Builders: How can one secure a roof for 225 mph winds?

[Christian for Israel]

oh.

well, it's a popular site and goes down all the time.

oops...

so, wha'cha think of the titan I facility?

 

[hitssquad]

Titan I and other silos as potential secure-homes

Well, I would be leery of any of the old missile silos because of potential condensation issues. If there is not enough external insulation, the walls are going to "sweat" the same way a glass of ice water does. It looks like, from pictures that I have seen, they used ordinary corrigated steel culverts for the passageway tubes. These items are notorious for failing in the field.

Also, for a custom secure-home I would want to put in a superinsulated cold storage room, or two, or three. I'm not sure if that would be doable on the cheap in the case of a missile silo.

I am also concerned about multistory designs. It seems to me that there would be far more groundshock security with a single-story pod design. I like how Cheyenne Mountain was done. They excavated from solid granite and then put the facility buildings on shock-springs inside of the granite excavation. The buildings are connected to each other by flexible corridors. If the corridors fail, you can just get out and walk around the buildings -- while still remaining inside the secure excavation. Also, all of the pipes and conduit are totally accessible for inspection and servicing. I can imagine the corridors of a Titan I facility being ripped in half in a K/T class impact event (100,000,000 megatons of TNT equivalent comet or asteroid; named after the ancient impact event that separates the geological Cretaceous period from the Tertiary period; e.g., it wiped out the dinosaurs).

They also tend to charge a lot of money for those decommissioned silos. And they have usually also been subjected to a lot of vandalism before being restored. The pictures I saw showed the results of arson fires, campfires, water everywhere, rusted steel everywhere, etc. Is it really possible to completely restore a building that has been violently trashed for decades by possibly hundreds of motivated teenagers? Despite that, Bruce Townsley seems to have done a good job with his Texas Atlas F silo:
hgtv.com/hgtv/remodeling/article/0,1797,HGTV_3659_2037077,00.html

I also wonder what would happen to the little door-house on the surface in the event of a blast wave. I suppose that is what the escape hatch is for, but that means that from then on your only way in and out of your home is that escape hatch.

Back to Cheyenne Mountain, to simulate the granite excavation with smaller buildings inside of it, I would simply build a large dome in an excavated hillside and nest several smaller domes inside of it. I don't know how much that would cost, but I am exploring the idea.

 

[Trasael Adnepos]

A friend who was a decorated vet and leetle tetched used to live in an abandoned silo around here that he rented. It was a pretty dismal place, but no one could get to him without walking a plank across a very deep flooded lower level, and he liked it that way. No thanks. Looked more like the Mummy's Tomb to me.

Have a little more fun with it, hitssquad, and if you're going to fork that kind of dough, just build a self-contained blast-proof surface pod inside a giant super-ball, and take a wild last ride. You might add some remote viewing and thruster systems. If the enviro-nazis in the Administrative Branch survive, they'll never let anybody come outside again anyway.

Good thing the EPA didn't catch Noah letting all those animals off the Ark in a wetland.



Tras

 

[Christian for Israel]

before you say that tras, check this place out:

We took the end result of $18 million in government wasted spending (1958 dollars) and turned it into a rare and unique private airport getaway . . . one that will also serve as a survival shelter in the event of nuclear or germ warfare. Enjoy the privacy of an exclusive, luxurious mountain home which includes many acres of the most beautiful land New York State has to offer. The complex, accessible via it's own private paved airstrip, offers the optimum level of security available today.

Saranac, NY - Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's when the Cold War was hot, the U.S. government built hundreds of Atlas-F missile silos (for 18 Million each in 1961) to prepare the country for an attack that never came. Today, most of these silos lie abandoned and filled with water, monuments to governments wastefulness and a bygone era. But now, thanks to two entrepreneurial cousins, Bruce Francisco and Gregory Gibbons, one of these silos located in beautiful Adirondack State Park near Lake Placid is finding new life as a $2.3 million luxury home with its own private airport.
Surely one of the most unique real estate properties you could own, the missile silo home sits on 105 acres of manicured grounds, forest and trails. Above ground, it features a hangar and spacious open living room and fireplace with wrap around porch. Below ground, and accessible via stairs from above ground home in what was once the launch control center, now is a two level, 3 bedroom 2-1/2 bath with open living area and kitchen adjoined by a spiral staircase. Huge doors open to a large tunnel that accesses the silo with an additional 20,000 square feet of useable space with unlimited possibilities. The perfect getaway home, it has its own direct runway access, its climate controlled and is capable of withstanding a nuclear hit.

here's the site from the air:

http://www.silohome.com/id22_west_arial_view_ny17.htm

info@missilebases.com
785-256-6029l
Twentieth Century Castles Box 4
Dover, KS 66420

http://www.missilebases.com/index.html

 

[stillprepping]

hits,
"This is related to another thing that is inherently wrong with the AI dome. It has the thermal mass (the concrete) on the outside, and the insulation (styrofoam) on the inside. This is backwards and will drive up your HVAC costs."

that was the biggest drawback i found with it. you're exactly correct.

have u ever attended a monlithic workshop? at $975 its kinda pricey unless you *know* you're going to be building one.

 

[stillprepping]

hits,

the more i look at the 'complexities' of building a mono dome .. the more i keep looking at steel buildings as an alternative. the arched models can handle fairly high windloads, and with the proper gauge, could (ya think?) handle F5 winds. and - they're easy to assemble!

spray these babies on the inside with enough poly insulation (i like tigerfoam at http://www.tigerfoam.com/products.php?cat_id=1) .. and with a good concrete foundation wall .. they should be adequate for almost anything one can throw at them. and you cant beat the price.

if your really worried about their ability to withstand superwinds, you can always partially bury it.

