I don't understand why we are still building homes with English architecture when it's clear that shit needs to be built different for different regions. It kind of annoyed me when I found out that Kansas had to make a law to require everyone to have a tornado shelter. What kind of idiot do you have to be to not invest in a tornado shelter in fucking Kansas. It seems like places like that should be investing a lot more in deeper homes and protective earthen mounds.
I suppose part of it is absolutely cost, but it kills me that we make McMansions in the exact same way at $500,000 and up. Hell, a lot of these homes don't even have 30 year shingles for their roofs. If you build shit right, and properly, you won't need high maintenance costs.
I know at least Florida recently made it legally required to have some sort of metal supports put onto the trusses of roofs that make them pretty impossible to just "rip off" like they used to.
Problem usually is though, if the weather is strong enough to do serious damage, very little can truly prevent it. You can prevent the damage from regular storms, like Louisiana building all its homes about 6 feet up or more. But the major ones will take a hit one way or another.
And unfortunately that means for most people the idea is "build cheap and replace cheap." Even the McMansions are a fraction of what you'd think they cost a lot of the time.
You'll have to trust me when I say "I know" on that. It kills me that building a decent new house is gonna be around $150,000 at cheapest, and then instead of building a more expensive house, the builders will cheap out by building a $150,000 house and selling it at $500,000.
I just want to see more homes in America that can last 200 years.
Well a handful of the houses I grew up in as a kid lasted 100 years before a random storm decided "no" and ended that. Solid buildings that managed just fine until something beyond survivable hit them.
At some point, the might of nature is beyond human ability to withstand without making it unlivable every other day of the year.
What kind of idiot do you have to be to not invest in a tornado shelter in fucking Kansas. It seems like places like that should be investing a lot more in deeper homes and protective earthen mounds.
People in the country and smaller towns understand that. It was mostly about, what else, but dealing with the terminal retards in the bigger cities like Topeka, Lawrence, and Overland Park. Where they wouldnt build shelters on new houses because "Tornado's dont hit big cities, it is a waste of money" and everyone else in the state had to drag them kicking and screaming going "No, you retards, that is a great way to get people killed for what is only a few thousand extra dollars to a new house". Also, the eternal menace known as "The HOA" is responsible for earth berms not being built in cities even though you can just use fill dirt from other job sites to create the berm needed.
But I do see earth berms out in the country and they are becoming more common. If I ever came into money and could build my own dream home, I would certainly want to build one. The main downside I have heard for them though for why they are not more common is that once they are built they cant get any bigger (as opposed to expansions added for traditional homes).
"Tornado's dont hit big cities, it is a waste of money"
Yeah, tornadoes absolutely hit cities, it's just that tornadoes are so small and "not city" comprises such a huge land mass that they don't tend to hit cities as much as "not city". When they do hit cities, the casualties multiply by ten-fold.
It is especially "funny" because a tornado that hit Topeka in the 1960's is still one of the most destructive tornado's in history (luckily low death count, but hundreds injured and caused what would now be $1B in damage). But apparently they think "No, that was a fluke. It will never happen again, so we dont need to prepare." Like I said, the legislature had to drag them kicking and screaming into sanity.
Although worth pointing out is that skyscrapers are actually built to handle a tornado just by the nature of the things that have to go into building them in the first place. Although obviously you will want to get into the interior away from the outside glass facades.
See, I wouldn't be so confident a skyscraper could take a tornado. Given the debris traveling at over 200 mph, the sky-scraper might be able to handle winds at that speed, but maybe not cars, roofs, light poles, and cows at that speed.
I don't understand why we are still building homes with English architecture when it's clear that shit needs to be built different for different regions. It kind of annoyed me when I found out that Kansas had to make a law to require everyone to have a tornado shelter. What kind of idiot do you have to be to not invest in a tornado shelter in fucking Kansas. It seems like places like that should be investing a lot more in deeper homes and protective earthen mounds.
I suppose part of it is absolutely cost, but it kills me that we make McMansions in the exact same way at $500,000 and up. Hell, a lot of these homes don't even have 30 year shingles for their roofs. If you build shit right, and properly, you won't need high maintenance costs.
I know at least Florida recently made it legally required to have some sort of metal supports put onto the trusses of roofs that make them pretty impossible to just "rip off" like they used to.
Problem usually is though, if the weather is strong enough to do serious damage, very little can truly prevent it. You can prevent the damage from regular storms, like Louisiana building all its homes about 6 feet up or more. But the major ones will take a hit one way or another.
And unfortunately that means for most people the idea is "build cheap and replace cheap." Even the McMansions are a fraction of what you'd think they cost a lot of the time.
You'll have to trust me when I say "I know" on that. It kills me that building a decent new house is gonna be around $150,000 at cheapest, and then instead of building a more expensive house, the builders will cheap out by building a $150,000 house and selling it at $500,000.
I just want to see more homes in America that can last 200 years.
Well a handful of the houses I grew up in as a kid lasted 100 years before a random storm decided "no" and ended that. Solid buildings that managed just fine until something beyond survivable hit them.
At some point, the might of nature is beyond human ability to withstand without making it unlivable every other day of the year.
Sure, but I feel there's a line somewhere. Nothing's gonna get past a Cat 5 tornado. But also, I want it to survive a Cat 2.
People in the country and smaller towns understand that. It was mostly about, what else, but dealing with the terminal retards in the bigger cities like Topeka, Lawrence, and Overland Park. Where they wouldnt build shelters on new houses because "Tornado's dont hit big cities, it is a waste of money" and everyone else in the state had to drag them kicking and screaming going "No, you retards, that is a great way to get people killed for what is only a few thousand extra dollars to a new house". Also, the eternal menace known as "The HOA" is responsible for earth berms not being built in cities even though you can just use fill dirt from other job sites to create the berm needed.
But I do see earth berms out in the country and they are becoming more common. If I ever came into money and could build my own dream home, I would certainly want to build one. The main downside I have heard for them though for why they are not more common is that once they are built they cant get any bigger (as opposed to expansions added for traditional homes).
Yeah, tornadoes absolutely hit cities, it's just that tornadoes are so small and "not city" comprises such a huge land mass that they don't tend to hit cities as much as "not city". When they do hit cities, the casualties multiply by ten-fold.
It is especially "funny" because a tornado that hit Topeka in the 1960's is still one of the most destructive tornado's in history (luckily low death count, but hundreds injured and caused what would now be $1B in damage). But apparently they think "No, that was a fluke. It will never happen again, so we dont need to prepare." Like I said, the legislature had to drag them kicking and screaming into sanity.
Although worth pointing out is that skyscrapers are actually built to handle a tornado just by the nature of the things that have to go into building them in the first place. Although obviously you will want to get into the interior away from the outside glass facades.
See, I wouldn't be so confident a skyscraper could take a tornado. Given the debris traveling at over 200 mph, the sky-scraper might be able to handle winds at that speed, but maybe not cars, roofs, light poles, and cows at that speed.