Just wondering - with the recent tornados in and around Oklahoma City, does anyone know how the folks at Keeley fared?
Hope all's well.
Keeley is (or was) near Edmond, which is on the north side of OKC. Moore is on the south side. I have kin about 10 miles west of Edmond, and they were OK except for the usual thunderstorm damage. I say "usual" accurately. My brother-in-law has had his roof replaced by insurance for storm damage three times in 5 years.
Moore appears to be a bad place even for tornado alley. This suburb of OKC has had three major tornados through the town since 1993. It's possible that Mother Nature is trying to tell us something about putting houses there.
My son is a civil engineer, and while chatting yesterday, I mentioned that they probably spend little attention during their training to the sort of winds that occur in tornados. He went on about wind shear, and wind tunnels, and how they test roofs, but at the end he had to admit that they had never discussed how to design a building in anticipation of air forces that pull roofs upwards, rather than blow at them sideways. Kind of an important gap in their training, I think.
Sometimes it's worth it to put in the extra protection diode, isn't it?
Incidentally, PAiA is also in Edmond, so I gather they're alright too.
> how to design a building in anticipation of air forces that pull roofs upwards
A quick skim of the residential IBC (I recall BOCA was similar) requires computation of up-lift on all sides.
In quiet areas, like here, 70MPH (rarely), we can generally presume a few large nails rafter-plate, and the nail-schedule on the sheathing, will hold.
Down to FLA they are supposed to compute to 80MPH-110MPH (depending on exposure) and there are very detailed factors in Code and often suggested detailing from material makers/promoters(*). Good FLA homes are full of steel straps, have limited fenestration to keep ample sheer-wall effect, before they get to garage doors that don't pop-off and fly.
"Wind-Load" ASCE-7-02 is widely referenced by Codes. You are supposed to pay for it, but I have a partial PDF so it's around the webs.
(*) The Wood Frame council has documents like
http://www.awc.org/pdf/WFCM_120-B-Guide.pdf (4MB PDF)
with lots of strapping details.
Nothing about 300MPH wind. Recall the pressure is square of speed, so a tornado sucks 10 times harder than a near-hurricane wind which would terrify me and my roof. AFAIK there is only one building design which often survives a direct tornado: the storm-cellar. Perhaps a full-out Egyptian Pyramid. Or Grant's Tomb. I suppose the Codes must admit that a tornado-hit can not be built-against readily, and that so *few* buildings get direct-hit, that it is "accepted loss".
I have nothing technical to add but...after seeing those huge tornados looming on the horizon and the "toothpick" piles left in their wake....I would never live in an area where that's the "norm"!
Oh well..I guess we have to rebuild now. ???
I live in Southern California...you know....Earth Quake country. I've lived here all of my life and have witnessed many quakes including the Sylmar quake magnitude 6.6 in 1971 and the Northridge quake magnitude 6.7 (I was 7 miles from the epicenter) in 1994.
I have never seen anything even close to the devastation in Oklahoma.
+1. We dont have cellars or basements down here on the Gulf coast because the water table is so close to the surface that it would be a monumental effort to keep water out if it. If you have a pool down here you never want to completely drain it when cleaning it because it could pop out of the ground due to the hydrostatic pressure imparted by the ground water. If you decide to fill in a pool with dirt or sand, you have to punch holes in the bottom and sides first. So building underground shelters is expensive.
I worked for a couple of years on a job site in trailer offices sitting on top of a 15' high mound that was constructed of compacted clay in the middle of a swamp. We had sections of concrete culverts, tall enough to walk into, strategically located to serve as tornado shelters. The interesting part was that we had to inspect them regularly because water moccasins liked to hide out in them. It wouldn't be too cool trying to shelter with a few venomous snakes! :icon_eek:
A friend of mine was in a motel in North Texas when they had tornados come through a few days ago. He wrote on Facebook that he wasn't thrilled to see the tornado chaser trucks in the parking lot. His wife asked wrote back asking him if he could fit in the bath tub and if he could move the mattress. ;)
Edmond took a hit the day before Moore did. My folks live in one of the OKC burbs, and fortunately missed the worst stuff. I have several other relatives around there.
Quote from: PRR on May 23, 2013, 12:24:11 AM
In quiet areas, like here, 70MPH (rarely), we can generally presume a few large nails rafter-plate, and the nail-schedule on the sheathing, will hold.
I'm guessing they're more concerned with insulating against winter temps. Do they have problems with frost heaves on the roads there?
