Engineers Design Tornado Proof Home 189
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Emily Badger writes at the Atlantic that it's not too hard to build a tornado proof home but it's pretty difficult to design one that's liveable. "If you made a perfect earthquake structure, it would be a bunker with 24-inch walls and one small steel door for you to get in," says architect Michael Willis. That structure would be based on the empirical measurements of structural engineers. "You could design it to be perfectly resistant. But it would not be a place you'd want to live." The task behind the "Designing Recovery" competition (PDF): was to design a liveable tornado proof home in a part of the country where the geology makes it impossible to build tornado cellars or basements. Q4 Architects designed a safe space within a home instead of a shelter underneath it, a kind of house inside of a house. The result is an idea that could be replicated anywhere in tornado alley: a highly indestructible 600 square-foot core of concrete masonry, hurricane shutters and tornado doors where a family could survive a tornado and live beyond it, with several more flexible (and affordable) rooms wrapped around it. "It's going to do it's best to fight the tornado," says Elizabeth George." "Part of your house might get torn away, but the most important parts of the house are safe. After the disaster, everything is not lost. You're able to keep the most valuable things, which are the people, the functions of the house, and maybe your valuables." The genius of this idea is that while it would be significantly more expensive to build out the same tornado precautions for the entire home, the CORE house is meant to be constructed for under $50,000."
Editorial nit (Score:3)
You're able to keep the most valuable things, which are the people, the functions of the house, and maybe your valuables
Just putting that out there.
Re:Editorial nit (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone thinks Slashdot is mostly read by tech nerds. Nonsense - most Slashdotters are frustrated proofreaders.
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Provincialism (Score:2)
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what is even funnier is that tornado safe rooms have been designed for the last couple of decades, and a concrete bunker in the center of the house isn't a new idea.
the problem is twofold.
the average age of a house in the USA is 30-40 years old. that means things like decent insulation are still far beyond them let alone double pane windows. None of those houses can have a safe room easily or cheaply.
Second none of these are cheap period. a $30,000 addition to even a $300,000 house is a serious investmen
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the average age of a house in the USA is 30-40 years old
Living as I do in a ~250 year old English house, once a coaching inn, I sometimes forget just how young much of the US is. Which is regrettable, because it's its youth which has made it so dynamic and at the same time so naïve.
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To an American a hundred years is a long time, and to a Briton a hundred miles is a long distance.
Re: Provincialism (Score:2)
Yep half the country is less than 100 years old .
The other half is little more than twice that.
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"So living in an old house make you magically wise?"
Wise enough not to have been in a hurricane for 250 years.
Re:Provincialism (Score:4, Insightful)
What's your record on aerial bombardment? Location matters.
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This country were last subject to aerial attack in WW2, and the US in 2001.
This particular area has been populated for at least 6,000 years, and not been invaded since 1066. It has never been attacked from the air.
I wish you well over the next millennium.
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Yet houses like mine that are 60 years old are better built than the crap built today.
3/4" thick plywood, real brick and stone and not the styrofoam crap. 6" thick outer walls, real rafters and eaves that extend out. etc....
all homes built today are garbage compared to a properly built home from the 50's
Re:Provincialism (Score:5, Funny)
And it would probably pop apart in the first tornado or hurricane since it most likely doesn't have roof straps. Then you're buried under 3/4" plywood, those six inch outer walls and six decades of dirt swept into the corner.
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Your 60 year old home is better than the majority of homes built 60 years ago, which is why yours is still standing when most of them are not
Really? Not on Long Island, and I doubt it's because of stricter building codes. For example, there are thousands of houses in Levittown, which were built as tiny inexpensive homes, and the last of them was built exactly 60 years ago. They're virtually all standing, have been expanded, and are in good shape. In my town, there are lots of houses built in the 1920's (a construction boom era), and quite a few that date back further than that.
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In 60 years, most of the homes built today will be gone. But I dare say a fair number, possibly a higher proportion, will be still standing.
I'm sorry, what?
