I Built My House for Extreme Weather

Reader Contribution by Ed Essex
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I went to work in the family commercial construction company in the early 1980’s and by the end of the decade had worked my way into the office as a project manager. Commercial construction is entirely different than residential construction. For one thing, everything is engineered – structural, mechanical, and electrical engineers all take a part in the design of commercial buildings. It wasn’t long before I discovered the term “100 year storm”.

Many structural designs and mechanical designs were based on the 100 year storm (I’m over simplifying for the purpose of this article).  Things like concrete foundation design and building structures were based on the worst earthquakes and windstorms of the last 100 years or maybe storm systems/drains were sized according to the worst rainfalls of the past century. You get the idea.

Throughout the nineties I realized we were getting these “100 year storms” with more frequency. After the year 2000 these storms were setting all time records and the discussion heated up about warming trends and climate change. In 2010 Laurie and I decided to build a new off grid home and I included many design features to address the more severe weather conditions we were experiencing in our part of the world. The costs were minimal compared to (after storm) damage costs and we’ve never regretted our decision to spend a little more money up front.
These features were over and above current International Residential Building codes used by most jurisdictions at the time. Our design features addressed Earthquakes, Wind Storms, Snow Loads on the roof, and Wildfires. In order to keep this article brief I won’t go into details on any of the design upgrades but just want to highlight some of the things we did.

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