Hurricanes 2012

[emordnilap]

This is why I believe downsizing is a good form of preparation. Learning to live comfortably with less, so it's less of a shock when TSHTF.

Or even notsizing.

[Tarrel]

This is why I believe downsizing is a good form of preparation. Learning to live comfortably with less, so it's less of a shock when TSHTF.

Or even notsizing.

Depends where you're starting from.

[Tarrel]

(Reuters) - It is hard to sleep at night inside the tent city at Oceanport, New Jersey. A few hundred Superstorm Sandy refugees have been living here since Wednesday - a muddy camp that is a sprawling anomaly amidst Mercedes Benz dealerships and country clubs in this town near the state's devastated coastal region.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/ ... BV20121110

[adam2]

Makes one wonder if recovery and rebuilding will be completed before the next bad storm ?
New Orleans was never fully rebuilt.

[emordnilap]

(Reuters) - It is hard to sleep at night inside the tent city at Oceanport, New Jersey. A few hundred Superstorm Sandy refugees have been living here since Wednesday - a muddy camp that is a sprawling anomaly amidst Mercedes Benz dealerships and country clubs in this town near the state's devastated coastal region.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/ ... BV20121110

Very sad, I feel for them. But they're a lot better off than hundreds of millions of others.

[adam2]

The scale of the destruction does make one wonder if USA building methods are suitable for exposed locations.

There is not much one can do about flooding, except live someplace else.
As regards wind damage though, many of the damaged homes seem to be very cheaply built by UK standards.
Modern office blocks generally survived structurally, even if lacking power and with basements full of water.
Perhaps more use should be made of concrete and brickwork rather than light weight timber framing covered in plywood.
This would also be safer from fire, remembering that a whole neighbourhood was destroyed by fire in the recent disaster. Homes in the UK are sometimes destroyed by fire, and lives lost as a result, but it is almost unknown for fire to spread from one home to another and burn an entire district, as recently happened in NY.

[Little John]

The scale of the destruction does make one wonder if USA building methods are suitable for exposed locations.

There is not much one can do about flooding, except live someplace else.
As regards wind damage though, many of the damaged homes seem to be very cheaply built by UK standards.
Modern office blocks generally survived structurally, even if lacking power and with basements full of water.
Perhaps more use should be made of concrete and brickwork rather than light weight timber framing covered in plywood.
This would also be safer from fire, remembering that a whole neighbourhood was destroyed by fire in the recent disaster. Homes in the UK are sometimes destroyed by fire, and lives lost as a result, but it is almost unknown for fire to spread from one home to another and burn an entire district, as recently happened in NY.

Yes, it reminded me of the great fire of London.

I guess the history of the US is such that timber has alwas been seen as being the counstruction material of choice because of it being so plentiful. Here in the UK we have tended to see timber clad homes as being somehow inferior, at least until recently.

[Tarrel]

The scale of the destruction does make one wonder if USA building methods are suitable for exposed locations.

There is not much one can do about flooding, except live someplace else.
As regards wind damage though, many of the damaged homes seem to be very cheaply built by UK standards.
Modern office blocks generally survived structurally, even if lacking power and with basements full of water.
Perhaps more use should be made of concrete and brickwork rather than light weight timber framing covered in plywood.
This would also be safer from fire, remembering that a whole neighbourhood was destroyed by fire in the recent disaster. Homes in the UK are sometimes destroyed by fire, and lives lost as a result, but it is almost unknown for fire to spread from one home to another and burn an entire district, as recently happened in NY.

Yes, it reminded me of the great fire of London.

I guess the history of the US is such that timber has alwas been seen as being the counstruction material of choice because of it being so plentiful. Here in the UK we have tended to see timber clad homes as being somehow inferior, at least until recently.

I've been on house construction sites in Canada and seen them put together. I wouldn't want to live in one! Timber figures a lot in the construction, particularly engineered timber (e.g I-beams made from sterling-board type material). The main focus is on insulation, rather than storm-resistance or damp-proofing.

This is slightly off-topic, but I saw an interesting technique being used in Canada when building a sub-division (estate) on a green-field site. Essentially, they build a factory on-site, and assemble the houses completely inside, from pre-fabricated components. Most family homes in Canada are built with a basement. So, an excavation is made at each house-plot, and a steel girder "cube" is erected in the hole. The finished house is moved out of the factory and down the street on rollers, and bolted into position. Once the estate is complete, they take down the factory and remove it. This extends the period of the year in which they can build, given the severity of the winters.

Anyone remember that song from the '60's; "Little Boxes...made of ticky-tacky"?

[raspberry-blower]

Anyone remember that song from the '60's; "Little Boxes...made of ticky-tacky"?

Original version as sung by Malvina Reynolds

Oddly enough, this song reminds me of the dismal 1960s/70s housing stock - although the Tesco value rabbit hutches that sprouted around out of centre supermarkets are probably worse.

[Little John]

Anyone remember that song from the '60's; "Little Boxes...made of ticky-tacky"?

Original version as sung by Malvina Reynolds

Oddly enough, this song reminds me of the dismal 1960s/70s housing stock - although the Tesco value rabbit hutches that sprouted around out of centre supermarkets are probably worse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRxvaVhV ... re=related

[kenneal - lagger]

Oddly enough, this song reminds me of the dismal 1960s/70s housing stock - although the Tesco value rabbit hutches that sprouted around out of centre supermarkets are probably worse.

In some ways 60/70s housing stock is better than present house building. The space available is much better in that 60s/70s three bed house has a bigger floor area than a current four bed house. Both the current stock and the 60s/70s need to be further insulated to meet 2050 standards and it will only cost marginally more to get the 60s stock up to standards as opposed to the current building.

[vtsnowedin]

The scale of the destruction does make one wonder if USA building methods are suitable for exposed locations.

There is not much one can do about flooding, except live someplace else.
As regards wind damage though, many of the damaged homes seem to be very cheaply built by UK standards.
Modern office blocks generally survived structurally, even if lacking power and with basements full of water.
Perhaps more use should be made of concrete and brickwork rather than light weight timber framing covered in plywood.
This would also be safer from fire, remembering that a whole neighbourhood was destroyed by fire in the recent disaster. Homes in the UK are sometimes destroyed by fire, and lives lost as a result, but it is almost unknown for fire to spread from one home to another and burn an entire district, as recently happened in NY.

You might want to consider that much of the damaged housing was built back in the post war fifties to standards that are now far out of date and on lots so small that the distance between exterior walls is insufficient to avoid the rapid spread of fires between buildings. Add in that the population had been evacuated and the streets flooded preventing fire departments reaching the fires fanned by fifty mile per hour winds and you have to wonder why it stopped with just 100 houses burned flat.
How to weigh the cost of fire resistant construction against the probability of a fire during a buildings lifetime is an interesting puzzle but post depression/post war Americans wanting to get out of the city had a different point of view then any would have today.

[biffvernon]

Our media headlines have mostly ignored Super Typhoon Bopha, which did not actually hit New York, but did achieve windspeeds of 160 mph, well into category 5, killed several hundred people and left many thousands homeless.

[Little John]

Our media headlines have mostly ignored Super Typhoon Bopha, which did not actually hit New York, but did achieve windspeeds of 160 mph, well into category 5, killed several hundred people and left many thousands homeless.

It didn't affect Yanks, so not worth knowing about

[ziggy12345]

At the same time as SS Sandy there was a massive flood in Nigeria caused by cameroun opening their dam. It diplaced tens of thousands and killed hundreds. It didnt even make the news

http://leadership.ng/nga/articles/35195 ... river.html