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Get your nose out of the clouds. Surprisingly, most people are not familiar with the type of soil in Oklahoma, and how it affects construction. This denizen of the East Coast found the article interesting and informative. BTW, I presume you're familiar with the details of how barrier islands shift, what preservation efforts do and don't work for them (and why), the stability of different varieties of coastal sand bluffs, the hydrology of Long Island, which affects millions of people, the reason for the hump
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"The Surprising Reason" houses don't have underground facilities? Maybe surprising to the provincial readers of The Atlantic, but obvious plain logic to everyone else
Maybe I missed something, but the article doesn't seem to clearly explain why.
The ground is mostly clay, and it's not very stable. I get that. However, it also says, "one in 10 Oklahomans have access to the basements". So it's entirely possible, and not that uncommon.
On the question of possibility of building a tornado proof house, one expert said, "You can, but your neighbors probably would not like it in their neighborhood and you would need some of Bill Gates's wealth to pay for it."
Later, the article sa
Tornado Resistant (Score:3)
Living in tornado alley I must protest that one does not make a tornado "proof" home, one makes a tornado resistant home. The idea that you can make a home tornado "proof" is greatly misleading and like saying you can make an armored vehicle bomb "proof". You can only make things resistant to a given degree - this in important technicality on a tech site.
Tornadoes are these machinations of nature that are perfectly capable of lifting the foundations of a freeway out of a ground and flinging semi trucks through the air. When the news covers an area that was hit the word used to describe the people that lived is always "survived". Bad headline, bad headline.
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Sure you can make your house tornado-proof, but you have to live in an underground bunker somewhere that's not flood-prone.
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Speaking as the average human, I carefully skimmed your post and understand that we should build tornado-proof homes out of black holes?
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To me it seems there is a lot of FUD thrown up by those interested in pushing timber construction.
Another oft heard argument is that to you need hugely strong doors and thick windows to keep everything intact ... which seems disingenuous to me, just treat doors, windows, roof cladding and the interior of exterior rooms as sacrificial. Buying that stuff costs a hell of a lot less than building a new home.
Tornado *resistant*... (Score:2)
The walls may help shield from debris in the event of a EF-1 to 3 (which granted is the vast majority of tornadoes). But there isn't much on this earth (above ground, anyway) that's going to survive a direct hit from an EF-5 tornado.
My dad saw the track left by one that hit in Alabama years ago. The thing sucked up everything, including grass, in a 1/2 mile wide path. The only thing left behind was orange clay. There wasn't a single intact structure left, not even foundations.
Closest thing humanity has
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If the tornado left behind clay then you can pretty sure that a shallow dome-shaped building with concrete walls (or thick clay walls for that matter) would survive.
I would think the key to building a completely and utterly tornado-proof building is building it out of heavy materials that are hard for the wind to pick up and making sure the airflow over the building remains smooth and free of turbulence. You want smooth, flowing exterior surfaces. You do not want flat walls and corners that create turbulenc
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Wouldn't a smooth flow of air over a dome generate Lift?
Re:Tornado *resistant*... (Score:4, Insightful)
Joplin Hospital begs to differ. Yet, it was still standing and moved by all of 4 inches (which, however, was sufficient to make it uneconomic to repair). People died either because they couldn't be moved away from the windows in time (being in a bed in a hospital). Or because they depended on ventilators for breathing that lost power due to wind/hail/rain damage on powerlines and emergency backup.
Reinforced concrete is perfectly sufficient to withstand an EF-5. Unfortunately, most buildings in the US are made of reinforced cardboard.
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Quite the opposite actually. The smaller you build something, the easier it is for it to survive. The larger the house, the larger the area where the wind can push, the larger the forces that all the walls and structural members have to handle. Nobody would use the same thick walls of the first or second floor of a 14 storey building, if you weren't going to put the other 12 floors on top of it. It would be ludicrously overengineered for such a small thing.
It is much easier to build a small building to last
Nominative Determinism (Score:3)
I think this is old news (Score:2)
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Cite? Not that I doubt you, but I'd be interested in details, whether it had been tested, what strength tornado, etc.
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They are referred to as Insulating Concrete Forms. Plenty of info on the internet and the tech could be easily integrated with a reinforced non-ICF concrete central safe room for layered defense.