Quote from: Jdansti on May 23, 2013, 03:30:20 AM
The interesting part was that we had to inspect them regularly because water moccasins liked to hide out in them. It wouldn't be too cool trying to shelter with a few venomous snakes! :icon_eek:
Who needs venom? I just read about a fellow who killed a 19 foot (5.8 meter) python in Florida. Some snakes just swallow you whole.
> Do they have problems with frost heaves on the roads there?
They put up signs. "BUMP". "Heavy loads restricted". (When the under-frost is half-melted, on a typical rural road, heavy trucks will RUIN the road by punching through to supersaturated mud.)
New construction gets lots of insulation, but the Inspector's main concern here has been working fire detectors. Which goes with the cold and our creative ways to stay un-frozen.
me> a tornado sucks 10 times harder
I musta had a finger-cramp. 300MPH is more like 4 times the max wind in most of the US, so a tornado sucks like 16-20 times harder than a bad wind.
IAC, I had to do a little creative design to get my garage loft space _and_ nominal 70MPH wind loading. If I had to do it again with _16_ times the lift forces, I'd hide in a hole.... wait, I can't, the bedrock is only a few feet down. (That also means no good electrical ground.)
I haven't seen any lift force requirements in the area where I live (probably because we often get hurricanes, but rarely get tornados), but the wind load requirement is 110mph for 3sec gusts. Further down the road in Galveston it is 130mph for 3sec gusts. There are extra requirements for all openings. Once an opening forms in hurricane winds, the wind destroys the building from the inside. The home on the left in this video was not built to withstand high wind loads as well as the one on the right, but notice that the building is destroyed shortly after the front door gives in.
As for tornados, a simulator shows the weak points of buildings:
Quote from: PRR on May 24, 2013, 01:29:46 AM
IAC, I had to do a little creative design to get my garage loft space _and_ nominal 70MPH wind loading. If I had to do it again with _16_ times the lift forces, I'd hide in a hole.... wait, I can't, the bedrock is only a few feet down. (That also means no good electrical ground.)
I have similar issues. I required the builders to install tie-down straps to all the roof framing from the concrete walls of the house. They thought I was crazy, but took the money and did it.
I have bedrock, but it's porous limestone, so it's generally damp enough to conduct if you get into it. I had holes drilled 10 feet into it at each end of the house and ground rods buried into the holes, then bonded to the house wiring at each end. Seems to work so far, including a couple of nearby lighting strikes.
There is NO way to be sure you're safe against a direct lighting strike. Our in-laws in tornado alley had a direct strike on a 4 ft by 6 ft cross section stone chimney in one storm. It broke the chimney and toppled an 8 foot section of it into the back yard. Zeus throwing lightning bolts was no joke.
>I have bedrock, but it's porous limestone, so it's generally damp enough to conduct if you get into it. I had holes drilled 10 feet into it at each end of the house and ground rods buried into the holes, then bonded to the house wiring at each end. Seems to work so far, including a couple of nearby lighting strikes.
One of my job sites has 80 acres covered with a thick HDPE liner and then 18-in of compacted clay on top of the liner. We have a couple of buildings built on this that house pumps and air compressors. We weren't able to use ground rods because the only penetrations that we could have through the liner were wells (long story dealing with how you seal the liner to the object making the penetration), so the engineers designed grounding grids in the 18-in of clay that surround the buildings. I guess the shallow soil connects with ground-ground at the perimeter of the liner.
>There is NO way to be sure you're safe against a direct lighting strike.
True, but there are ways to help direct lighting "safely" to ground if designed and installed correctly. Unfortunately, many people simply put lightning rods on buildings and run a wire to ground without knowing the "cone of protection" that they need or how to install the system. It's not a DIY project! The lightning rod(s) have to be tall enough and properly sited on the building for their cone of protection to extend out beyond the building's perimeter. There are requirements for how the rods are installed and specifications for cables, connectors, fasteners and grounding. And then you have to consider all of the electrical and plumbing pathways into the building that originate outside of the cone of protection.
I used a metal roof grounded with braided aluminum down-cables to ground rods.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/i-was-struck-by-lightning-yesterday-and-boy-am-i-sore/ (http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/i-was-struck-by-lightning-yesterday-and-boy-am-i-sore/)
Quote from: R.G. on May 24, 2013, 11:11:07 AM
I used a metal roof grounded with braided aluminum down-cables to ground rods.
