By the way, this is my neighbor’s roof with structural damage:
https://www.vbforums.com/images/ieimages/2021/09/1.jpg
We think a shed got lifted up and slammed against her house.
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By the way, this is my neighbor’s roof with structural damage:
https://www.vbforums.com/images/ieimages/2021/09/1.jpg
We think a shed got lifted up and slammed against her house.
Had to go look up my home insurance. I pay $574/year, though I'm not sure whether I have quite enough insurance. House prices have been soaring so fast, that insurance covers the last valuation, but the house is probably worth twice as much, so...I could likely replace it, but not buy a new house.
In Florida, when a hurricane is forecast, people are out knocking the coconuts out of the trees, if they haven't done so already. They can become cannonballs in a hurricane.
Smooth and magnificent.
Warming back up, here.
Would having slab roof provide a better resistance against hurricanes?
I genuinely don't know. You don't really see those in Louisiana.
@dday I see you are having heavy rain again today. Do you have power yet?
No, I got a text message yesterday saying the estimated restoration date is Sept. 29th.
Possibly, depending on how it is constructed...and whether or not I'm thinking of the same thing that you are.
Slab roofs that I'm aware of tend to be flat. That can be a problem unless they are well made, but they are viable in the south. They don't work so well in areas with lots of snow, as they have to be VERY strong.
Still, the key to surviving a hurricane is: Good construction. However, you have to build not just well enough to withstand the hurricane forces themselves, but the impact of the debris being tossed about from all the less well constructed houses. DDay's house looks like it was pretty well built, but the windows took a hit, and the roof may have been impacted as much by flying debris as the wind itself. Very hard to build against that.
There's a restaurant on top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. It has big picture windows (perhaps 10-15' high, though I forget exactly) looking out over the mountain. It has been there for years.
I mention this because Mt. Washington had the worlds highest recorded land windspeed for a very long time (231 mph). It gets hurricane force winds on average of once a week, and 100 mph winds on average once every 10 days, yet that restaurant is doing fine, even with those big windows.
Of course, those windows appear to be double panes, possibly of plexiglass, and each pane appears to be about two inches thick. You can't build a house like that, but if you did, it would shrug off a hurricane.
This is another example of things being built much better in the past. The town of Bedrock would have minimal damage, Fred and Barny would have been at work at the quarry the next day. Now that's a quality slab roof.
Yeah, and the windows couldn't blow out, either.
And a dog called TotoQuote:
Still, the key to surviving a hurricane is: Good construction.
I am thinking of a "slab roof" as the ceiling, and a regular roof on top of it. Perhaps some grills or shutters on the windows may provide protection from flying debris. We are regularly battered by strong typhoons the past years, we are lucky that we haven't experienced something that knocked our roof, the most common problem we are experiencing is the flooding.
I’ve been wanting functional storm shutters since I moved in. Right now (what’s left) there are decorative ones that serve no use.
My old manager showed me how she built hers, and I’ll probably do the same.
When I was in Florida, our office didn't have real storm shutters. What it had was a set of sheets of plywood with holes drilled so that they fit over studs sticking out from the four corners of the window. A pain to put up and take down relative to storm shutters, but functional...and we had the manpower to install them, when needed.
We then backed boats up against the doors and filled them with water. That acted as a multi-ton door stop. Unfortunately, one of the boats had an internal gas tank that had a leak or vent. Water got into the tank.
When rebuilding, might want to consider adding storm shutters to the windows to deflect debris and keep out water.
My GoFundMe account temporarily stopped accepting donations for my campaign. They want to know how I know the people donating. I don't think it'll be an issue because I followed the process to get it back taking donations, but that's something I never even considered.
That seems kind of opposite to the whole point. I've heard lots of stories of somebody putting up some Go Fund Me and getting money from all over. If you have to know everybody who contributes...aren't you then just asking your friends and family?
Yeah, I had to write a whole statement about where the donations were coming in from. I was like, I’m big in the programming community, the Boy Scout community, and oh yeah I’m the chief technology officer for voluntaryism in action. Soooo those donations come from a bunch of different places.
Now I wanna play the song Rock You Like a Hurricane on my guitar...the metal version :bigyello:
Today has been particularly rough. My wife's having a bad day thinking about the house.
it is not too hard for the kids ?
They think we're on vacation!
We just got some moisture reading levels. The lowest (least damaged) room is at 17% and the highest (most damaged) is at 19.5%
I was able to throw or pack everything up this weekend. The contractors are going in on Tuesday to rip out ceilings/walls/floors.
You were able to throw everything up this weekend? Sounds like you got some bad gumbo.
I was out wandering up streams for the last week. There was a pretty good fire going a ridge or two away. It blew up to 80,000+ acres due to some strong winds. There were pyro-cumulous clouds billowing over the ridge, at times. Fortunately, the wind generally kept the smoke away from us most days, so we didn't breathe in too much of it.
Funny enough, I did have some gumbo this weekend. It was pretty good for a "roux in a jar".
@dday - I see more heavy tropical rain headed your way - are you in a good spot at your home to weather this next round?
My house is south of New Orleans, so it won’t be affected by this tropical storm. However, we’ve temporarily moved to the Lake Charles area and they’re expecting some flooding and some light winds.
The only thing I’m really concerned about is my camper because it isn’t covered. Then again it’s just a tropical storm so I’m not going to stress over it too much.
If I pretend it doesn’t exist then all my problems go away, right?
Yeah, that works.
Or...Power to accept the things you cannot change!