 

[hitssquad]

The expenses of F5-resistant construction

the more i look at the 'complexities' of building a mono dome

Please list them. One of the single most difficult steps is the spraying of the PU foam, which you mentioned below you would be interested in doing as long as your backstop were metal and not fabric. The fact that spraying PU foam is expensive and difficult is why people are always asking how they can get around that step. It is also why they always hire a professional to do the job. Inflating an airform, hanging rebar, and spraying shotcrete are easy and inexpensive compared with spraying PU foam.

A lot of the cost of building a Monolithic Dome is composed of land, surveying, soil analysis/engineering, grading, foundation work (digging trenches; pouring cheap, low-grade concrete in them), running in utilities to the site, structural engineering, road building, tree clearing, plumbing, electrical, installing windows and doors, running vent pipes, internal framing, internal flooring, HVAC purchase/installation, hanging a second or third or fourth floor (if you want those), building cinder-block walls for the garage/carport, building ICF walls for the home theatre, purchasing and installing the home theater, purchasing and installing the $50,000 custom kitchen, purchasing and installing the $20,000 custom bathrooms, purchasing/installing the pool, purchasing/installing the fountain, purchasing/installing the marble statues, etc.

Do those items sound like they are specific to one certain type of construction? You can built an F5-class sculpted-concrete home for $50/sqft shell cost (includes plumbing and electrical and maybe some basic windows and doors), and $100/$150/$200 per sqft for basic finishing by today's hedonistic standards; decent finishing by today's hedonistic standards; or impressive finishing by today's hedonistic standards -- respectively.

the more i keep looking at steel buildings as an alternative. the arched models

Quonset huts?

can handle fairly high windloads

images.google.com/images?q=quonset+damage

and with the proper gauge, could (ya think?) handle F5 winds.

You did not provide any figures or calculations, and I am not a civil/structural engineer. Chris Zweifel might be able to answer your question.
http://www.zzconsulting.com

But he also might wonder why you did not simply ask your question on the Monolithic BBS.
http://bbs.monolithic.com
http://bbs.monolithic.com/search.php

and - they're easy to assemble

If you are simply using them as backstops for PU foam, quonset huts are easier to assemble than airforms are to inflate?

spray these babies on the inside with enough poly insulation

...And you have a reflector-oven death trap.
monolithic.com/foam/fire_hazard/index.html

You will waste PU material doing that (since the shape is inefficient), and your backstop will be expensive, difficult to transport and difficult to assemble.

If you wanted to make a really strong PU foam structure, you could use 6-pound foam instead of 2-pound foam. This would cost more than a Monolithic Dome, you would not have the benefit of the thermal mass of concrete, and you would have a reflector-oven death trap, but you could do it.
monolithic.com/gallery/airforms/low_pressure

Also, with PU foam sprayed on the inside of a steel quonset hut, you might end up with soggy foam and lots of mold.

and with a good concrete foundation wall .. they should be adequate for almost anything one can throw at them. and you cant beat the price.

Monolithic Domes have foundation rings (I am guessing this is what you meant) and the price for the Dome would be lower than that for the quonset hut since the dome shape uses building materials more efficiently per sqft of inside space.

if your really worried about their ability to withstand superwinds, you can always partially bury it.

I don't recall ever having heard about a buried quonset hut, except for these...
images.google.com/images?q=culvert+rusted
images.google.com/images?q=culvert+damage
images.google.com/images?q=culvert+damaged

...which do not even have very large diameters. Can you imagine how weak a buried corrugated steel culvert would be if it were 40 or 60 feet in diameter?

have u ever attended a monlithic workshop?

No. TCLynx on the Monolithic BBS did, though. You can ask her all about it and why she thinks it is a good deal.
bbs.monolithic.com/viewtopic.php?p=8307&highlight=workshop#8307

at $975 its kinda pricey unless you *know* you're going to be building one.

Since it is the absolutely cheapest type of structure you can build that will satisfy your two criteria of 1) F5 tornado resistance, and 2) absolutely cheapest price, it would seem that you do not really have a choice in what type of structure you will end up building, if you do end up building one.

If it is coming down to cost, you might ask on the Monolithic BBS how much the shell cost would be for a sculpted monolithic concrete building vs attempting to modify a steel building for the ability to handle F5 tornado. The shell cost of the sculpted monolithic concrete building will be ~$50/sf and will have the lowest long-term ownership costs of any type of structure you can build to code in the United States. I am not aware of any code-compliant type of structure that is a combination of stronger, cheaper, faster to build and lower-cost to own long-term.

 

[hitssquad]

Superwater, for waterjet coherence

awesome pics hitsquad!
btw, what's the range on that water jet squirt gun?

It is very low, unless you add a chemical called Superwater to your feedwater:
waterjets.org/super-water.html

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Waterjets have an inherent property of losing their jet coherence shortly after leaving a nozzle. This happened in the original water cannons used in California to literally wash away hill- and mountain-sides to disclose and capture the gold, it occurs with fire hoses when fire fighting, and even with the ubiquitous garden hose.

So ideally we would like to offset this jet divergence. Certainly this would produce more efficient cutting. Instead of a diffuse water spray developing at close standoff distances we would like to have a uniform coherent jet possibly of infinite length.
And that is what SUPER-WATER® gives. The jet is so coherent that it will remove the bark from a tree at a distance of 40-feet.
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