A house built to withstand wild weather | Hacker News Reader

A house built to withstand wild weather

bloomberg.com

22 pointspseudolus15 comments

Here is one of these houses in the aftermath of a hurricane as compared to its neighbors:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/us/hurricane-michael-flor...

A concrete house on stilts with 40' concrete pilings. Genius! I wonder if such a structure would survive even if the sea level rose all the way up to it, so that it could only be accessed by boat.

Wow, that is impressive.

Of course if you're the only one in the neighborhood that withstands the natural disaster, you are probably still going to lose a lot of property value.

If you own and actually live in the house, why would it matter? Property tax and HOI also drop...that's a net win IMHO.

Puh-lease. Move to Guam. Everything is built to withstand hurricanes. And they do, 2-3x a year.

I live in the American south, have some friends in the upper midwest. One of the friends recently built a new house, he used ICF (insulated concrete blocks) for the exterior. They're supposed to be super efficient and super strong. I'm looking around to see if they are as helpful in hot weather as they are cold.

Here's a house built to survive a hurricane that did survive a hurricane.[1] It's a steel and concrete structure clad in wood.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLjsDQyW5Y8

The irony is South Florida is rich. As somewhat alluded to by another remark, even low-income housing on Guam--as ugly as they may be--makes Florida construction standards look skimp.

A concrete dome house is a much better design to resist a hurricane.

these houses have nothing on monolithic domes.

Why they build houses from wood in those areas to start with? Where I live most houses are build from concrete, steel and bricks, I don't see how a hurricane would have much impact on such a house. Also all those things that they have to deal with like maintenance and such, brick houses stay forever, there are no termites or rotten wood, why not invest a bit more and have a house that can stand for hundred of years?

They build houses on the shores of New Jersey because (1) it's close to New York City, close enough to commute, so there's a high value in living there; (2) New Jersey has the highest population density of any US state, 1200/square mile; (3) hurricane damage has scaled up in the last few decades.

The problem with having a hurricane-proof house in New Jersey is that your neighbors don't -- yet.

> The problem with having a hurricane-proof house in New Jersey is that your neighbors don't -- yet.

Not really. The biggest threat in high-density areas is damage from small projectiles. Proper hurricane shutters are a thing and quite effective. How effective? Consider surviving 3 Category 5 Super Typhoons back to back on a small island with nowhere to run[1][2][3]. Not even South Florida knows what that's truly like.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Ivan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Keith

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Paka

You need to get the house off the ground to allow the storm surge to pass underneath. 15 feet (5 meters) is about what you should plan for. You would need concrete piers going down 40+ feet (13 meters) to provide enough shear strength to protect against the wind load and also the sand erosion that will happen.

Something to consider is that all that weight up high (if you elevate a brick house somehow) will cause the house to function as an inverted pendulum. The wind in a hurricane isn't constant - it has both infrasound and pressure waves[1] in the audible range and if it happens to match the resonant frequency of your building, that's bad.

Maintenance is constant in coastal areas. They usually use fiber-cement siding ("Hardie Plank") as it doesn't rot and provides some resistance to wind-driven projectiles (aka your neighbor didn't bring his patio furniture indoors, and now the chairs are missiles). Air conditioners last half their usual expected lifespan because they're constantly running and the salt-laden air corrodes them.

[1] Apparently hurricanes can induce "earth hum" via friction contact. https://arxiv.org/html/physics/0509103

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