That pretty much covers the entire structure! :)
Quote from: R.G. on May 24, 2013, 09:30:53 AM
I required the builders to install tie-down straps to all the roof framing from the concrete walls of the house. They thought I was crazy, but took the money and did it.
I have bedrock, but it's porous limestone, so it's generally damp enough to conduct if you get into it. I had holes drilled 10 feet into it at each end of the house and ground rods buried into the holes, then bonded to the house wiring at each end. Seems to work so far, including a couple of nearby lighting strikes.
There is NO way to be sure you're safe against a direct lighting strike. Our in-laws in tornado alley had a direct strike on a 4 ft by 6 ft cross section stone chimney in one storm. It broke the chimney and toppled an 8 foot section of it into the back yard. Zeus throwing lightning bolts was no joke.
Years back you sent me some pics of the "Lego" house in its early construction stages. Now you've made me curious again about its final state. From yur description, I feel like my house has a volume and tone knob, and yours is like a 4-channel Marshall! :icon_lol:
John, That second video is absolutely kickass.
Quote from: Jdansti on May 24, 2013, 10:47:56 AM
True, but there are ways to help direct lighting "safely" to ground if designed and installed correctly. Unfortunately, many people simply put lightning rods on buildings and run a wire to ground without knowing the "cone of protection" that they need or how to install the system. It's not a DIY project! The lightning rod(s) have to be tall enough and properly sited on the building for their cone of protection to extend out beyond the building's perimeter. There are requirements for how the rods are installed and specifications for cables, connectors, fasteners and grounding. And then you have to consider all of the electrical and plumbing pathways into the building that originate outside of the cone of protection.
The ham radio crowd has info on lightning strike protection. I haven't looked at it in a long time, but I'm guessing it's mostly about how to keep a strike on the antenna from blowing up your rig and burning down the house.
QuoteI have similar issues. I required the builders to install tie-down straps to all the roof framing from the concrete walls of the house. They thought I was crazy, but took the money and did it.
RG,
That's the standard in my country. The main +2x10 inches woods and others are always hold in concrete. The flat ones are nailed to the main woods, and we use spanish or french tiles, french are way better, or galvanized steel sheets, and an isolation carpet below the tiles or steel.
We construct in a very different way than you do, bricks, concrete and iron everywhere. Tough as a MXR Dist+.
We build this way because our spanish ancestors did so, not because we fear tornados. Also, when they came here, they found a flat land with no trees at all (pampa argentina).
We also have tornados, mostly F3, and they cause minor damages to the roof, some tiles gone with the wind.
In rare case we have F2, and very few F1. Despite what you can read in the web, (goolge "are brick houses immune to a F1"), we never had the devastation seen in OKC.
Mmhh... well... we had that level of devastation or worst, but caused by our politicians...
It's difficult to compare the tests performed by US authorities with our standard constructions techniques. Our houses are oversized, like using a TIP31 to handle 1 micro ampere. A well built concrete and brick house can stand F1, roof blown and interior damage, but not completely destroyed beyond repair
I've just finished a couple of twin houses, one sold recently,
Can survive almost everything, except a bear market...
I deleted the pictures I had of the construction stages. It has concrete and iron foundations, concrete beams and columns with 4x 12cm irons inside, concrete floor with iron mesh for the first floor, 18cm exterior and 12cm interior walls + plaster, galvanized steel roof with woods hold to the walls, etc, etc.
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/558789_10151344058772673_243317699_n.jpg)
Too expensive techniques for the american market I guess.
Some examples,
(http://www.alamaula.com/img/timthumb.php?src=/uploads/1/312/Classified/3752130/amurada-de-tirantes-953_big2.jpg&w=650&h=412)
(http://img2.mlstatic.com/techista-techos-de-teja-o-chapa-70-el-m2-con-garantia_MLA-O-454106872_5600.jpg)
(http://www.fotosdigitalesgratis.com/noticias/fotos/Obra-Capdevila-jun10-FDG.jpg)
mac
Quote from: Mark Hammer on May 22, 2013, 10:29:06 AM
My son is a civil engineer, and while chatting yesterday, I mentioned that they probably spend little attention during their training to the sort of winds that occur in tornados. He went on about wind shear, and wind tunnels, and how they test roofs, but at the end he had to admit that they had never discussed how to design a building in anticipation of air forces that pull roofs upwards, rather than blow at them sideways. Kind of an important gap in their training, I think.
Sometimes it's worth it to put in the extra protection diode, isn't it?
