EliphIno!
>Are there only perimeter pilings?
As far as I know. All the weight transfers to the ring beam. The whole interior could be a clear span.
WOW. That looks like the head of a giant alien (or football player) emerging from the earth. Kindof cool tho.
Was thinking about my angle idea a bit more. How do you think a pyramid would hold up?This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
The owner likened it after some of the seashells on the beach...
PBS did a show on structures. Technically, a pyramid is stronger than a rectangle, but not as strong as compound curves (dome). Space is harder to use efficiently, too. Still, all shapes can be interesting with forethought.
Suspending a house from cables between mountains seems counter productive for hurricane or wind storm protection. Wind would be channeled, concentrated by the narrow gap. Also wind speed increases with altitude, has to do with friction with the ground, vegetation and other surface obstacles. Might be fun, quite a ride, in a moderate storm but in the long run I would worry about metal fatigue. About the only advantage would be versus flooding.
Generally the best strategy seems to be to stay low, but not so low as to get flooded. To limit the ability of the wind to grip any of the house exposed, think hemispheres and round structures. Weight and anchoring helps hold things in one position. Structural reinforcement holds everything together. Any opening unreinforced to remain closed can allow wind to literally blow the structure apart. Anything the wind doesn't get gets soaked and fails, or rots, later.
Long ago a popular strategy was to design overhangs and other structures likely to grab the wind so as to allow them to peel off or break away without compromising the larger structure. Modern thinking and some research has shown that these pieces, in addition to becoming deadly missiles to anyone caught outside and damaging your neighbors house, often come back on shifting winds as battering rams and damage the home they came from. Most reputable sources advocate keeping everything in one piece to limit the number of missiles.
Some cut down all surrounding trees but some research seems to show that trees, at least those properly maintained to common sense standards, do little damage and have been shown to often act as wind breaks protecting the house.
All this holds for hurricanes, wind storms and tornadoes. Earthquake resistance is bolstered by good structural integrity but weight, a benefit in a breeze, works against you. Particularly if it is some distance from the anchor points or center of mass. A dome is good as the weight is low with a wide base.
Wildfire. IMHO a low building without overhangs and few horizontal surfaces is a boon. With few areas for burning brands to settle on, surfaces for flames to rise or blow squarely against the resistance should be higher for any given material. Building the exterior out of resistant materials, concrete, masonry or metal multiplies this effect. Similar to hurricane resistance reliable closures over openings is important.
Domestic unrest. Making the house unobtrusive can pay dividends. Given a choice between raiding a ostentatious palace or an apparently empty block of woods mobs tend to go for the easy money. While your landscaping for wildfire keep your fields of observation, or fire, open. Thorn bushes and cactus both are adapted to fire, don't burn well or don't add much fuel, and keeping people at bay in an esthetic way. Ballistic armor might make sense if your planning for gunfire. incorporated into a safe room, if your planning to hold out until help arrives, or the whole house, maybe just below the window frames, if your more likely to reenact the Alamo.
Terrorism. Many of the common steps helpful for natural disasters, like storage of food, water and other supplies, help greatly as OBL is more likely to target infrastructure, transportation, communication, utilities that your particular house. Three day supply is an absolute minimum. Go for a years supply if possible. It can be built up slowly. If you plan to include arms don't advertise the fact. Guns are prime targets for thieves.
An independent power supply, solar looks good, and water source make sense the longer your planning to hold out. Storing enough water for a weeks measured use is easy enough but your going to need to refill, filter or treat from a source in time.
You can get as elaborate as you can afford. A filtered positive pressure system makes sense if your planning for biological or chemical agents. A virtual spaceship located a few miles underground and supplied for several decades would be nice to call home if a medium sized asteroid hits the planet. That is unless it it hits the same hemisphere. Then your pretty much screwed.
Some say that safety is an illusion. We live provisional lives. Protected in your super bunker from everything and supplied for generations you can still slip on the soap and brain your self on the edge of the tub or poison yourself trying to conserve food. Ironic. Others spend billions of dollars attempting to protect ourselves from virtually everything. Some, check out the survivalist web sites, seem to spend so much time, effort and money protecting themselves that they surely have little left to actually live life.
In Rancho Cucamonga, a customer gave me a tour of his other house while we repaired his fire damaged farmhouse. This house used two huge concrete deadmen with steel cables stretched between them. In the middle where the house is, are D shaped walls that held the cables up and apart. Large in the center then decreasing outward. Like half a football laying in the dirt.
Huge cables exposed at the ends, shotcrete ceilings/roof and some outher exposed steel made it look kinda cool. Your comments please.
I'm not sure how any of the more popular disasters would effect such a building, I don't have a clear picture in my mind, but unprotected steel looses integrity if exposed to fire. This was the main mechanism of failure for the WTC. The soft mineral wool and drywall insulation around the steel was blown off in the blast of the planes crashing. Burning fuel and contents of the building heated the structural steel allowing the concrete floor to fall. The falling floor caused the one below it to fail and on to the ground.
The Empire State building survived a B-17 crashing into it because the steel was protected by more durable clay tile and masonry units. Given the same insulation used in the WTC it too would have likely failed and fallen.
If this is like a lot of the more modern designs I would suspect that there might be large expanses of hard to protect windows. Loss of a window, especially one of those 12' by 16' monsters, in a storm can lead to the loss of an entire building in a wind storm. I have read that such windows can allow enough radiant heat from a wildfire to get into the house to ignite the contents without fire or burning brands having to enter the building.
Huge picture windows are also a fine way to allow potential thieves to preview your fine furnishings and make a more than educated guess as to when no one is home or when the lady of the house is vulnerable.
I had a friend do some work in Puerto Rico, I think it was Puerto Rico but I'm operating from memory, and he brought back pictures of a house built into the side of a mountain. The reinforced concrete slab shading the deck could be lowered, picture a turtle retracting into its shell, to shield the openings.
Good point. Must be what the foam that you see sprayed on new const. steel, dose. Picture a hammock with Fat Albert in it, only upside down. Thats what this house looks like. Couldnt tell ya why. L8 4 Work. Jack
I saw the thread title and my first thought was "building to insure a disaster would happen."
Rich Beckman
Another day, another tool.
Bad, bad Beckman. In the corner.This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
"Bad, bad Beckman. In the corner."
But...I...um...alright, I'm going. But it's lucky for you I don't live in a dome...there'd be no corner to go to!!!
Rich Beckman
Another day, another tool.
And if you lived in my fantastic angled house you'd go insane trying to figure out which corner to go to. At least I'm not making you sit under the table with Ron <g>.This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
Try all ICF construction. I haven't seen any all concrete buildings blown off their foundations lately.
"At least I'm not making you sit under the table with Ron"
Bless you.
Rich Beckman
Another day, another tool
Edited 9/20/2003 7:09:13 PM ET by Rich Beckman
http://news.mpr.org/features/200202/19_druleyl_dome-m/index.shtml
Thanks, great article. I am a little disappointed in the lack of natural light tho. Oh well, looks like the savings in heating, cooling and tornado damage makes up for it.This jobless recovery has done more to promote the consumption of exquisite chocolate than the finest chocolatier. Cost be damned.
No....Must Resist....Can't Stop....Yup I used to look for the purple ring also.
talkin early in the morning?