The Guam House Built of Concrete

[Milton Bradley]

Why do the people of hurricane ravaged Southern U.S. not embrace the smart construction of the Guam house?


I can see no reason to rebuild these people houses with insurance, or government money when the solution to this problem has existed for many years.


What do you folks think?


http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/talla...l/12957463.htm

[PatrickHenry]

From the source article

concrete homes cost about 3 percent to 4 percent more than using wood framing.

It seems worth the extra cost to me.

I don't get how people can think that trailers in the Florida Keys are a good idea...

[Compugasm]

Domes are structures that contain the most space, with the least amount of material. Read about the designs of Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project. Some of his ideas aren't possible in our lifetime, or a little "out there". The point is his concrete designs are interesting.

From what I've gathered so far, in mechanized society, expensive part of construction comes from labor. Adobe or a ferro-cement is the cheapest, and most common building material in the world. But in the USA the labor to assemble it is expensive. We have universal framing construction used coast to coast to standardize, and reduce costs. Our houses crumble, because they're cheap to make when computed on a sq ft. Even when compared to Adobe or other such materials like in the third world countries.

Other methods:
http://www.domeshells.com.au/
http://www.tridipanel.com/index.htm
http://www.alumes.com/buildings/index.htm

[Milton Bradley]

I am surprised more Southernes have not commented on this idea.


Seems like a real no brainer to me.

[SteveA]

Quote by: Milton Bradley Why do the people of hurricane ravaged Southern U.S. not embrace the smart construction of the Guam house?

Maybe it's because whenever there's an emergency declared thay receive resources from other areas to rebuild so there's not much of a need to build something that would resist harsher weather?

[Compugasm]

Good article: ...The phenomenon is referred to at FEMA as hazard amnesia, South says. “One day the trailer park blows away. People say they’ll never move back. But three days later, the trailer park is filled. If I were king, I’d say, ‘You don’t build in hurricane country unless you build up to the standards of a dome."

Beautiful high end domes:
http://www.domeofahome.com/DomeHome_sun-sentinel.pdf - The bottom of this has pictures of where/what happend to this home in a category 3 hurricane. The stairs and landscaping are gone, but the house is still there. Their neighbors houses are totally lost.
http://www.domehome.com/


El Cheapo:
http://www.durakit.com/Disaster_relief.htm

[Livemike]

Quote by: Compugasm Good article: ...The phenomenon is referred to at FEMA as hazard amnesia, South says. “One day the trailer park blows away. People say they’ll never move back. But three days later, the trailer park is filled. If I were king, I’d say, ‘You don’t build in hurricane country unless you build up to the standards of a dome."

It aint "harzard amnesia" it's "can'taffordbetteritis". It's patronising and arrogant for
FEMA (who's mental skills are nothing to write home about) to suggest that the
poor are dumb because they don't do what FEMA wants them to do. As for what
you would do if you were king, it sounds like there'd be a lot of people living in
cardboard boxes in your kingdom.

Quote by: Compugasm Beautiful high end domes: http://www.domeofahome.com/DomeHome_sun-sentinel.pdf - The bottom of this has pictures of where/what happend to this home in a category 3 hurricane. The stairs and landscaping are gone, but the house is still there. Their neighbors houses are totally lost. http://www.domehome.com/ El Cheapo: http://www.durakit.com/Disaster_relief.htm

[RickSp]

Many houses in Florida and along the Gulf coast are built of reinforced cinder block - effectively concrete houses. My mother's house is 6 feet above mean high tide and is right on the water. It might survive a twelve or twenty foot storm surge, even if every thing in it would be ruined. It is entirely cinder block on a concrete slab. Many houses in lower lying areas are designed with the first floor being largely service areas - garages and storage, so that they can flood without major damage to the house or furnishings.

Of course a bit further inland houses built of wood are common. They have to meet local building codes which are far stricter than up North. The enforcement of the codes was racheted when way up after Hurrican Andrew devastated so many frame houses in Homestead that never came close to meeting the codes. Homestead was a relatively poorer area and the housese weren't as well built so they all blew down. On the other hand, all the old frame houses in Key West, some of them well over a hundred years old, survived Wilma just fine.

And last but not least are the trailers, mobile homes, manufacturer housing - call them what you will. As LiveMike suggested, people don't live in them because the really like living in a metal box. It is cheap and if you are poor the issue of whether you should build yourself a nice concrete house is kinda beside the point.

[Jack]

What amazed me was hearing that after these disasters, the FEMA was putting up the homeless in...you guessed it, trailers. Governmental "harzard amnesia" or plain stupidity?

[Milton Bradley]

Do you people think that the South would benefit from a building code change that would force people to build these type of structures in hurricane ravaged areas?


I think this is how they addressed the issue on Guam.

[Compugasm]

If it's better, then why not everywhere? Well, domes are everywhere. But, anything different tends to be difficult or expensive to the point of impossibility. This is why domes are really only used on sports stadiums, churches, banks, or things like this. There simply aren't enough mega-projects in the world to sustain their continual manufacture of components, and this is why it's more expensive.

It's been demonstrated that domes are viable, and lend themselves to the mass production, and component manufacture. So, I think change in the building codes would be a benefit. However, why just disaster areas? It sounds like this could be used as further justification for higher costs, simply because you live in an area with a high potential for disaster. For it to be truly cost effective, you'd have to change the building codes everywhere, and this is not going to happen.

It could also be said that mainstream culture will not accept an untraditional appearance for a home. However, how many of us are choosing where we want to live, and how many just end up there because it's what they can afford? Given the choice of having everything destroyed, or living in "untraditional" housing, this objection doesn't hold the weight it's proposed to have.