We all know the story.
Piggy #1 built with straw.
Gone.
Piggy #2 built with wood.
Also gone.
Piggy #3 built with stone.
That worked.
And then there’s me.
Not a piggy.
Just… thinking a bit further.
What if I had to build a house from the ground up?
Not the usual way.
But properly.
And yes with properly I mean…. PROPERLY
Prerequisites
At a minimum:
- Safe room. Actually safe
- EF5 tornado. No discussion.
- Category 5 hurricane. Expected.
- Fallout. Managed.
- Yellowstone burps? On the checklist
- Zombies. Sure.
So yes.
This means I have to think about things most houses simply ignore.
Water management.
Water treatment.
Water storage.
Not one filter. Multiple! In different stages.
Enough mass to attenuate radiation.
And not to forget:
electrical island stability.
Because when the outside world goes down…
this house doesn’t!
Location
EF5 tornadoes. Category 5 hurricanes.
Yellowstone.
Not exactly a Dutch problem.
So yes.
This house belongs somewhere in the United States.
The basics
Yes. The basics. This house will be partially built into a hill. Why add artificial mass for radiation attenuation… when nature already provides it?
Dirt. A lot of it!
That solves part of the problem.
The rest of the house?
Still exposed.
So yes.
Concrete.
Lots of concrete.
More precisely:
- 30 cm reinforced concrete. 12 inches.
Let’s call that the “Outer shell”.
Then an insulation layer.
And then…
another 30 cm reinforced concrete.
The inner shell.
That’s already a serious amount of mass.
And then for good measure another 50cm for the core of the building, the safe room.
So yes. Even if someone in the Oval Office decides to play with the nuclear football…
this house should handle most of it.
Short of a direct hit.
That’s… beyond specs.
Getting the picture?
Brain, yours truly, is overengineering.
Again.
Hehe
Hardware
Then the hardware.
And yes… inside the safe room. Because that’s where it actually matters.
Power first.
A serious battery system. Grid connected. Island ready. Plenty of PV. Backed by a diesel generator.
And in extreme cases…
human power.
(Yes.)
Water becomes a system.
Store it.
Filter it.
Filter it again.
Pond near Chernobyl?
Fine. After filtration… it’s just water.
Air?
Fully controlled.
Multi-stage filtration.
Down to particles you don’t want to think about.
Clean.
Predictable.
Ours.
EF5
Then the EF5 tornado.
This is where things get… less theoretical.
Doors closed.
Shutters down.
And just to be entirely sure…
we go to the core.
Door closed.
Cards on the table.
We wait.
After it passes…
we go back upstairs.
Everything is still there.
Exactly as it was.
Outside?
Different story.
You’ve all seen the typical timber-framed houses.
Two-by-fours. Plywood.
Nails doing most of the work.
Efficient. Scalable.
But basically Piggy #2
Back on topic!
Something hit the outer shell.
Hard.
Could have been a car.
Could have been something bigger.
Is it a Hummer?
Didn’t stay long.
The house didn’t fail.
It didn’t even try.
O crap a minor scratch!
Why?
Simple.
Houses are meant for one thing.
Safety!
If a house is hit by a natural event that can happen in its region… it should be able to handle it.
Not “most of the time”. Not “within spec”.
Just… handle it. All the time!
I remember one storm.
Proper storm. Wind force 12.
I was inside.
Looking at my own reflection in the window. And I saw the glass move. Not break.
Not crack.
Just… flex.
Inwards.
Outwards.
Like the house was breathing.
That was… not “comfortable”.
And that is an understatement!
Up in the attic it was worse.
Wooden beams making sounds I had never heard before.
After the storm…
Houses damaged
tiles missing
parts of houses… just gone
Yes I’m not kidding, the remnants ended up in our garden.
And I thought to myself.
Never to my house!
Since then…
I’ve adjusted a “few” things.
hehe.
Well…
Another slightly insane story from yours truly.
Brain out.