Done once before (Score:2)
...and the engineers said almost the same thing but their design was a strucutr that looked like a pyramid
Well, the pharaoh's still there sleeping, isn't he?
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Well, the pharaoh's still there sleeping, isn't he?
Nope. They failed to make it archeologist-proof.
They had that designed back in the 40's. (Score:3)
Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller had built several that are tornado and hurricane proof. He made several concrete dome homes that have taken the worst that nature can dish out and only need minor repairs.
Heck they are sharknado proof.
as a design exercise, sure (Score:2)
It's an interesting challenge, and forces architectural 'entrpreneurs' to think through some of the relevant issues.
However....I'd guess that the best that will come from this is a few decent ideas that *may* make things a little bit better. I hope so anyway.
For example: it's a market fact that people are willing to spend very little $ on pure safety features. Witness the great swathes of country where a basement or even simply storm cellar would radically increase the chances of tornado survival....and y
Basements in San Diego (Score:2)
Does anyone know if this type of soil is why houses don't have basements in San Diego? I don't live there, but even locals don't seem to know why.
Interesting but (Score:3)
You can build a structure to combat hurricanes and tornadoes - but it isn't going to be THAT cheap. Given that fact I have no intention of living anywhere beyond the northeast U.S. None! Sure, we get a little geologic action from time to time, and hurricanes get here about once every 30 or so years though the cycle seems to have been shortened lately.
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You guys just have to deal with blizzards that can knock out power and make driving difficult for extended periods of time.
Why not the southwest? Generally not too much geologic activity, no real hurricanes or tornadoes to speak of, etc.. There's a reason data centers are being built like crazy in Las Vegas (beyond the fact that the backbones go through there).
Even central Texas isn't too bad. Hurricanes don't get that far inland, you're far enough south to avoid most of Tornado Alley, and there's virtually
cave (Score:2)
My cave does just fine already. Free AC and heat year round too. Mold is kinda a problem. And bears.
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And bat guano. Still, I kinda like the idea. Who says being a troglodyte is bad.
20 years ago (Score:2)
Bad idea. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bad idea. (Score:5, Informative)
For hurricanes and floodings, which could devastate large areas in a single event, I see your point. However, a single tornado usually impacts only a small area. The probability of an individual house in Tornado Alley being struck by an F4 or F5 tornado seems to be 10^(-7) per year [flame.org]. Economically, it makes more sense to insure the risk than to build an F4-tornado-proof house. I couldn't find probabilities for F3 tornadoes, but I could imagine that a similar argument holds there.
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Financially, it probably does make more sense to simply insure against the loss, as you said.
But keep in mind that people can't evacuate from tornadoes like they can with hurricanes, so not having precautions like these is essentially a death sentence for the individuals in the path of a tornado like that. Did you remember to factor the cost of life in? And even if you did, telling people that it makes more sense to simply insure the loss is the same as telling them that those lives are only worth as much a
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It will let people survive to rebuild in an area unsuitable for human occupation again and again.
New York City began a North Atlantic port with connections to the Great Lakes and the Midwest. The Mohawk Valley providing a pass through the Appalachian mountains. New Orleans as a Gulf port with access to the whole of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio River valleys.
If you are looking for gainful employment and a place to live, you tend to be drawn to places that have fertile land, fresh water, good communications, the potential for trade, agricultural and industrial development.
The geography and clim
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Most farmers aren't willing to live in isolation a thousand miles from the nearest city.
Anyway, there's a simple and effective solution for disaster prone areas: mandatory insurance. The government already requires people in flood prone areas to purchase flood insurance. Simply expand that to other types of disaster, and perhaps add a city-level insurance for city property.
already employing the cost effective solution (Score:2)
paying tens of thousands of extra dollars for something that probably won't happen is a waste. better to play the odds and have low cost houses, sometimes a minute amount of people will die *shrug*
Reminds me of the Kettle House (Score:2)
Ask the Air Force (Score:2)
They probably have some Minuteman Missile Silos being decommissioned , they would be tornado proof.