Incidentally, PAiA is also in Edmond, so I gather they're alright too.
google CalEarth.
their dirt homes broke all the building codes and testing equipment.
We have the information and the capabilities of producing homes that can resist natural disasters far better than homes made of post and lintel style, which is a home that immediately starts trying to pull apart once it's completely built. It's not a good structural design.
The reason it is "glossed over" and ignored is not because design possibilities dont' exist, its because people dont make money from rebuilding houses that don't fall apart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-jrvzrJ3Q0
a 2,000$ home isnt pie in the sky or a pipedream, it's a direct economic threat to the construction industry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sYSf0b4N6A&feature=fvwp&NR=1
of course, such a good insulation source also lessens the burden of heating and cooling. economic threat to power industry.
Who here has heard of such techniques in their life? The answer is the point.
> I haven't seen any lift force requirements in the area where I live
Dig in the building code. There is probably a reference to ASCE. Here's a snippet of the 54 pages for wind load:
(http://i.imgur.com/4f4ITLl.gif)
Take 85MPH for example.
My main roofs are 12:12 pitch, 45 degree, so take "30 to 45" row.
Roof is divided into zones E-H relative to wind direction (you consider all directions and take th worst-case).
The -negative- signs mean UP-lift.
I have to design for 3 to 8 psf UP-lift on parts of the roof. (Since wind can be any direction, pretty much the whole roof.)
Southerners like flatter roofs, take 20 degree. Any part of the roof must withstand 7 to 14 pounds square foot up-lift.
Since a southern roof may be designed for 20PSF down-load, and may weigh less than 10PSF, a 14PSF up-lift has to be pondered in design.
Small areas like parapets and porch roofs may have to be designed for higher spot-loads. There's also a section "Components and Cladding".
At 130MPH nominal wind speed an overhang can have 45PSF of up-lift.
There's more. Wind is turbulent and you may not have to design for 7-14PSF on the *whole* roof at the same time, some areas are likely neutral or down-force. You still have to plan each sheet of plywood for the whole force, but you may not need 7,000+ pounds of pull through wall plates.
These are obviously approximations based on simplified conservative assumptions. There's more pages to control you if you want to do more-exact computations to maybe save a buck.
> ground rods buried into the holes, then bonded to the house wiring at each end.
Should be bonded to the fusebox or service entrance. Not to circuits. #8 or #6 from rod to the ground bus AT the main box.
Apologies if I've misunderstood.
> engineers designed grounding grids in the 18-in of clay that surround the buildings
Not too unlike my situation. (20 mil plastic, 20++ feet rock, no great difference.) At some point you really approach a "glass floor" situation. Then it becomes "impossible" to have large stray ground current. If you stand on glass and hold a live wire, no shock. The clay could conduct a lethal current to the perimeter of the campus to Earth, but grounding grids around all likely shock-zones mitigates that. In a lighting hit, the whole building is raised above distant ground by the stroke current times the impedance of the utility feeder. I guess in your case this could punch holes in the plastic.
> the devastation seen in OKC.
What you see in the overhead photos of OK is largely "manufactured houses". They are mass produced in a factory and very competitively detailed. In other words: they are equally strong everywhere. Stick-built houses tend to be strong in the panels and weaker where planes coome together. My site-built house would lose its roof then 4 walls fall outward. Large chunks. A manufactured house will hold together and then splinter in every part. Toothpicks.
> ...our standard constructions techniques ... Too expensive techniques for the american market I guess.
No; there's houses built here very much like yours.
Main difference is your mild climate. In the USA we need insulation, either for cold or for heat. Though there are areas where a masonry block wall is acceptable.
>I guess in your case this could punch holes in the plastic.
I'll have to check the design docs to see if the engineers considered this. ??? It's 40mil HDPE (20' wide bolts overlapped at the edges, double "welded" and leak checked). I imagine that "punch throughs" could be possible given the energy in a lighting strike. There's 4' to 8' of compacted clay under the liner shaped into 4 grassy mounds (no trees) across the 80 acres to facilitate drainage. We have three buildings at the peaks of three of the mounds with equipment in them including variable frequency drives (VFD) and associated VFD pumps (we pump and treat contaminated groundwater). I don't have evidence of direct lightning strikes on the buildings, but the RF from nearby strikes often trips the VFDs into error mode when we have electrical storms. There's a power pole just outside the perimeter of the liner that has to have its big fuses that hang at the top of the pole replaced about 4 times a year due to lightning.
QuoteToothpicks.
