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Baroana -> RE: Hurricane Sandy/Frankenstorm (11/1/2012 4:57:23 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1
I am really glad that there doesn't seem to be any major casualties out there.
Now, I'm going to sound like a thick dunderhead clutz here considering I live in a country where most dwellings are built from stone, double-walled brick or concrete - but I have to ask what seems to me to be the most obvious question.....
I see on the news year after year where you American people get blitzed by tornado's, hurricanes, freaky snow storms etc and when we see the devastation left behind it's.... erm, matchwood??
I lived in various places in the USA for 8 months and one thing I noticed was that most non-high-rise homes were no safer or built any better than a glorified posh garden shed or beach hut - pretty much all-wooden construction with a plywood roof and shingles and the really posh ones have brick cladding to look good.
As nice as they look, it doesn't take many brain cells or a rocket scientist to know that a glorified garden shed isn't going to put up much of a fight against the type of raging weather you have over there with regular monotony.
So why keep re-building matchwood homes with more matchwood??
Surely something a lot more substantial is going to be much more cost effective?? A brick-built house with a proper slate or tile roof is far less likely to be raised to the ground than a posh overgrown shed. You might need to replace a few tiles or a chimney stack or even a whole new roof after a storm; but wouldn't that be a whole lot cheaper than completely replacing all the lost possessions and rebuilding the dwelling from the ground up?
I would have thought the building trade and the population would have learned something by now. Or is it a sneaky way to keep people employed to continually rebuild wooden homes knowing they won't last much beyond the next nasty thing to swoop through the district? Maybe it's the insurance companies artificially keeping the prices high by pointing at the constant claims for loss of possessions and homes? I'm baffled!
So, sitting here comfortably in my brick-built home where I have only ever had a 2-hour power outage once in my lifetime, I do wonder why you continue to build matchwood homes in a storm area? I may be rather naive but that doesn't make any economic or practical sense to me - or have I missed something??
* puts on tin hat waiting for the flack *
Ok, here's the thing, genius.
Please pardon any typos, as I am writing this on a Droid phone in a cold dark room. It's not just about houses being build to withstand the big bad wolf. It's about flooding, falling trees, falling power lines, breaking windows, rupturing gas lines, and yes, some wind damage to buildings.
I am not an expert on what to build houses out of. I know two things about bricks though. They are expensive and they are not seismically sound.
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