Did you try a concrete dome. (Score:2)
Wrong Solution - Use individual "Escape Pods"... (Score:2)
Cheaper Solution: Use Culverts, Culvert Pipe (Score:2)
Protect yourself by climbing into the pipe.
It would have to be buried or anchored and topped with earth/asphalt/gravel/concrete to streamline air flow over the pipe.
Normally a culvert pipe is laid horizontally and could hold a number of people. Or you could use short sections and set them in the ground vertically. When trouble comes you climb in with a built-in ladder. Although these would be more trouble to maintain because:
trailers is what we need, not homes (Score:2)
No need to spend $50K (Score:2)
There is no need to spend $50K. I designed and built a masonry (steel reinforced concrete, ferrocement and stone) small (252 sq-ft) home for our family for $7K. It is great to live in. It is also tornado proof but that is merely incidental. Because of it having a high thermal mass inside an insulating envelope it also stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter which saves more money every year on energy costs.
I'd like to see more subterranean homes (Score:2)
It sounds crazy but they make a lot of sense.
1. Heating and cooling is less of an issue. The earth holds a pretty consistent temperature and you can regulate your home by exploiting it.
2. Winds, hurricanes, etc are less of an issue because you're either flush with the ground or nearly so.
3. The roof can more easily be used as a garden or expansion to your property. All natural light comes in through skylights.
4. The major problem will be flooding. There are a variety of ways to deal with that from simply bu
How dangerous can they be? (Score:2)
I don't understand the need for this. Tomatoes are simply to small and soft to pose much peril to a house, even in large numbers. The only way there could possibly be a danger is if somehow they were exposed to large quantities of radiation, clearly impossible.
A safety Core is an old idea.. (Score:2)
This is an old idea.
Houses in the North West of Australia have been built using an inner safety core for at least 35 years.
I know, I've lived in one.
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Anyone who bought a house on a floodplain in tornado country is a goddamned idiot.
Then anyone who lives in a known major earthquake zone is an idiot, so most of California (actually the whole West Coast) should be abandoned. Alternatively, they could have building codes that minimize loss of life in the event of an earthquake, but that's just swimming against the tide, isn't it?
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Then anyone who lives in a known major earthquake zone is an idiot ...
This does begin to explain a lot of things, though.
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You have to be pretty unlucky to get hit by a tornado, though. Very big ones are only a mile wide and typically run for a few miles.
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Re:Holy stupid ideas, batman (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree that owning land is an absurdity, "Just move somewhere better!" is one of the least logical cries of the over-privileged.
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While I agree that owning land is an absurdity, "Just move somewhere better!" is one of the least logical cries of the over-privileged.
Let's be clear, I don't even own a home. But neither does someone whose home is redistributed across seven counties by the weather.
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Why? your legs broke? pack your crap on your back and Walk to montana.
Which will make you more likely to die in an accident. As a spread out rural state, Montana has one of the worst per capita rates of vehicle fatalities. Deaths from traffic accidents dwarf deaths from natural disasters.
Re: Holy stupid ideas, batman (Score:3)
Holy stupid comments batman.... That is true in every state.
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Holy stupid comments batman.... That is true in every state.
No it isn't. How can every state be "one of the worst"?
California has earthquakes and Montana doesn't. But if you look at your probability of dying in an accident in California and Montana, Montana is worse. The chance of dying in an earthquake in Montana is zero, but the vehicle accident rate is higher than California's and that makes a much bigger difference. So moving to Montana because it is "safer" is silly, because it isn't.
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The issue is "death by traffic accidents out number deaths by natural disaster".....News flash....there are more deaths per year by traffic accidents than by natural disasters by a very large margin. There being a slightly greater number of traffic deaths compared to natural disasters than other states does not increase your risk in any meaningful way.
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It's true, there's a MARXIST CONSPIRACY in mathematics faculties across the planet. Wall Street is full of LENINIST QUANTS.
Re:Holy stupid ideas, batman (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy fail to read even TFS, Batman!
"You could design it to be perfectly resistant. But it would not be a place you'd want to live". Most people would not want to live in a giant concrete dome (though I personally would, and I suspect you'll find a fairly unrepresentatively large sample of Slashdotters who would say the same). Simple as that.