:D
I hope Maine is far away from atlantic ocean´s hurricanes path...
QuoteMain difference is your mild climate. In the USA we need insulation, either for cold or for heat. Though there are areas where a masonry block wall is acceptable.
Patagonia isn't a mild place, nor the stifling northeastern provinces.
We have the same insulating needs you have.
It's not only a matter of $$$, but of uses and costumes of each nation as well, ins't it?
If british invasions of the Rio de la Plata in 1806 and 1807 would have been successful, our houses would be all wood instead all bricks!!! (and my english better)
Wood is a better insulator than a solid brick of the same thickness.
We use hollow body red clay bricks that have similar or better thermal and noise insulating capabilities than wood.
IIRC in the recent years light weight bricks were introduced. They are porous as wood, and lighter than clay or concrete bricks.
In my country they are rarely seen because hollow bricks are far more cheaper, even than wood.
mac
> If british invasions ..., our houses would be all wood instead all bricks!!!
Maybe. England hasn't used much wood in houses for several centuries. They cut it all long ago. In North America we had "endless forests" so wood was used for everything. Even siding, which rots, but we have more wood. This went on from Maine to Carolina to Michigan. (Much of our "corn land" used to be forest; hard to imagine today.) With the transcontinental railroad we started axing the West. We nearly ran out, but by then the old clear-cut areas had trees again. Even so we in the North get lots of wood from Canada.
> We use hollow body red clay bricks that have similar or better thermal and noise insulating capabilities than wood.
I have known hollow red-clay block buildings.
In most of the US, that is not considered "insulation". We use a lot of fiberglass "wool". A house has 5 inches in walls, 10+ inches in ceiling (12cm/25+cm). In many areas there is another inch of plastic foam under the siding, to reduce heat loss through studs. In my bathroom re-do, I took the fiberglass out of the wall around the tub and put in 4 inches of foam (about double the insulation of fiberglass; the 3X cost was worth it around a steel/tile bathtub).
Wiki has some nice tables. Yours are C-dominant and ours are F-dominant, seasons are reversed, some city tables don't track mean temperature, so I won't try to summarize too much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_del_Plata#Climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Maine#Geography_and_climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.#Climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NYC#Climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco#Climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Chicago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo,_North_Dakota#Climate
In my numbers, you go up to 80 and down to 40 (with 15 and 103 records).
Washington DC ranges up to 88 and down to 29. Several deg C further than you either way.
San Francisco is known for cool mild climate: 71 to 46, smaller range than you.
Chicago runs 84 to 18.
NYC from 84 to 26 (a bit cooler than Wash DC).
Fargo ND runs 82 to zero. (Not a major city, but inspiration for the tornado scale.)
I'm a bit(?) north of Portland ME but those numbers will do. That's on the coast. Inland can be much rougher.
Outliers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needles,_California#Climate - Summer can average 108F (42C) with peaks to 125F 52C. Insulation to hold the cool in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Falls,_Minnesota#Climate - Average 5 deg F *below* in January and proud of it. Record 40 deg *below* (either C or F!).
> I hope Maine is far away from atlantic ocean's hurricanes path...
Mostly they hit from Central America to Boston. If not, they go toward Greenland, miss me. When a hurricane comes over land, its energy supply is cut. The winds drop. So does ALL the water that has been suspended high in the sky. Several recent hurricanes came hundreds of miles inland (technically no longer hurricanes) and caused major flooding. Parts of Vermont and New Hampshire washed away. That one passed 100 miles west of me and was a really-really rainy windy day, with trees down.
>In most of the US, that is not considered "insulation". We use a lot of fiberglass "wool". A house has 5 inches in walls, 10+ inches in ceiling (12cm/25+cm). In many areas there is another inch of plastic foam under the siding, to reduce heat loss through studs. In my bathroom re-do, I took the fiberglass out of the wall around the tub and put in 4 inches of foam (about double the insulation of fiberglass; the 3X cost was worth it around a steel/tile bathtub).
After hurricane Ike damaged our roof, we decided to enclose and lay a slab in a 12x24-ft open air atrium located in the center of our house. The insulation they used in the new ceiling and the walls that had now become outside walls was recycled denim batts. The heat loading calculations called for another 6-inches of blown cellulose in the flat parts of the attic for us to avoid having to increase the size of our A/C and furnace system.