That said...
I have an even better solution, though. Fucking move. Anyone who bought a house on a floodplain in tornado country is a goddamned idiot.
This, a thousand times this! Every time I hear about the federal government bailing out people stupid enough to live a place likely to get wiped out once a decade or so, I can't help but think exactly what you've expressed. The US has vast tracts of uninhabited, relatively safe land, yet we have people trying to live in the worst possible choices. Flood zones, tornado alley, scrub-brush tinderboxes, earthquake central.
I have nothing against having FEMA around for the freak "storm of the century" events. But if your day-to-day life at least part of the year involves always listening for that warning klaxon in the distance - You should not live where you do, should not expect the rest of us to bail you out - Period.
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The US has vast tracts of uninhabited, relatively safe land, yet we have people trying to live in the worst possible choices.
There's a reason nobody lives in those places. It's because there's no economic activity. You can't live without money.
Next obvious question.
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Okay, how about: "Did you know we have literally tens of millions of acres of those those unoccupied relatively safe places, all within an hour's drive of a population center?"
Personally, I live in the "densely populated" Northeastern US - I live within an hour of two major cities. And land goes for around $1000-$2000 per acre around here. Other than an irrati
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Cities were built in these areas because rivers and oceans are vital routes of transportation, the fishing is good, the minerals are there to be mined, or the soil is fertile. Of course that doesn't matter now. We have highways and we can just send a few people out to the fertile soil areas to tend the robot workers. It'll take some doing, but we can move everybody to minimal hazard areas and use our cheap energy to do things that need to be done in the hazard areas... just in time for the
A rectangle isn't very aerodynamic. (Score:3)
Re:Holy stupid ideas, batman (Score:5, Informative)
FEMA has instructions on how to build a safe-room into your home..
http://www.fema.gov/safe-rooms [fema.gov]
It's been up for years, and the instructions are clear enough for a do-it-yourselfer to do, or to hand off to a contractor to build.
How big you make the room(s) is up to you. If you're in a tornado area, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make effectively a studio apartment. That could be a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen pantry. That way, if your house was completely blown away, you'd still have somewhere to live.
If you can afford a $50k room for something statistically rare, you can make a nice home theater (aka "man cave"). A theater room is better without windows, and soundproof from the rest of the house. With independent emergency power, you could camp out in it, and watch movies through the apocalypse, and come out sometime after its done.
We've been discussing making our safe room here. Unfortunately, most of Florida is not only a tornado risk, but a flood zone. You get both risks during hurricanes. So you may be in the totally safe shelter room from the house falling down around you, but if your exits are blocked, you may end up drowning in the same room.
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Unfortunately, most of Florida is not only a tornado risk, but a flood zone. You get both risks during hurricanes. So you may be in the totally safe shelter room from the house falling down around you, but if your exits are blocked, you may end up drowning in the same room.
You just need one of these [gumotex-re...ystems.com]. Comes in a nice, waterproof container even. Stick an Ikea coffee table or similar over it and your worries are gone.
Wine Cellar beats Theater room. (Score:2)
It is $50K for the entire house, not for the improvements to build a tornado-proof core.
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The US territory of Guam has hurricane proof and earthquake proof homes. They are built of concrete and come with built in storm shutters that can be opened and closed from the inside. There's no need for a dome to survive a typhoon (hurricane to mainlanders). Regular home shapes work well enough. They mainly ride out the storms within their own homes with very little loss of life and property. Contrast this with the US mainland with annual problems. Stop being cheap. Stop using wood in hurricane and
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Actually, we intend to move inland, when we have the money... And ya, part of the move would involve constructing the safe room.
I'm not partial to earthquakes.. Hurricanes and floods, you know are coming. Earthquakes come with no notice.
I've lived all over the US, and have been through the major disasters. Blizzards with devastating snowfall. Northeasters pushing frozen ocean inland. Hurricanes and tornadoes. And ya, a few years out in earthquake prone areas.
I'll stick with hurricanes and tornadoes.