Since the roof still had the original layer of wood shingles under the damaged asphalt shingles, the roofer had to rip everything off and lay down new decking. We chose a decking material that had a radiant barrier facing the attic space. We also got rid of the three whirlybird vents and had ridge vents installed, which provided a larger open area for ventilation to match the extra soffit vents I had added years ago. The coolest thing was the solar exhaust fan installed on the roof of the garage. The down side was since the atrium formerly provided 80% of the natural lighting (very few exterior windows in the house), my wife insisted on two 4x5-ft skylights in the new atrium roof, which lets in much more heat than if there had just been roofing.
As for keeping the roof attached, "Tico" clips and 48" straps are what we use for earthquakes here in Los Angeles. Keeps the framing and roof tied together pretty well. But, keep in mind the three little pigs.....
I'm really glad I live where I do. No severe storms, no earthquakes, no volcanoes. we worry mostly about keeping the heat inside in the winter, our roofes not collapsing from the waight of the snow and moisture destroying our wood constructions. As a consequence we build differently from most of the US. We expect our houses to stand for at least 100 years(my house was built 1911 ), but with the kind of winds we are talking about here, I doubt there is anything but a concrete bunker that would survive that timespan
J
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushuaia#Climate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Province,_Argentina
What the do there is to use double walls of 8cm hollow red bricks, with fiberglas wool or expanded polystyrene between the bricks.
Same below the roof tiles or steel shets.
By themselves wood or bricks are not enough.
It's very difficult to compare insulating materials since in the case of bricks, it depends on the type of clay, the number of hollows and the thickness of the brick. Also the exterior waterproofing layer + lime, and the interior lime + plaster helps.
Where I live this is more than enough.
The only thing needing insulation here is my Ge FF because we have variatons of 15C in minutes... >:(
mac
> depends on the type of clay, the number of hollows and the thickness
So I see. I've been looking around.
Around 1920 there were major suppliers of terra-cota (fired red clay) blocks in the US. I knew several buildings made with this stuff. Blocks were cheap and light so walls were thick. But the cell-hollows inside were simple circles or squares. Significant air convection inside each cell, and significant conduction through the cell walls.
I found a German (or Swiss?) block maker and their inner walls were all parallel to the face with thin spaces which discourage air convention inside the cells, and thin side walls giving little direct conduction. Really very artistic! And must demand a very good grade of clay, very well processed, to form those thin walls without a lot of trouble in the extruder or the kiln. Apparently some buildings use only clay block (no wool/foam) and get good thermal performance. (This may be more true of multi-unit apartment buildings with only limited outside exposure per tenant; here I heat all four walls but back at the apartment I only had one wall.)
There's also real difference in fire rating, though the statistics didn't show a huge difference in fire losses. (Germany 80% block, 10 fires/million population; USA 80% wood and 20 fires/mill; you would expect a bigger difference; also the USA has some of the world's worst wiring and poor enforcement of wood-stove safety.)
A real factor is the price of wood. I got a quote last summer for paneling, $0.80/ft. I bought this spring: $1.15/ft. I thought the store made a mistake: Apparently I missed the spike to $1.30 the month before. I have a table of HomeDepot wood prices from a year ago, and ALL lumber prices are up 20%-40% in a year. I guess it means the recession is fading (more home construction than in recent years) but this roof over my lawn-tractor is costing more than the tractor is worth! Maybe time to build a brick out-house?
QuoteA real factor is the price of wood. I got a quote last summer for paneling, $0.80/ft. I bought this spring: $1.15/ft. I thought the store made a mistake: Apparently I missed the spike to $1.30 the month before. I have a table of HomeDepot wood prices from a year ago, and ALL lumber prices are up 20%-40% in a year. I guess it means the recession is fading (more home construction than in recent years) but this roof over my lawn-tractor is costing more than the tractor is worth! Maybe time to build a brick out-house?
Here wood and bricks walk hand in hand, same $$$/m2 rate!!! >:(
QuoteThere's also real difference in fire rating, though the statistics didn't show a huge difference in fire losses. (Germany 80% block, 10 fires/million population; USA 80% wood and 20 fires/mill; you would expect a bigger difference
I was in Berlin a couple of times, and in my limited experience, I saw a lot of wood inside their buildings, like floors and stairs.
Any german member reading this thread? :)
mac
(http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/08/09/a6ahasem.jpg) just because we discussed house construction...we are tearing down an inside wall in our house..this is nothing like the paper walls we see in hollywood movies...but I realize hollywood might not have much to do with the true story..8)
J
(http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/08/09/y2a3uvem.jpg)