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That's not always possible. It definitely wouldn't pass planning and zoning in most residential neighborhoods.
Where we are, the house takes up the area allocated for the home. We can't build onto the easement (the space between the house and property line).
Any structure that could rise on the pilings would also be able to be ripped away by a tornado. The FEMA guidelines are pretty clear on the minimum required to keep your safe room in place. I believe it was 3 feet into the ground, with L shaped ancho
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While we're at it, "who" is becoming acceptable where "whom" should be used. Referring to a person's gender is nonsensical - people have a sex, and words have a gender. Shall I go on? Yet none of those things leads to any real confusion or ambiguity (if they did, you wouldn't be able to correct them).
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Grammar nazism stops wars.
English grammar or German grammar?
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Ball or aerosol?
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The only grammatical 'rule' is to use 'whom' when it is governed by a preposition
And you're complaining about pedants?
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The only grammatical 'rule' is to use 'whom' when it is governed by a preposition: to whom, from whom, for whom, etc.
Where you would use THEM (or HIM, HER) you use WHOM
Give it to them (him) (her).
Give it to whom?
(bold emphasis added)
How does that differ from the GP, other than being vague and harder to understand?
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I should thing that a heavily reinforced, hardened concrete structure could have mush thinner walls.
Nah, walls made of mush wouldn't work.
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Use rocks, they have far more structural integrity than Mush.
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You are the idiot. If you think brick or even cement block stands up to a tornado much better than plywood, you know nothing about tornadoes. Your ignorance is tolerable, but not when compounded with arrogance.
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what's the difference between cement and concrete?
and sure it stands up to strong winds much better than plywood.. unless of course you're building using plywood thickness bricks which is a bit silly. for one it has more weight to keep the whole thing from flying away.
anyways, shantytowns get fucked while brick neighborhoods don't. regularly around the globe.
hows timber? actually 10" thickness composite/plywood would probably work fine too. at least better than trailer homes.
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Cement is a binder, concrete is an aggregate made from cement, sand, and stones (and often other materials). "Cement block" is really concrete.
Concrete blocks are obviously going to stand up to tornados better than plywood, certainly in terms of debris resistance. If you're building a tornado shelter you'd run rebar through the voids and fill with cement mortar so you have a solid structure.
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No, it's the same thing. We have both concrete block (nowadays called CMUs -- concrete masonry units -- because everyone likes acronyms) and poured-in-place concrete like you are describing. And certainly for a given thickness a poured-in-place wall will be much stronger. But I'd still take a concrete block wall over a typical plywood one.
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Bricks, concrete blocks? (since you object to the vernacular dual use of the word cement). "Stands up to strong winds"? I don't think you appreciate the intensity of a good tornado. Force due to wind is proportional to the square of the wind speed. Trucks get thrown through the air. The difference between wood and masonry construction is the difference between a pile of splinters and a pile of rubble. The only thing that will stand up is reinforced concrete, and then only if poured in a single piece or very
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The problem is not "can my 35cm concrete wall resist a tornado's 200-400+ km/h winds better than a truck?"
The problem is "can my 35cm concrete wall resist a tornado's 200-400+ km/h winds _hitting it with a truck_?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jLB4Mz4V10 [youtube.com]
Hopefully the answer is yes, but I still wouldn't want to find out the hard way.
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"Plus, give me a home without windows and I'll be really happy. I really hate windows, and it's much better to not have them than to have them at least IMO."
We know. The newspapers pasted all over windows were a dead giveaway.
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Aluminum foil. Not only does it give the illusion of no windows, but it keeps the alien mind control beams out.. Well, at least from coming in the windows. :)
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True. I am sitting in Japan right now, and we are having a typhoon. We expect another one tomorrow. (seriously, check the weather reports). No issues with buildings blowing down here. Steel reinforced concrete will stop any problems with wind you might have. Granted, it won't float during a flood, but at least after the waters recede your house will still be there :)
The house I am in is constructed of wood. We used 2x6s instead of 2x4s and 2x10s instead of 2x6s. Hurricane ties on the roof, asphalt sh
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2x10's and hurricane straps wouldn't even merit a laugh from a tornado.